Loops Of Zen is a new puzzle game produced by a renowned Atari XE/XL coder, known only as XXL, in collaboration with another well-known 'Atarian', Miker. A gloriously simple concept, it provides no storyline to speak of and it's bereft of presentational touches; it offers no title screen, nor is there a menu. This game gets right to the point, which has its benefits as well as its pitfalls. Starting with a 4 x 3 matrix, and working up to a maximum of 18 x 10, the idea is to revolve each shape within, so that there are no loose ends - essentially creating closed circuits or 'loops'. The end result bears more than a little resemblance to an empty printed circuit board.

Of the five linking shapes, four may be rotated clockwise (by up to 180 degrees depending on the shape).

There is no time limit - somewhat unusual for a puzzle game - and, as such, no score either. You play this simply for your own pleasure. The biggest hints to solve each level are found on the outer most shapes, because there can be no outward-facing links, but the difficulty level is somewhat gentle and, once you're up to the largest matrix, will not really get any harder.

What are the benefits that I spoke of? Like a crossword in a newspaper, you can complete it as and when you like (though there's no help from the Internet, nor any premium rate phone lines to call for hints), and it's just personal satisfaction that spurs you on. Once you get the knack, it becomes very compulsive. There are no dead ends, nor is there a way of ever completing this game; I don't know how many different puzzles the game can generate, but I've played it for hours without it becoming tedious or finding repeats.

Some may like the meandering pace of the play but, on the other hand, having defined levels, a password system and a time limit would have given Loops Of Zen more of an edge to its pedestrian game mechanic. As this game is around 7KB in size, there would have been a lot of room for these extras, and a level designer would have been another excellent addition.

Overall, its simplicity wins through, though; it's not the sort of game that will cause frustration because it becomes near impossible.

Product: Loops Of Zen
Price: Free (download) TBA (Cartridge)
Developer: XXL and Miker
Publisher: Self published at atari.pl/zen.xex
Machine: 64k Atari XE/XL

A simple, but very addictive puzzle game

It's certainly not been a quiet autumn for independently published 8-bit software generally, especially when you consider the recent completion of Bomb Jack for the Atari XE/XL (requiring a whopping 320KB of RAM on the host machine). This conversion is based heavily on the Commodore 64 rendition of the original arcade game - fairly sensible because the C64 and XE/XL have similar processors and screen resolutions. I did wonder why they choose such a mediocre version of Bomb Jack, but it could have been worse. It may be downloaded from atari.sk/download/XE_games/bomb_jack.zip.

Meanwhile, another XE/XL games have been unleashed through the website atari.fandal.cz. Animal Party is a 'Whack-a-Mole' type affair, simply tasked with manipulating the joystick into one of nine positions to smack the animals that pop up from a base.

It's very colourful and nicely presented, though there are some problems with the game mechanic... well, either that or I'm just not very good at it.

Regarding other formats, I've just had a new game through for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum by Jonathan Cauldwell. I'll tell you more about this and others next week.