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Earth, year 2562. An alien invasion has deprived the planet of all its gold reserves, bringing not only the economy but also the production of electronic devices to its knees. To solve the problem, a search module is quickly assembled and sent to Amalthea, a satellite of Jupiter, where a large amount of gold has been found. The module is conceived as a sphere capable of absorbing the deposits of the precious metal by bouncing on them. You will then have to guide it along fifteen zones of increasing complexity in order to recover the gold for the benefit of all mankind.

The premise is just a pretext to introduce Cosmic Payback, a game where in fact you are not dealing with metals or mines, but with a three-dimensional landscape composed of squares of different appearance, smoothly flowing under your eyes while you control an incessantly bouncing sphere. At the same time, you should be careful not to go beyond the limits of the playing area, nor to touch a type of square that makes you lose a life. Along the way, your task will be to collect all the squares of "gold" - indicated by a flashing chequered pattern - scattered around each level, and then reach the exit. You will find teleporters, moving platforms, switches to negotiate otherwise impassable passages, surfaces that disappear when the sphere bounces on them, and more.

The first levels are rather linear, but soon they become wider and more complex, and as a consequence, carrying out your mission becomes more and more difficult. Luckily, you can restart the game from an already reached level through a system of identification codes. There is also an "arcade" mode, with endless lives, but it does not give points.

Cosmic Payback is very reminiscent of historical titles such as Trailblazer and Impossaball, where the player controls a bouncing ball in a three-dimensional scrolling space, with the not insignificant difference that the scenery here flows in eight directions, not just horizontally or vertically. The technical realization is flawless: the playing area moves without a hitch (especially noticeable is the transition effect when activating the teleporter) and the inertial control of the sphere is very accurate. Pleasant tunes play during the action when playing on the 128K models. As a game in itself, Cosmic Payback is as immediate to pick up as it is difficult to quit: the increasing complexity of the levels pushes the player to try and try again, until the desired goal is reached.

Cosmic Payback can easily be mistaken for the work of some particularly unconventional master of the past - the name that comes to my mind mostly is Pete Cooke - and instead it is, a truly surprising fact for the writer, the work of a 18-year-old youngster who learned to code in Z80 Assembly for pleasure. Besides being an excellent game in itself, it is also a breath of fresh air in the context of Spectrum homebrew productions, which too often tends to reiterate the usual two or three basic formulas.

Without any doubt, one of the best titles of the last few years.