Like the A-Team 'I love it when A plan comes together', but I enjoy it even more when an 8-bit game starts in 2011 and is released in 2019. Hexavirus on the Amstrad CPC may have been eight years in the making or eight years in the waiting, but who really cares, it's here now as a free download, so let's play!

Kevin Thacker has been involved in the 8-bit and 16-bit community all his life. Probably far too much info to write about for this review so I will keep it short. Kev is very well known for his love of the CPC which started at age 11 with a CPC6128. He wrote a sprite editor (now lost), converted games from tape to disc for friends at school, and converted pictures and music from the Atari ST.

Following this he set up the first website documenting Amstrad hardware called "The Unofficial Amstrad WWW Resource" (1995) which is still open today. From 2001 he has been heavily involved in the CPC community either solo or being part of groups writing demos, games and various utilities all which can be downloaded from cpc-power.com.

CPC Hexavirus was Inspired by the homebrew game of the same name for Nintendo DS called HexaVirus, created by Mollusk in 2006. It's a simple flip the colours game. At the bottom left of the screen, the game begins with a virus infected cell (or cells).

The premise is to grow a virus covering all the cells of the play area. On the right of the screen there is a colour selector. With the joystick, move up and down the seven colours and press the button on the colour variants of red, green and blue to grow your virus. Every cell that the virus touches with that colour will be infected.

Now repeat the process to complete the board in as little moves as possible. You should be seeking colours that are in larger quantities to help you make the shortest amount of moves. If you select a colour not attached to your virus then it's a missed or wasted turn. Your goal is to see if you can equal or beat the number of suggested moves at top right of the screen which starts at 40 and reduces by one after each completed board. Kukulcan from CPC Power has provided an alternative title screen cheat mode created back in 2011 which you can view on CPC Power website or by typing Poke & 8000, & FF then RUN "HEXVIRUS.BAS on the disk version of the game.

McKlain, you have done it again! Haunting music track at main screen followed by a ramped-up, techno-based, in-game tune. At the very start and on completion of the game there are short music samples taken from Arkanoid, a nice tribute. Other likes include the huge playing area, the ease of playability, the decreasing moves available after each completed board allowing you to get enjoyment out of the gameplay before it gets much harder.

Perhaps new colours could have been used when a new board begins. After each board is completed, there could be new map designs instead of the same one, yes it does change subtly, colours have been rearranged, but perhaps not such a full board of hexagons perhaps some spaces in the board to change it up a little.

Author Kevin Thacker has acknowledged, Hexavirus has rather limited replay value, he may have a point, though it was good enough to reach the finals of the Amstrad Eterno 2019 CPC game awards. I enjoyed playing Hexavirus.

A good game to play to de-stress oneself after a hard day at work. A lovely huge playing area using the CPC's Mode 0 graphics made all the more pleasurable by McKalin’s music and tunes. If you love colour flip games you will certainly enjoy CPC Hexavirus.