Savage

STORY / GAMEPLAY
You play Savage, a muscular warrior who was imprisoned inside an evil castle. In level 1, a labyrinth of dark and gloomy dungeons hides a myriad of demons and ghouls, all ready to put a bloody end to his attempts to escape. Savage is attacked by a number of deadly mutant monsters. Once killed, they will yield a piece of weaponry that will enable Savage to continue his fight. He is able to collect items that increase his energy, shield himself from the enemy attacks or even increase his energy level. At the end of each level Savage comes across the Guardian of the dungeon. Upon defeating the defenders of the dungeon, Savage escapes from the Castle and is now free to enter Death Valley in level 2. In this level the gameplay changes to a first person perspective into a pseudo 3D environment, in which Savage must escape from the area by seeking ways to shoot down the attackers (ghosts and lurking skulls) and avoid monoliths that rise. But halfway through the attacks in the valley, Savage discovers that his escape from the castle is just a trick to keep his Maiden love imprisoned forever! He then returns to the Castle to rescue her but now he is unable to enter it so he calls upon his trusty eagle to fly into the Labyrinths. The game now is in level 3 in which the perspective changes to a multi-directional action shooter where you fly the eagle through the corridors of the Labyrinth, searching for specific items and battling the last of the demons and monsters that now fight for the final victory. The corridors are swarmed by deadly traps like pitfalls with spikes, dropping stones and others. This game is one of the 8bit home-computers' finest! The gameplay is addictive, the visuals and sounds are superb but the difficulty level is rather high due to the huge sprites and the increased, non-stop number of enemy hordes that occupy half the screen!

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The ZX Spectrum version has great graphics with detailed sprites and impressive (for its hardware) colors. Technically the game looks like the CPC version but with fewer colors and a few less graphics touches at the backgrounds. The sprites' animation is superb, offering plenty of smoothly animated frames (check the eagle animation) which is quite rare for a Spectrum game! Both foreground and background scroll good enough, though there's an annoying flickering on the screen compared to the C64 (which runs much smoother). The sound on the ZX offers an intro tune (same as the CPC's) along with a few rather simplistic sound effects during gameplay.

GAMEPLAY SAMPLE VIDEO
On our video below you may watch the Sinclair ZX spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 and Amiga OCS versions of the game