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The face of BOH

Oct14 We’re not talking about an episode of that new-fangled Dr. Who here.  We’re talking about the ghosts of Amiga Computer’s past.  Er, Games of Amiga’s past.  According to the know-all see-all Wikipedia, The Amiga was a family of personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. Development on the Amiga began in ‘82 and  Commodore International bought Amiga Corp and introduced the machine in ‘85.   What does this have to do with our game?   Because of the Amiga’s superior audio/video capabilities a majority of the Amiga community was into games, including the person who created this game.  They wanted to bring that feeling back to modern machines.  The game is called BOH by Simone Bevilacqua and is, according to the website, an original, retro-flavored game of exploration and action searching for the “Evil Masters” whatever that means.  So how does this game fare?  Unfortunately for me, it didn’t fare too well, read on to find out more.

BohSS01 So I start this thing up and it has uniquely retro-graphics, not a bad start it looks nice.  The music is some sort of rock ballad tune thing…  In short regular music.  I would have expected something more chippy sounding but that’s not really important.  On the start-up screen it recommended reading the manual.  So I’m sitting here reading and reading… and reading… and… reading… sheesh, so I decide to play the darn game already!  Okay so it’s not so tough to play.  Use the arrow keys to move or rotate, and x to fire.  You can use z to turn on the mini-map.  I’m sorry I couldn’t figure out the 2nd tutorial level the one about “connections”.  You end up in this room that you can’t go anywhere in, and no clue as to what to do.  So I simply go back the other way and kill more baddies, and end up not being able to finish the mission.

BohSS02 As I said graphics are pretty good.  Sound is actually not bad.  But there is no in-game music.  That coupled with a “tutorial” mission I couldn’t finish, and the fact that once I entered a staircase I ended up pointing in the original direction I went in with, in other words with my back against the enemies so I get killed easily, doesn’t really do much for me.  The thing about this game though, is that it might appeal to you Amiga-fans, and for that I can’t fault it.  I even like retro-gaming, but I couldn’t really get into this one.  Did I mention you can theme the menus? No? Well now I have ;-)  Actually it looks like “gameplay” maybe themed as well.  I didn’t get that far though.

BohSS03 Here is a Youtube video of the game in action.  The language on the menus is Italian because the person that reviewed it and grabbed this video was Italian.

Name: Boh

Developer: Simone Bevilacqua

Price: around 10-12.50 Euros (15-20 dollars US)

Where you can get it: Here!

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Categories: Adventure, Shooter, retro

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Simone Bevilacqua

in October 14th, 2009 @ 03:21

Hello,

this is the author of the game.
First of all, thanks for taking the time to have a look at and write about BOH :)
I’d like to clarify a few points.

1. Menu music: yes, the music of the default theme is a “normal” prog-rock piece; for chip-sounding tunes, check out the themes “C64″ and “vectors”.

2. Controls: there are also controls for sidestepping (strafing).

3. Dead end in mission “2. connections”: it is likely you are talking about the room at floor #6, the one divided into 3 sections. There are teleports in that room: it is enough to stand still on them far half a second to get teleported to the connected devices.

4. No in-game music: in general I don’t like background music because in real life rarely there is one (and, if there is, often it is because we intentionally turned it on). F.ex., which music could one possibly expect to find in places like those depicted by the default theme? So, I replaced the background music with the ambient noise, whose intensity depends on the size of the place the character is in (it makes for some atmosphere).

5. Taking staircases: yes, the direction is the same the character has when taking them; you can end up with your back against the enemies only if you take a staircase while walking backwards, as you land on the destination floor exactly with that orientation – and, if you think about it for a second, not only it’s logical, but it couldn’t be otherwise: 1. you are moving backwards, so the “back” button is pressed; 2. you take a staircase; 3. if you landed on another floor with your back against the staircase, the fact that the “back” button is, as it likely is, still pressed would immediately cause the character to take the staircase again, returning to the previous floor (and this would go on forever as long as the “back” button is pressed).

6. Themes: not only the menus are themed, but the whole game! Each and every audio/visual aspect depends on the chosen theme.

As a closing note, a general consideration: the missions other than “tougher and tougher” cover only some specific aspects of the game, so playing just (some of) them is not sufficient to get an idea of what the game is about.

Regards,
Simone