Advanced Pondering The Orb Simulator - Jim Waterman

To prove I can follow instructions I turned off fast load for this one.

"Do not fail to load this at normal speed, though, because I had to use some interesting trickery to get the loading screen to appear in the way I did! And, the chances are, it'll take longer to load overall than it will to see everything in the game."

Even at normal speed, it is necessary not to blink. For a brief second a screen with A O P S appears

Before blending into the image from the cover of A Spy in Isengard which spawned a multitude of memes around orb pondering.





The email promised me "You'll play it once to lose, once again to win, that's your lot.". Since I only read the email before loading I wasn't sure what to do at this point. I poked around at various keys with no result. Maybe this was after all a genuine Niksen simulator? I left it running in the background while performing a couple of chores, suddenly there was a fuzzy crackling and the emulator reset. What the...!

Time to read the instructions that came with it. 

"You see the "Pondering The Orb" wizard. You must ponder the orb until it flashes and makes mystical zapping noises. As soon as it flashes, press SPACE. If you don't, you'll soon find out what happens."

Ahh! There it is. Time to play again to win.


This time I managed to remain focussed for the 2 minutes and 41 seconds and hit enter at the correct moment. I'm greeted with a pleasing victory tune and the congratulatory phrase "Excellent pondering". I'm not convinced by the promised reward, but once my wand arrives from Amazon I'm in search of a lute to wave it at.

Technical Ability - 90%

"This was intended to be a very quick and filthy attempt to see if I can make an actual GAME, no matter how crap, entirely in machine code."

I feel ill-placed to review the technical prowess of this program. Jim is clearly further along his journey of Spectrum machine code than I am. He has clearly made a game (a crap game) in machine code. Being Jim it is adorned with extra bells and whistles, it is not content with a bog standard loading screen or a badly drawn image of a man pondering an orb.

Read the notes and devlog for more insights, also the helpfully include .asm files.

Achievement - 100%

According to the email "You'll play it once to lose, once again to win, that's your lot..". Exactly true. Twice was enough for me, even the predicted order of win/lose was correct. The email also promised, "it wouldn't be a CSSCGC without the deadest of dead horses being flogged to within even more inches of its long-running afterlife.". I feel the horse was well and truly flogged. Mission achieved.

Fun - 2%

I can't deny it has gameplay, but the gameplay is utterly dull. You would be far better off buying your own orb to ponder for as long as you like without crackly effects and flashing screen.

Crap Factor - 93.3%

I fear far more effort has gone into producing this crap than it deserves. Jim says he used the bonus leap day to produce it, I say his bonus day was wasted unless he was hoping for a crack at winning the converted CSSCGC.

Roundup

I think this program proves that the essence of crapness is not in the level of coding.

Pros -
  • Blink and you miss it loading screen
  • Pretty picture of a man pondering orb
  • Nice tune for winning
Cons -
  • Tedious gameplay
  • The nervous tension of having to concentrate in case you miss it and need to sit through the whole thing again just to see what happens when you win.
Remember I play these games so you don't have to. Should you play this game I bear no responsibility for your mental health afterwards. Should the warnings not be enough you can download and play it here.



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