If you thought 2023 was crap, think again!

 One of the requirements for a crap game surely has to be a great name, one that instils a frisson of excitement and a sense of wonder as to what it will herald. This game has such a name, move over Ant Attack here comes Sloth Attack. The accompanying email adds to that level of promise "Anyway to this Spectrum game. It's all quite simple. You control a character who's sole need for survival is to avoid a sloth. A rampaging, murderous sloth that kills on contact. And it is hell bent on doing so. Fortunately it's a sloth, and it's slow. But it's constantly out to get you. It's probably on cocaine or something because it never goes to sleep. " Now if this is paired with excellent graphics, kickass music and unmissable gameplay play this game will be a winner. It begins with a simple intro explaining the content of the game. All framed with a pretty leafy border. So far, so good. Unfortunately, there isn't any intro music, but still a chance for excel...

 This is a game that I have waited a life time to play. Billed as Tetris for the spatially challenged, UNIS gets rid of the awkwardness of different shapes and replaces it with a simple cube. Loading the TZX file presents the player with a simple but effective loading screen. Once loaded the player is offered the choice between using the keyboard or Kempston joystick. The latter wasn't tried in this review due to a lack of the required hardware. Since there is no need to rotate the playing piece the keyboard is limited to 3 key O and P to move left and right and A to drop the piece faster.  The object is to make lines of cubes the same colour vertically, once you have 5 in a row, the row will disappear. Initially the pieces drop slower than a snail with a terrible hangover, but as lines are formed this speeds up to the maximum speed the BASIC program is capable of running at. Pressing left or right causes the pieces to keep moving in that direction until a wall is hit or you p...

 Hot on the heels (well a couple of weeks after, but there is a review backlog) of Orb Pondering comes a game with a very similar concept, but a hint of extra gameplay.  "I think you have a QL? Well, I made a game for it. But then I thought you'll never manage to run it. Because running anything on a QL is impossible, and the emulator might be £40 or something. For all these reasons, I converted my game to work on QPC2 - which is free and QL based. So stick the attached files into a random folder on your PC. Set DOS2_ to point to your windows folder location in QPC2 and the LRUN the bas file," Because the BASIC listing contains calls specifically for QPC2 it won't run on a real QL or other emulators. It was the first time for me using QPC2 and a fuzzy head from a bout of man flu meant it took far longer than it should have to get the program running. With hindsight, even the fuzzy head is a poor excuse. Of course, if it is the first time starting QPC2 you will be give...