ERE Informatique £19.95
A small ghost in an old castle floats from room to
room atop his soul, which is as light and fragile as a soap-bubble.
If nothing can block the path of the ghost, the same cannot be said
of the bubble, which bursts all too easily!
This is another game from the French company ERE Informatique. From
loading up this game, you can tell that it is something a little
different to anything else available for the ST at the moment. It
could be described as an arcade adventure, but it is something more
than that. You play the part of the ghost, who has the task of
moving the bubble around the many rooms of the castle.
The game loads with a fairly impressive picture, and a digitized
voice welcomes you to Bubble Ghost. The game begins with you
floating in a fairly empty room, with the soap bubble hovering in
front of you. In the far wall is a doorway, through which the bubble
must be blown. Moving the mouse about moves your ghost around fairly
quickly, and pushing one of the shift keys on the keyboard causes
him to purse his lips and blow. If you are behind the bubble, this
will cause it to drift off in the direction you blew it. Your ghost
can be rotated left or right using the mouse buttons, because in
later rooms you will have to negotiate some quite difficult
obstacles such as green heads and large spikes! Normally the ghost
is facing the left hand side of the screen so rotation is necessary.
To blow the bubble towards the right hand side of the screen, you
must turn your little ghost totally upside down! There are lots of nice features in Bubble Ghost, my favourite being the
way the ghost goes red when he's been blowing too long. This all
seems a bit 'cute' but it is nice to see that the author has put a
little thought into the game.
The graphics in the game start off looking a bit bland, however they
improve from screen to screen. Shading is used to a good effect, and
all of the screens are bright and colourful. The sound effects are
also fairly good. The sound of your blowing is very lifelike but I
do not care much for some of the `droning' background sound effects
which become a little irritating after a while.
This game came out of the blue with none of the usual pre-release
advertising and so I didn't really know what to expect. However, I
now think that it's an excellent game and my opinion of Ere
Informatique has been given quite a boost because of it.
Bubble Ghost is a refreshing change from a lot of the run of the
mill arcade adventures which are being released by the dozen for the
ST at the moment. It would appear that a lot of thought and care has
gone into the creation of this game. I highly recommend it.
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