If you thought 2023 was crap, think again!

Oh dear, has it come to this? I'm reviewing a game called 'Clam Diver'. IS there some intentional innuendo at play here, or have I got a distorted sense of reality from too much attribute clash and chutney as a child? I went to Urban Dictionary to clarify things. clam diver: A Fisherman who harvests underwater by hand-picking varied species in a discriminate and non-destructive way. Most countries with a coast have such communities, often they are misunderstood by other Fishermen and particularly by Bureaucrats. Actually the oldest and purest form of fishing. The Clam diver told us he had seen a lot of damage to the seabed caused by dredging. The game Well, that was surprisingly innocent. But also a reasonable way to introduce the game. Clam Diver is then a game themed around diving for clams. There is a very minimal introduction where you are asked to enter a level with no indication of what levels can be selected. I tried a range of numbers here and I can't figure ou...

Before going any further I have to honour a promise made early in the year. I confess it took ten spins before I was brave enough to settle on a result. Goes nicely with salted porridge Honourable mentions There were so many entries that took the art of creating a crap game to lofty levels.  All of TMD2003's entries came with a wealth of fascinating notes and development logs and each entry was extremely highly polished. So much so that Katakombs of Kakrafon was at risk of winning best game for much of the contest. Vegetable Stock wins Best Loading Screen in my mind for the perfect use of the Spectrum's palette to reproduce highly recognisable vegetables. Sweary Hangman also deserves a mention for its very professional loading screen. All the Firelord Quality Games came with extensive (and very amusing manuals) which probably took as much time to write as the games themselves. Most unusual machine entry was Number Board Plus for the Lambda. Good to see the QL getting a look in...

  Good game alert. Red Zebra has made a little text adventure using basic. The game is called Luna Tick. While there is no loading screen, the opening screen has some flourish, with nice use of attributes to form a logo:  This text adventure has a 'help' feature, showing all possible commands. The command list is simple, and that suits me just fine. I like text adventures generally, but I am usually clueless about how to play them. Really clear instructions mean I can focus on the puzzles, and not worry about what mystery command is needed to progress. This is a hard game to review because you should play it so I'm being careful not to spoil anything. And anything I can think to say is a spoiler! You start the game as an inmate trapped in an insane asylum. Although you would never know it. This information is only given when you complete the game!  However, don't let that put you off trying Luna Tick. It's a pleasantly small yet perfectly formed text adventure based...

  A lovely loading screen Seventeen years ago I wrote a  review  of  Wizard Of Wor , a  ZX Spectrum conversion  of the  C64 version  of the arcade hit.  I commented on the fact that it was a well loved C64 game, and this version finally plugged a gap in the Speccy line-up that the Commodorks had been teasing us about since 1983. I expected  Space Taxi  to be the same.  There's an ugly but loved C64 game of  this name , and it doesn't seem out of the realms of possibility that the Spectrum could handle a version.  There was a different game for the ZX81 called  Space Taxi  - which is very CCSCGC material, being a type in from the book  Not Only 30 Programs for the Sinclair ZX81 1K .[1] Space Taxi, by Dave Hughes isn't related to any of the previous Space Taxi games. I'll let Dave explain the plot. The game fills the screen with stars to avoid, then populates it with planets and your destination.  Th...

 While I have been writing reviews for other entries I have gotten behind on the entries of jj52. There have been so many of these that he is well on the way to creating his own cassette 50. However, buyers of the collection are unlikely to receive a Timex digital calculator watch. To catch up this post will review all the missing entries so far. Music Match - 16K Spectrum This arrived as a TAP file of 123 KB which was quite exciting. Loading it caused me to scratch my head. Opening the TAP file revealed 34 entries with Music Match buried at 28-29.  Extracting this produced a working program. There are four levels of play when the computer makes a beep of different durations and pitch. After which you need to input a response. There appears to be no link to the response and the beep. 1. Nothing 2. 9,3 3. 7,2 4. 1,3 If you are wrong which you will be you will be told "incorrect","incorekt","What are you? 12?", Some1 neds to go back to msc cls ASAP" At ...