Reviews

In this case we play the role of a cyborg/edgehog lost inside some futuristic caves filled with enemies ... Tantalus is as interesting as it sounds !!!

by Paul Hargreaves

Tantalus is a colourful maze game in which you explore a huge set of alien infested flip-screens while desperately looking for a gameplay. Paul Hargreaves seems to be a great programmer, but a poor game designer. The movement of the sprites is amazingly smooth, the graphics are flashy and psychedelics, your manoeuvrability is excellent, everything looks good and works fine: it's like a beautiful and bright palace with nothing inside. The programmer worked on the size and on the extras of the game, producing a 1000 screens maze [or at least that's what we can read in the mags], five or six different kind shootings for you character, more than 40 different aliens moving in 16 different patterns, but forgot about the substance: so the dynamic of the gameplay is reduced to an endless wandering in very similar rooms, chased by aliens, in a map so huge that it's very rare to find the elements that would allow you to end the game [32 locks to be destroyed to reach and kill a hidden deviant]. In other words, it's almost like opening a series of boxes without ever finding a content. In fact, it's so dull that this review has become a whiny bore. So, anyway, thanks to the technical prowess in display, the smoothness of it all, and the superficial playability, overall it's a

3/5

1986 Quicksilva Ltd (UK)
by Paul Hargreaves

Tantulus and Terminus are two marvelous action maze games.
Technically speaking both games are very well written, very smooth, fluid and fast. The plot is also very straight forward and easy to get into. The ultimate goal is the assassination of a deviant in the world in which Tantalus is set in, but in order to achieve this, you will first need to open the 32 doors, firing at the lock activators dead center. Each time an activator is opened, a door, located somewhere in the Fortress, will be removed, permitting access to deeper areas.

Initially this will require patience, which may discourage a few due to the huge size of the Tantalus world. But rewards soon appear as you progress deeper in the game. If it's too big a challenge for you, you could instead just wonder around, shooting aliens and overcoming obstacles, and you will still have fun with it. The sprites are above average and do their job competently. The use of colour is great and without any color clashing. As adventure shooters games go, Tantalus and Terminus are both excellent, addictive and very playable.

This is hard to rate, because it mix too many features, like a great map, but with playability problems.
All in all, great merit for pack into the 48Kb such a huge adventure full of details