MARBLES OF WISDOM A puzzle game for Zx Spectrum ---------------- THE STORY: The action of our tale takes places in ancient Greece, the land of mighty gods, mythical creatures, brave warriors and wise philosophers. Lapides could consider himself a happy man. Although still a young man, he had already achieved a lot in his profession. Being a bright philosopher and an eloquent orator who could win almost any court trial, he needn't to worry about money. But gold didn't mean much to Lapides as his true treasure was a woman whom he loved and was about to marry soon. Her name was Berenika. One day the happy life of Lapides got shattered into broken pieces of sorrow. His Berenika has dissapeared! It took some time, but eventually he learnt that she was kidnapped by Hades, the god of Underworld. It was a common practice of Greek gods to take by force any mortal women they liked. There was sadly not much to be done about it. Lapides couldn't do much against Hades alone, but fortunately Greek gods were constantly arguing and fighting against each other, so he could search for allies. He climbed the Mount Olympus, the site of gods, and asked for help. With his best oratory skills he described his suffering and pain. The gods were willing to help Lapides but not for free. They wanted him to impress and thrill them somehow. First they suggested monster fighting, but learning that Lapides wasn't a warrior they offered another quest, suited for his skills. They set up a board in the sand and placed some coloured stones on it. "These are marbles of wisdom" spoke Zeus, the supreme Greek god. "When connected into long chains, they dissappear. Play with them to show your wisdom and win our favours" Each god is going to give five riddles to Lapides. When he solves them all, the god will give him an impressive gift. When Lapides collects five gifts, he can go to Hades. Fighting Hades would mean death, but with his skills of orator, he should try to barter and exchange the gifts for his beloved Berenika. Good luck, Lapides! ---------------- THE GAMEPLAY: The game board is 8 fields wide and 8 fields high. At he beginning of each riddle there are marbles of different colours situated on the fields. You can try to move any stone to any neigbour field on the board. If the destination field is empty, the marble will just move. If it contains another marble, the marbles will swap places. You need to create vertical or horizontal chains of marbles of the same colour. A chain consists of at least 3 marbles of the same colour. A legal move should create at least one new chain of marbles, but there may be more. You won't be allowed to make an illegal move, but fortunately there isn't any punishment for trying to do so. The marbles connected into a chain will blink and dissapear. It will create some empty space on the board and some still existing marbles may have empty space under them now. In such case they will fall down. When some marbles fall down, it may create even more new chains of marbles, which will dissapear too. You may create long chain reactions of marble destruction with a single move. There are two types of marbles: -STONES They are oval and very common. You just need to connect them into chains and it won't give you any special effects -DIAMONDS On some boards you will find diamonds. You have to connect them into chains, just like stones. A diamond, put into a chain, will explode clearing an area of 3x3 fields. If there are other diamonds in its explosion area, they will explode too, making a chain reaction. You can combine stones and diamonds into a single chain, but they must be of the same colour. Your goal is to clear all the board, which means destroying all the marbles. ---------------- CONTROLS: In the game menu you make the choice if you'll control the game with keyboard or Kempston Joystick. The keys for keyboard are: Q-up A-down O-left P-right SPACE-select You control a pointer with the direction keys. Move it over a marble that you want to move and press SELECT. The pointer will start to flash. Now if you press a direction key holding the SELECT key, you will try to move a selected marble into the chosen direction. If the move is legal, it will happen. If you make bad decisions of connecting wrong marbles, the level will become impossible to complete. When you realise it, you may press R button to replay the level. You can replay each level 9 times. The game will know when you got into the dead end with no more possible moves to make. You can only press R or SELECT then to replay the level then. At any moment you can press X to exit to the game menu. When you solve five puzzles given you by a god, you get a valuable item from the god and a password. You can enter password by choosing an appropriate option from the game menu. Use left/right to choose the password letter and up/down to modify the letter. When you are ready, press select to confirm. If you have given a correct password, you will start the game from the appropriate level. ---------------- CREDITS: Coding and graphics: Rafał Miazga Music: Mister Beep This game is FREEWARE