Bristles

Sinclair User

Gilbert Factor 6/10

Richard Price 6/10

BRISTLES Statesoft Memory: 48K Price: £7.95 Joystick: Sinclair, Kempston, Protek. No prizes for guessing that Bristles is a painting game - yes, all right it could have been a shaving game, ho ho. Right, grab the stick and guide the little housepainter round the house. Do it fast - there's a very tight time limit. Be careful because there are dumb buckets, flying half pints, steam pipes and sundry other aggravating hindrances. There's also Brenda the Brat who sticks her nasty little mitts on your nice new paint and loses your score. The house is shown in cutaway on screen with time indicators below. You use ladders and lifts to reach the various floors and the various nuisances will knock you back to the basement or deprive you of a brush if you collide with them. Although there is nothing new about the scenario, the game is certainly ultra-fast and demanding on your reflexes. There are eight buildings with six skill levels for each, making a total of 48 permutations. If you're into this sort of thing then sit back, switch your brain off and get sploshing.

Read it at Sinclair User Magazine Online

Your Spectrum

Dave Nicholls 1/5 MISS

Roger Willis 2/5 HIT

Ross Holman 2/5 MISS

JOYSTICK JURY From their bench on high, our regular panel of jurors - Ross Holman, Roger Willis and Dave Nicholls - pass judgement on the latest and greatest games software! Here they are again - that motley bunch of joystick jockeys, ready and waiting to sift through the plethora of software to help you make that important decision! WARNING! Just in case you find our scoring system too confusing, here's what it's all about. The score out of five at the end of each person's review is based on their own experience of the game. But that's pretty subjective... so they also use the HIT and MISS system to indicate its potential as a commercial success. BRISTLES Statesoft £7.95 Roger: Toshing out the crumbling walls of the Willis ancestral pile with half a gallon of budget emulsion was never like this. Bristles is about painting and decorating, a subject which I sincerely doubt is close to anybody's heart, but manages an appeal to lovers of quick-fire arcade activity through a sort of covert complexity. At first sight, simplistic graphics representing the eight houses to be attacked by brush - with a choicc of skill levels and the odd bit of trickery stirred in to give it gloss (sic, sic and sic) - are enough to make anybody fall asleep on the job. Its speed and scoring system just about save the day, however. Climbing up the skill levels introduces any aspirant tosher to the delights of working with clear varnish or doing it in the dark. All sorts of graphical oddities get in your way, banishing you back to the start. There are also elevators that can transport you all over the shop. However, having this info lodged in-brain did little to help me on-screen! Why, playing this game could be just like serving an apprenticeship without getting magnolia all over the carpet.

Read it at Your Spectrum Unofficial Archive

Crash

Use of Computer 84%

Graphics 70%

Playability 82%

Getting Started 85%

Addictive Qualities 83%

Value For Money 45%

Overall 75%

Unknown

Unknown

Unknown

Producer: Statesoft Memory Required: 48K Retail Price: £7.95 Language: Machine code Author: R Huddy Bristles is not a hard game to describe exactly, but it is somewhat hard to describe in detail, as there are rather a lot of ingredients. Basically, what we have here is a 1985 'Painter' type game. It is set in a house, or series of houses, and each room must be painted before the time runs out. With each screen the set up gets more complicated. There is a basement with ladders leading up to the ground floor and from then on there are lifts to the other floors. These zip up and down at a furious pace and timing is required to enter and exit them safely. Traversing a room will result in its being painted. The houses can have as many as five lifts. Inevitably, these buildings are filled with awkward nasties which are described in the commendably detailed instruction booklet. Some of these chase you ferociously, effectively gives you more paint. Each screen is controlled by a timer- when it runs out your points are calculated and you may progress to the next screen if sufficient points are obtained. There are 48 skill levels consisting of six levels with eight houses in each. The differences between the skill levels is also complicated but well detailed in the booklet. Between levels a series of letters appears on screen which will result in a message after completing eight houses. Discovering all six messages is the ultimate challenge in the game. COMMENTS Control keys: Q or ENTER/A or SPACE up/down, SYM SHIFT or CAPS/SPACE or Z left/right, or the cursor keys Joystick: AGF, Protek, Kempston, Sinclair 1 & 2 Keyboard play: responsive and thoughtfully laid out for left or right handers and cursor freaks Use of colour: good Graphics: on the small side and simply drawn/animated, but fast and smooth Sound: good between-play tune, otherwise a continuous buzzing with no on/off facility Skill levels: 48 Lives: 1 Screens: eight houses

One of the easier houses awaiting expert redecoration in BRISTLES.

Rooms with paint rollers should be the first to visit for a bonus.