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Majesty Of Sprites is a stunning scrolling platform game for the Commodore Plus/4 and expanded C16. Loaded with full software sprites and gorgeous backgrounds, you must guide Kate through thirteen huge scrolling levels performing evil jumps, collecting diamonds and hearts to help her find Clara.

Released in 2015, Majesty Of Sprites received a nine out of ten from issue 147 of Retro Gamer and the three level demo game was placed third at Evoke Party 2015. Since then it was released commercially on tape and disk by Psytronik. What is notable about this game is a scrolling bitmap with sprites on a Plus/4 machine.

So there's a bit of a story about reading a book and falling asleep. You're Kate and slowly you're falling asleep and is this really just a dream,... blah, blah, blah... You then have the choice of two chapters to play. Chapter one is the proper game. Chapter two I'll explain later.

This is a flick screen platformer where you can headbutt blocks to collect balls, three at a time, to throw at your foes or just jump on their heads three or four times.

The latter is a lot more satisfying but sometimes the former needs to be applied to progress. There are chubby natives with spears as your main enemy followed by birds, frogs, skeletons that throw bones, lizards, bomb throwing wizards, wild cats, cavemen and stone dropping winged dinosaurs.

The controls are left, right, up is to climb up and jump, down is climb down, fire throws a ball. I'm never a fan of up for jump but this time around it doesn't feel too bad, plus how else are you supposed to throw a ball other than using the single fire button?

You enter the play area via some sort of teleport gate and must collect so many hearts to open the exit teleport gate. First level is Forest of Dreams 1-1 where you have to collect three hearts.

There are also diamonds to collect and creatures to kill for points. You have a five block energy bar for each of your three lives. When a creature or its projectiles touch you, your energy is depleted. Apparently Kate is an awful swimmer as water is fatal; only sometimes it isn't and then later it is again [Only a non swimmer like me would understand - Ed].

There's no time limit so you can chill out and plan your actions carefully. Not only are hearts needed to open the exit portal, each one collected also gives you an extra life. Screens consist of the usual solid blocks, blocks you can pass through and stand on, blocks that are just scenery and fatal blocks. Most of the screens seem to be set outdoors, at least in the early stages, so you can often see the night sky. It makes a nice change from the usual chambers and caverns.

Sometimes platforms can be a little bit confusing as blocks that are the same colour and look almost identical are not all solid blocks, some are just background that you fall straight through. When you die you are returned to a checkpoint, but there's no indication of where these will be. However, any enemies you killed before stay dead which I think is very fair.

The overall level design is pretty good with your path not always obvious and sometimes more than one path to choose from. There are plenty of surprises in each level and hearts are not always as straight forward to find as you might think.

There's a nice balance between completing a level and getting a high score. You can really points leech as enemies don't respawn. Graphics are very pretty, varying between levels, and with some decorations around the platforms plus a bit of movement with teleport gates shimmering and water rippling. The title screen tune isn't too bad and the in game music and spot effect are also fine. Not the game's strength but does the job nicely.

So about Chapter two. This is a bunch of new levels and is almost like a sequel. You collect other items instead of hearts to complete a level. There doesn't seem to be a score. There's loads of different enemies that I personally did not see in the stages of Chapter one. You have an energy bar and there are large white hearts you can collect for extra energy and small white hearts which are similar to the diamonds you collect in chapter one. It feels a bit more arcade like than chapter one. So basically you're getting two for one of an already great game.

The graphics are excellent. There are lots of different creatures. There's a good mix of exterior and interior screens. This is really two games for the price of one - better than any black Friday sale I ever went to. It's more like getting Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy at the same time - you can't lose. Collision detection is spot-on, quite precise. Very colorful design with sensible level construction.

One screen flicks to the next way before you reach the edge of the screen so when you move around the screens it all seems a bit jerky. There's sometimes a little too much blind jumping but if you have faith it usually turns out fine more often than not.

Majesty of Sprites is a very good platform game. The maps are massive and will keep you glued in till you can complete it. It's got great graphics, a clever level design and it's extremely polished. It's got a few flaws but they don't take that much away from the game, and don't forget you're getting two for the price of one which adds even more to its appeal and staying power.