THE SPECTRUM GAMES DATABASE MAZIACS PUBLISHER DK'Tronics AUTHOR Don Priestley YEAR 1982/3? CATEGORY Maze DESCRIPTION Explore a randomly generated maze looking for gold and fighting nasties! CONTROLS Redefinable keys, Kempston Joystick INSTRUCTIONS These instructions are taken from the game itself. ------------------------------------------------------ This is YOU, the HERO of this ADVENTURE. To SUCCEED you will need to Run through a complex MAZE Collect of box of TREASURE and then RETURN EASY? ------------------------------------------------------ The MAZE is VERY BIG (64 times this section) & has NO EDGES! A whole NEW MAZE is generated for each adventure (This takes time) The DISTANCE to the TREASURE varies but is never short! Randomly placed in the maze are SWORDS, PRISONERS and BOWLS of FOOD, all to HELP you in your search There are also many MAZIACS They are slightly LESS helpful ------------------------------------------------------ PRISONERS can show you the ROUTE to the TREASURE or, if you already have it, the way back to the START The route shown only lasts for so many "moves" or for so much time You then need to find ANOTHER prisoner The ROUTE is shown in YELLOW ------------------------------------------------------ Having a sword will enable you to kill a MAZIAC, but after a fight you will need ANOTHER Fighting MAZIACS without a SWORD takes LONGER and you will PROBABLY be KILLED IF you are SITTING down, any attacking MAZIAC will ALWAYS send you to YOUR MAKER ------------------------------------------------------ MAZIACS are the GUARDIANS of the TREASURE Although they know where you are they're no intelligent enough to find any but the most direct route to get at you Sometimes their behaviour is UNPREDICTABLE ------------------------------------------------------ The MAIN screen will show you only a FIFTIETH of the MAZE VIEW will show about a TWELFTH This helps locate SWORDS etc BUT although MAZIACS can still move YOU CAN'T ! (Any key restores MAIN screen) ------------------------------------------------------ ENERGY & FOOD Running through the MAZE and fighting MAZIACS uses ENERGY EATING FOOD will INCREASE your ENERGY (First find the food !) If your ENERGY runs out then the adventure ENDS in a quick death by STARVATION Your ENERGY METER will be to the right of the screen ------------------------------------------------------ The TREASURE will be at least 200 MOVES from the start You can't carry the Treasure AND a Sword You CAN swap Sword and Treasure at any time Killing rather than avoiding MAZIACS on the way to the TREASURE will help (a bit !) ------------------------------------------------------ DEATH or GLORY If SUCCESSFUL your SCORE will be the MINIMUM number of Moves needed compared with the ACTUAL moves you made as a PERCENTAGE PLUS 0 10 20 or 30 for the level of DIFFICULTY chosen ------------------------------------------------------ DIFFICULTY LEVELS Use MENU & "D" to CHOOSE FROM 1 EASY 2 Lose ENERGY during VIEW 3 As 2 but also lose ROUTE during VIEW Route duration is TIMED 4 As 3 but Prisoners can only be used ONCE IN ADDITION the more difficult Levels have LESS Swords, Food and Prisoners but the SAME number of MAZIACS ------------------------------------------------------ All these instructions are easily accessed (with pictures) from the game itself! INLAY CARD TEXT I don't have this, but I imagine it would be much the same as the instructions I have included above. CHEATS SEQUELS/PREQUELS Rumour has it that Maziacs is based upon (i.e. much the same game as) Mazogs on the ZX81. SCORES RECEIVED Unknown. Possibly released before Speccy mags came about. URL Maziacs is available from a number of sites, this is just one of them : ftp://ftp.dcc.uchile.cl/pub/OS/sinclair/snapshots/m/maziacs.zip GENERAL FACTS Some games of Maziacs are much harder than others, I imagine this is because of the randomly generated maze. Don Priestley went on to write a whole heap of top games for a number of companies including Piranha and Mastertronic. These include Popeye, Trapdoor, Through the Trapdoor, Benny Hill's Madcap Chase, Minder, and Gregory Loses His Clock. He became famous for producing Speccy titles with huge colourful sprites! Maziacs, as you will see, isn't one of these titles. NOTES Maziacs is simple and fun (and very frustrating at times)! Try and complete it without using the map or without using any swords!