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It's turning into a bit of back to the future this 2019, 8-Bit Annual isn't it. 1983 type games seem to be highly in favour at the moment. The C64 Shadow Switcher game by Dr Wuro Industries is a Lode Runner variant, and developer Salvador Cantero started this theme off way back in January 2018 releasing Robbie Strikes Back on the Amstrad CPC. He wrote to me on twitter saying "basically this is a recreation of Ultimate's "PSSST" for the ZX Spectrum", originally coded by the Stamper brothers. Salvador Cantero says "It's a port of PSSST for CPC 464 in the Amstrad CPC's mode 0, so they are not identical and I have coded it using CPCTelera. It's really just a programming exercise, just for fun"

You play Robbie the Robot. While tending to your garden, your mission is to protect a plant known as a Thyrgodian Megga Chrisanthodil. This plant grows from a seedling from the bottom of the centre of the playing screen until it fully opens. For it to become a flower, Robbie must protect it from getting eaten by three different types of insects - green greasy worms, yellow sucker wasps and red hairy aphids. These pests fly or crawl around the one screen playing area, you need to avoid them and grab the cans of pesticide that are on a ledge on either side of the screen. If they touch you, a life will be lost. To keep them at bay from harming Robbie's flower, he is able to use three coloured insect sprays to repel them from latching onto the Thyrgodian Megga Chrisanthodil and stop them from killing it. It's pretty simple to work out which insecticide to spray for each insect, the colour of the can that matches the colour of the pest will be able to destroy it. Yellow can for yellow sucker, wasps, green can for green greasy worms and red can for the red hairy aphids.

The game is presented from a single, 2D perspective. During gameplay some collectable icons appear in the form of a fly swatter which acts as a smart bomb killing everything on screen. A watering can helps speed up the Thyrgodian Megga Chrisanthodil growth and collecting a bottle of fertilizer will help the plant grow twice as fast as collecting a watering can. Collecting these items will also add points to your score. You have five lives to complete your mission which happens to be five levels of the same screen. The first level introduces the green greasy worms, the second level you fight off green greasy worms and red hairy aphids and from the third level the yellow sucker wasps join in the fight to kill off your gorgeous Thyrgodian Megga Chrisanthodil flower from growing and flowering. Once you complete the five levels the game repeats but at a much faster pace, with insects becoming much more aggressive.

It's a beautifully presented, colourful fun game. While basic in design and lacking some depth, the graphical representation of the sprites does re-capture the spirit of the original game. The tune is very catchy and the growth of your flower is worth you completing each level. The five lives is adequate and moving around each level is quite smooth. You are more than able to complete Robbie's task of killing off all the insects before they kill off the Thyrgodian Megga Chrisanthodil. The gameplay is minimalistic but also entertaining, shooting down insects in this game makes you want to go do real garden work, but then you realize nah, i'll just keep playing this and not break my back bending over pulling out weeds all day.

The cans lock back into the side walls way to easily just when you didn't want them to. I found this rather annoying and then when you went to pick them up you had to be precisely level with the can. The collision detection was a little off and swapping shooting direction was sluggish. Perhaps there could have been a different plant flowering on each level just for something a little different.

The small number of levels may be a disappointment to some players, but the speed does increase once you complete level five, ultimately making the game harder and more challenging. There is much to like about developer Salvador Cantero's fun and very cute looking homage to the original ZX Spectrum game "PSSST". Back to 1983 video games sure is turning out to be a great deal of fun in 2018.