Diamaze

Let us use our imagination for a while. You were playing poker. Against a Lord. Carruthers is his name. Ouch. He was cheating, but since your game skills are so incredibly keen, you managed to win. Poor middle-aged low-income Lord is completely tied, as he doesn’t have the means to pay you. Or so he says. Well, shed no tears my old friend, as Lord Carruthers has a diamond mine!  Actually, more than one, apparently.

The proposal is that you go into his diamond mine(s) and mine diamonds so he’s able to pay you. Makes sense, right? What you get is a lamp, which runs out of fuel after a while, meaning you’ll be risking a slow, dark, cold, probably bug and bat ridden death. Unless you make it out of the cave before the lamp runs out of its fuel. If that’s the case, you know, you’re pretty much fine. A bit richer, too. You also get a few dynamite sticks, just in case.

 

Don’t be fooled by the diamonds that I got.

The gameplay couldn’t be simpler: you, an X, go for the little diamonds on screen. Don’t let the fuel run out, and use your dynamite wisely so you can get as many as you can. You should also take into consideration that you only complete one game when you actually leave the cave; meaning you can leave your score on this pretty wall of fame. If you clean the whole screen, you get extra 5000$. Getting all the diamonds is actually quite a challenge, of that I can assure you.  Diamaze, from 1990, requires no fancy videocard, or anything of the sort. 

While it is a fun game if you’re looking for some brainless wandering and exploding squares with dynamite i’s, it has a couple of shortcomings: the sounds are most definitely annoying. One could argue that they’re the typical sounds for these sort of DOS games, but, well, they’re just annoying. You can turn them off, but every time you restart a cave, the sound comes back on. Also, the controls for such a simple game should be a bit more straightforward. You move with the arrows, but you use dynamite with LRUD keys (yes, that means left, right, up and down). As you can imagine, I’m not really looking for morphology oriented games, which means having for example WASD for planting the sticks would be ideal. There also doesn’t seem to be a way of changing controls.

Next time you play poker against someone, make sure they show the money beforehand.

Here’s a little gameplay video, so you get the jist of it:

                          

Alley Cat

Ever wanted to know what it’s like to live under a cat’s fur? You may just have found your thing. No, not that thing.

Alley Cat is a game from 1983 where you play as a, well, alley cat. This means you are enabled to do all the nice things that alley cats do: get mice, jump on aquariums, and overall just invade random people’s houses in search for stuff that cats enjoy. The main goal of the game is to get laid, which means you’ll have to fight off other prospectors, and finally get close to the very coveted not-so-alley female cat. You can think of this game as a feline Leisure Suit Larry. 

     Just chillin’.

The tasks of a cat chillin’ in the neighborhoods are not easy ones. This little piece of black fur must fight for survival, in an intensely aggressive and randomly painful universe. Not only he has to fend off huge bulldogs trampling purple floors, always looking for an easy target; this pre-cat videos on the internet creature even has to worry about mice. That’s right. Just jump at them the wrong way and kitty cat’s gone, kaput, done for, micecandy. You’d think he has 7 lives, as implied by the title screen, but you’d be wrong. This game is known for sharp puns (pun intended), since when you pause the game, you don’t pause it as much as you paws it. Bloody brilliant, ain’t it?  Other than that, in this cat's life, one has to evade brooms, electric eels, random stuff thrown out of windows, spiders bigger than Australia itself, and possibly Twilight fans looking for a buffed vampire.

Dogs in this game are not portrayed in the most positive light.

The gameplay is pretty smooth and swell. Most you have to do is to jump into random windows where you can find five different rooms. Once you finish the task proposed (usually in the form of getting birds, fishes, or just being an asshole and breaking vases around), you can move on to the female kitty room, avoid all the other cats trying to get frisky, and be glorious in your achievements. Just like going to those weird clubs in town. Moreover, in the platonic love room, you actually have to get her a gift, otherwise it’s useless going up to her. She’s only after your ‘cedes, bro. After that, the game starts getting harder; however, in case you want more of a challenge, you actually have more than one difficulty mode so trim your whiskers, as it can get tricky.

You can actually leave paw prints to keep the broom sweeping while you chase after rats who are clearly incapable of digesting huge chunks of cheese.

This being said, it’s a fun game. It might get you busy for over 10 minutes providing you’re not hungry. Or needing to pee. As I positively leave this text to do the latter, I’ll present you with a small gameplay video of Mr. Cat chasing after his holy grail (and failing masterfully at it).