Colony (ZX Spectrum)

Don't blame me for this one, it wasn't my idea. Looking at the title screen I suppose this is going to be about a brave ant trying to get food for his colony, while being hounded by a tiny robot wizard bug who likes harassing people with second-hand lightning from his deadly electric cigarettes.

This came out on the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, MSX, and Atari 8-bit computers, but I'm only playing it on the Speccy. My curiosity does have limits.

Oh right, I'm actually playing as the antisocial bug droid. I've started off in some kind of base and I've no idea what I'm meant to be doing here. I'll go wandering and see if there's any ants to harass with my tongue cannon.


38 SECONDS LATER.

Mushrooms. Nothing here but rows of mushrooms. This base is like a Lego brick ghost town.

Maybe that HUD up there can give me some clues to what my objective is. I've got money, a radar with nothing showing up on it, the E.T.A. is never, the beacon is off, and there's a picture of someone stopping a chainsaw with their bare hand on the right.

There's a button which switches between these two modes. Laser gun is pretty obvious, but I've no idea what the chainsaw hand does. Melee perhaps? Pity the game didn't let me assign each one to a separate key, save me from having to switch between them.

Guess I'll keep wandering around then.

A few screens down the game suddenly went Zelda on me, and I finally ran into some ants. A single shot blows them to pieces, but it gets me nothing and costs laser ammo. I thought I might at least get a few extra credits for the effort.


A MINUTE AND A HALF LATER.

There's nowhere to go out here! I've travelled to the four corners of the level, and there's a wall of rocks around the edges sealing me inside. Plus the radar's still being less than useful, giving me absolutely nothing to head for.

Oh wait, hang on. This isn't a radar, it's a mini-map! The stage is an 8x8 grid of screens, and I'm in the bottom left one right now. Okay, now I know what I'm dealing with here I'm going to map this place out.

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Turns out that the base is the level, with rooms I can enter, mushroom farms, solar panels, and a lot of ant-nibbled fences around the outside. Funny how the left and right walls are built out of solid ant-proof blocks, but they decided to go with crap wooden fences for the top and bottom walls. Because that's how you get ants.

I figured out what the chainsaw hand mode thing does! If I'm standing in just the right place, it lets me pick up the wreckage of a smashed fence (and perhaps other things), and store it in my four block inventory up there at the top of the screen! I admit I'm struggling to think of why I'd want to carry that around, but I'm sure it's just a failure of imagination on my part.

Whatever, I'm going to go check inside this building. If I don't find a shop selling laser ammo soon, I'm going to be in serious trouble.

It is a shop! Plus the mystery of the beacon is halfway to being solved. Whatever it is, I'm the one who can flick it on or off, and it's activation status is important enough to get a space on my HUD. I'll leave it off for now though I think. The last thing I want to do is attract more of whatever's out there.

No laser ammo, but I can order fences. Three varieties of fences in fact, I'm spoiled for choice. I think I'll take a selection of each, I am rich after all.


FOUR MINUTES LATER.

Those bastard ants have been eating my solar panels! Why would they even do that? Put solar panels on the floor where the ants can eat them I mean, stupid colonists.

There's a grey line in front of them though, which indicates that I can block the way in with a well placed section of steel fencing. That should keep the ants out for... oh, at least 20 seconds. And it has to be well placed, because the bloody game is incredibly picky about where I have to be standing to place objects.

Fortunately I've found a building that converts the fence debris I've been collecting into a shiny new block of fencing. In fact I've found three buildings, and each one repairs a different kind of wrecked fence. Because having to try each door in turn to see if it's the right place to get the crap out of my inventory sure adds a lot of depth to gameplay.

While I was busy racing around trying to fix the perimeter fence, those bastard ants ate all the mushrooms! Five sections of mushrooms, and this is basically all that's left.

I guess I'll harvest what's here, try to find a building to dump them in, then hopefully figure out how to plant a new crop. And if I'm very lucky I'll find a place along the way that restores my health and laser energy, because I'm a few pixels away from game over here.


40 SECONDS LATER.

Hey, I found a place to get my health back, and took some mushroom seeds out of storage, and... huh?

"NO BEACON FOUND, DUMPING SUPPLIES"?

Oh crap, that must have been the fences I ordered! They just dumped my cargo of fences, all 1000 credits worth! Those bastards.

I earn credits by selling crates of mushrooms, but ants eat the mushrooms unless I block their way with fences, and I don't have any fences because the ants eat them too. Wait a second, mushrooms... giant ants... we're shipping these crates off to the Mario Bros games aren't we?


SIX MINUTES OF FENCE REPLACEMENT LATER.

QUIT BREAKING MY FUCKING FENCES YOU FUNGI FEEDING FORMICIDAE! PLEASE!

I haven't been playing long, but it feels like it's been hours. I just can't take a break for a second, or the ants will get in. Well, the ants get in whatever I do, they only need ONE hole, but every ant busy chewing on a fence is one less ant in my mushroom patch.

Oh come on, I'm too tired for this now. If I go off to get a laser power refill these seeds will be ant food by the time I get back. It's like I'm trying to plug leaks on a sinking ship when the hull's cracking open and it's already flooded up to my knees, except with giant pink insects instead of water.

Why am I even planting seeds anyway? Mushrooms grow from spores.

Hang on, why are these mushrooms still here? They're outside the base wall, but they've been untouched for over twenty minutes. The ants must not be able to get past those green blocks, meaning that I've got an ant-proof emergency cash source!

I bought some new supplies with my mushroom cash: two bags of seeds, and a robot battery. And this time I turned the damn beacon on so the delivery guy didn't chuck them out the window on the way.

This red robot's been sitting here for half an hour, so I figured he's either an extra life for me, or he just needs a kick in the ass to get moving. The robot battery did the job well enough, and he immediately ran off going on his own adventures someplace else. I hope he finds happiness wherever he ends up.


TEN MINUTES LATER.

This is what I should have done from the start. Instead of trying to protect the entire base, I'm just guarding this one patch of mushrooms, and some solar panels. Much less fencing to keep maintained. Now I can get a steady income, and I was just able to buy 80 more seeds.

And still the level refuses to end. Maybe there's no goals, no actual way to succeed here. Perhaps this is all the game is; I just keep harvesting mushrooms and fixing fences four at a time, forever.

Well fuck that, I'm throwing my robot under an ant.

Oh now I get the screenful of text. They could have used this chunk of memory to store some basic instructions or introduction telling me how to play the game, but nope I get the Dead Parrot sketch from a Monty Python ep instead. I didn't want to be a mushroom farming robot anyway... I wanted to be a lumberjack! Leaping from tree to tree! As they float down the mighty rivers of British Columbia! With my best girl by my side...


Alright, Colony is basically a farming game then it seems, designed to let the player experience unending stress and frustration until they either keel over, or sacrifice their robot to save what's left of their mind. My favourite bit was when it let me redefine my controls on the main menu, but it was sadly all downhill from there. Well to be fair it's far from the worst game I've played on the site, it's functional, but I couldn't wait to stop playing it.

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If you agree, disagree, wish that I'd stop playing crappy looking ZX Spectrum games, have a game request, or just want to announce to the world that you've read this post, feel free to leave a comment.