Scrap Yard Scrapes

By Steve McCrea

Genre: Scrapyard: maze

Rule #1 of how to write a crap game,  states that only good games have the word ‘crap’ in the title, and seeing how Scrap Yard Scrapes manages to secrete said word in there twice then it must be especially good.  Well yes actually, it is.

The aim of the game is to get from the left to the right hand side of the screen, you have a limited number of bombs to plant (get clear!) which blast your way through the blocks and scrap, and you can use your plough to shift the cyan scrap.  There is a time limit, after which the scrap yard dog (apologies to the author for thinking this UDG was a pig in a previous review!) chases after you, and finds you with a remarkable reliability.  The algorithm it follows is clearly very advanced.  As you progress the game gets harder as you get less bombs.  It is best around level 3 & 4 where you really have to employ strategy to get through.

 

There’s always a fly in the ointment of course, and SYS is no exception.  The game setup including ‘Loading…’ and screen generation takes a full 41 seconds, and also there is a bug in the code where you lose a bomb if you try and plant it in a block (or was it intentional?).  Also the game becomes impossible around level 5 as you only get 1 bomb, but the screen generated usually needs more than this.

There’s so many good points about this game, I mean, Steve has even included a feature that clears space around the player at the game start, to avoid being blocked in. 

Summary: lovely UDGs, great idea, great gameplay, a simply brilliant BASIC game.   

For shame Steve, for shame!

Tipshack: get to the middle of the screen and wait for the dog to start chasing you, makes for a more exciting game.

HACK PACK: non – finite bombs:  insert LET nb=7 at the start of line 200.

Download here.  DO IT!!!!!!