Bearded Fantasy

Break Space

Andy

Dave

Mpk

BEARDED FANTASY JuanGM PWYW / $2 Dave's Review The title doesn't give much away. It could be anything from a Dumbledore text adventure to a Point & Click game indulging your Auntie Edna's more savoury thoughts about Noel Edmonds. As it turns out, Bearded Fantasy is a rather fresh and fun painting platform game. You play a nameless beard tasked with painting a haunted castle while dodging the nasties. These nasties being patrolling ghosts, lava and other lethal hazards that have been the bane of platform game tradesmen for decades. Normally, a paint job involves slapping on a couple of coats of something neutral with a quirky name. Here however, the walls are already done and your task is to paint the floors in a matching green – presumably called 'Frothy Pistachio' or something on the tin. I love the player sprite. Using a few well crafted lines against a black background, it makes a fantastic cartoon realisation of a beard on legs. I have to admit that initially, I was looking at it wrong and could see a figure in a big black coat. The French have a phrase for that: "Eet treeks ze aye" or something. Bearded Fantasy is made with ZX-Boriel, which allowed JuanGM to unleash his creativity in BASIC while keeping the speed of machine code. What it also means is that you don't move smoothly in pixels but clunk in character squares. This is generally fine and the speed hides it - we don't want every game to handle the same-but it does make a few jumps harder than they ought to be. It's eight single screen levels, which IMO is the perfect length for the modern player. With our busy lives and smartphone addled attention spans, we're less likely to finish a massive epic than BITD. That doesn't mean Bearded Fantasy is shallow. While you can play it through like any platform game and not have to think tooo much about it, there are important nuances: as you complete 75% of the screen, a magic potion appears that acts like a Pacman pill. Knowing that, the player can tactically finish certain sections of the screen first, knowing they won't have to leave the difficult baddy corner to chance later. You can jump through unpainted blocks, but not painted ones. That's a subtle but important mechanic, which can be ignored, but you'll be gnashing your teeth a lot less if you don't. There is also the rarest of features-a time limit which I'm glad is there. It spurs you on, and it turns the easier levels into time trials where marginal gains come into play. Some levels have conveyors that need painting twice, and others have little gem shaped teleporters, springs and trampolines that can be used to your advantage. The sound effects are default samples from Shiru's BeepFX, and they're fine, but most of us have heard them a few times before. It's a great tool that is begging to be tinkered with. This is a great first game from the author, and according to him, a 128K version is in the works with AY music, extra levels, and 'more surprises'. I hope he isn't tempted to go too big, but rather develop some extra features, and make more of the solid painted block mechanic. All in all, like the simple but effective thuds and beeps of the intro tune, this is music to my ears. Muchas gracias Juan!

"Rarely has painting floors been so much fun"

"fantastic cartoon realisation of a beard on legs"

A BRUSH with danger! No? Nothing? Suit yourselves

I should be getting danger money for this

Just a few pixels - but mostly BEARD.