Jumbly

Crash

Overall 64%

Producer: DK. Tronics, 48K £5.95 Another jigsaw puzzle game, but with more pictures than Artic's game offers. The object again is to recreate the original picture from the pieces. The graphics are very good, with plenty of detail and smooth animation. The sound is also excellent, with one or two different tunes for each puzzle. Good instructions. Overall CRASH rating 64%. May be used with Kempston joystick. Machine code.

Read it at Crash - The Online Edition

Your Spectrum

John Hall 7/10

Mark Knight 8/10

Tony Samuels 6/10

Your Spectrum is continuing to scour the country's computer clubs to get the undiluted thoughts, feelings and impressions of dedicated games enthusiasts - thus providing our readers with unbiased evaluations. Any club wishing to offer their reviewing services should contact Ron Smith, Spectrum Soft, [redacted]. This month we visited the Heald Green Computer Club (which meets fortnightly at the Public Hall, [redacted], on Wednesdays from 7.30 to 10.30pm). Three of the club's leading members each played the games we gave them for review and in some cases found them so well-conceived and written, went completely over the top with the superlatives. In others, the games were deemed to be re-hashes of old ideas and evaluated accordingly. The club was formed four months ago, and has already managed to attract over 40 enthusiasts. All members are being brought up to the same standard of proficiency by the more experienced members who are running formal courses in both Basic and machine code. Membership is offered at a very reasonable rate, and all enquiries should be referred to Tony Samuels on [redacted] (after 6pm). Tony, incidentally, is currently working on a new program for the Spectrum (called Ugh - see Rumbles in this issue) which will be available from Softek in the near future. JUMBLY DK'Tronics £6.95 This is one of those slide puzzles, the kind that used to be found in Christmas stockings and crackers every year. You start with a picture grid, and all the squares jumbled up; your job is to put them back in order.

Read it at Your Spectrum Unofficial Archive

Personal Computer News

Lasting Appeal 4/5

Playability 5/5

Use Of Machine 5/5

Overall Value 5/5

Bill Davies

Bob Chappell

Geof Wheelwight

Jim Ballard

Mike Gerrard

Simon Williams

PCN MICROPAEDIA VOL 21 PART 2 GAMES GALORE PCN stacks up the best games on the block for Spectrum Dragon Atari BBC As promised in our last issue, here is the second part of the games Micropaedia. If you didn't find something to suit your taste last week you'll probably have more luck this time around. The featured micros are the Spectrum, BBC Micro B, Dragon 32 and Atari. On the following 2 pages we present a selection for the Sinclair Spectrum - both for 16K and 48K machines. NAME: Jumbly SYSTEM: 48K Spectrum PRICE: £6.95 PUBLISHER: DK'Tronics, [redacted] FORMAT: Cassette LANGUAGE: Machine code OTHER VERSIONS: None OUTLETS: Spectrum retailers Remember being frustrated by those flat, plastic puzzles where you had to unscramble a muddle by sliding lettered or numbered tiles around a tray? DK'Tronics has brought this type of puzzle kicking and screaming into the electronic age. The object is to slide the jumbled tiles around and reassemble the original picture in a set of moves. There are at least 12 different puzzles to solve but you are only told the titles of the first three. You select your puzzle by entering its title (Letters, Jumbly or Nursery). The chosen picture is displayed, one of the 20 tiles is removed and placed outside the tray and the rest are randomly jumbled. Your target to beat (around 100 moves for the simpler puzzles) and actual number of moves is shown. Manipulating the puzzle is easy - each picture has one vacant square so by using joystick (or keyboard) you move a tile up, down, left or right into the empty slot. There is a wide variety of musical accompaniments and you can switch back to the puzzle solution. If all this sounds fairly ordinary, wait until you see the puzzles themselves - they are alive. The Nursery puzzle includes a winking, leg-swinging dolly, twin cannons blazing away at each other, a twitching monkey, a drum-beating rabbit, a spinning top, a marching guardsman and a bouncing jack-in-the-box. Some of the harder puzzles are not only animated, they also scroll. In wraparound fashion, off the edges of the tray. You can freeze the picture - that helps a bit - and if you're desperate, remove the scrolling. An old mechanical puzzle brought sparklingly up to date. The random shuffling and mobile pictures present a tough challenge yet the game manages to remain hugely enjoyable. Micropaedia Editor: Geof Wheelwright Design: Paul Clarkson Contributors: Jim Ballard, Bob Chappell, Bill Davies, Mike Gerrard and Simon Williams NEXT WEEK We begin a five-part series of detailed graphics techniques for the BBC Micro, the Acorn Electron, the Oric Atmos, the Oric-1, the Atari series of home computers, the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair Spectrum.

ZX Computing

Lasting Appeal 80%

Graphics 80%

Originality 70%

Playability 80%

Use Of Machine 70%

Value 80%

James Walsh

Jumbly is based on the old fashioned slider puzzle game in which a sequence of numbers, letters or a picture must be rearranged correctly. In this rather advanced, computerised version, a number of specially designed pictures are divided into twenty blocks. The computer jumbles the picture by removing a block and sliding the remaining nineteen about in a random manner. The odd block is then replaced once the puzzle has been completed. You then must rearrange the blocks into the correct order using keyboard or joystick. A target number of moves for each picture is provided; if this target is exceeded, the picture will have to be attempted again. If on the other hand the target is either met or beaten, then the option of going on to the next puzzle is provided. Titles are given to each puzzle, the next one only being given on the completion of the present one. Fortunately, the first three titles are given beforehand, so giving you a headstart. Some pictures jumble with wrap-around, ie a block can jump off the end of the puzzle board and reappear on the other side so adding another dimension to the game. Another added extra is the cleverly written tune which plays with each puzzle (and can of course be turned off). If and when you complete all the puzzles, there is an opportunity to win £150 by designing your own picture. Verdict: The pictures are stunning, the graphics are excellent and the sound is fantastic. An old idea has been put to work very neatly and efficiently, whilst also expanding upon it. The game is surprisingly addictive and often frustrating. The graphics are smooth and a pleasure to watch and the game is a delight from a player's point of view as well as the programmer's.

Personal Computer Games

Graphics 9/10

Sound 5/10

Ease Of Use 4/10

Originality 9/10

Lasting Interest 6/10

Overall 7/10

Chris Anderson 7/10

MACHINE: Spectrum 48K JOYSTICK: Optional CATEGORY: Puzzle SUPPLIER: DK'Tronics PRICE: £6.95 Remember those flat plastic puzzles in which you had to slide squares around until they were in the right order? Now you can do the same thing on a computer. Jumbly is a very nice version of the puzzle with the added twist that some of the 10 pictures you have to unscramble are continually scrolling. This means that in their jumbled-up state it's extremely difficult to work out which piece goes where. Another addition is that you have a target number of moves to solve the puzzle in (initially 150). If you make the target you're supplied with a code which allows you to move on to the next picture. If you don't make it, you gnash your teeth and try again. I fear that quite a few buyers of Jumbly will do a good deal of teeth-gnashing. For if you hold down a key a fraction of a second too long, you will end up sliding two squares instead of one. You only have to do this a few times to blow any chance of reaching your target Fortunately you do have the option of peeking at the unscrambled picture you're aiming for. And of stopping the scrolling - although this stops you getting the code when you solve the puzzle. Anyone who does manage to get through all 10 puzzles will win the right to design a picture for Jumbly II. But although Jumbly is novel, colourful and slick, at heart it remains a simple puzzle which is made frustrating in a rather artificial way. A bit like asking someone to count to 10 while holding his head submerged in a bucket of glue.