OK, so you've seen it all before, it's just another Thrust-
But hold on a minute, because if you pass Dr Plummet's House of Flux by, you'll be missing out on something. Not missing out on some state of the art programming. Not missing out on originality, or wonderful effects. You'd miss out on a neat sense of humour, something which is getting hard to find these days, and mostly coming from across the Atlantic. Remember, if it makes me start a paragraph with "but" then it is something worth looking at
The Dr Plummet, bored with mankind (and alien-kind for that matter) has set himself up on a custom-
And you? Well, you know better. You aren't a breadhead into destruction and heavy things like that. You're a good guy, and you're going to rescue the good doctor. Or at least have a try.
Your ship is of the small, rotatable, thrustable type wit blasters and standard issue weapon deflection shields. Ideally suited to exploring outer space and strange planets, or at least, planets which obey the normal physical rules.
Dr Plummet was never one for rules, so his idea of gravity and Newton's concept tend to differ in places. Somewhat dramatically at times. Like, opposite even. Or at the very least, very odd.
In several scenarios it is more like flying a stunt kite than a spaceship, swooping and diving in circles to rescue the astronauts. Didn't I mention astronauts? There are six to be rescued before you move on to the next scenario, each weirder than the one before.
They are grouped into four sections of seven, allowing you to choose your starting place. They range from seemingly un-wierd planets to zones with seriously hypnotic backgrounds.
My favourite was a land of the giants, based ina laboratory. It was great fun reliving A level organic chemistry from the point of view of a benzene molecule.
This is the kind of game I really like. Written more as a hobby than a professional product. More for fun than fame. Flying in the face of "real" Amiga programmers everywhere, it even obeys some (but not all) operating system rules, so I managed to install it on to my hard disc.
This almost makes up for the bog-standard font used to display scores. Looks bad, guys. Ruins the karma. A bit of parallax scrolling would have been mind expanding too. But hey, I'm mellow and won't complain too much.
With the game you get some nice props to make you feel better about spending your money, and quite right too. Opening a huge box to nothing more than a folder A4 sheet of instructions and a disc is very depressing. Dr Plummet has enclosed some alien currency and a letter from a chum for you to read. It all adds to the game, lifting it above the ordinary.
It's fun. Get it.