The Game

These are confusing times... The beehive has been enjoying a revolution that surpassed the Cuban one. Everything upside down, general strikes, economic depression...

After an authoritarian reign by the great bee queen, Paca Beja, and due to her tiredness for exploiting the poor bees with a 65-hour working week and a recent indigestion due to a bad state poppy, the rest of the bees living in the hive are living ungoverned... happy, but ungoverned.

The incapacity of the great mother queen descendants after the multiple sexual scandals revealed in the nights of Moncayo's festival meadow, means that nobody trust them to fill the duty. But suddenly... a light can be seen on the horizon...

The queen mother's small daughter, Maribee, just came back from her Erasmus travel in galician lands, and between flower, crawfish and spider crag, she has learned everything that's necessary to undertake such an arduous task. Definitively, she's the only educated one who's capable of meeting the challenge. Besides, thanks God her flirtations with local male bees didn't transcend the gutter press.

Will she be able to pass the great test to become the new queen of the beehive?

The Game

iLogicAll is a Picross-like game, also called Nonogram. It's a logic game, where the objective is to discover a hidden picture, based on numeric hints that we have for every row and for every column, without surpassing the fixed time limit. To discover the picture, we must open all "void" cells of the picture.

So, we must discover a 16x16 "pixels" picture, and we must do it by discovering the "unpainted" pixels, the white ones, taking into consideration the hints we will be given.

The game area is divided into several zones:

1. The Markers
   Informs us of the score, available time and anything else.
2. The Game Board
   Formed of 256 cells (16 x 16), that will be initially "closed", and we'll be "opening" or "marking" depending of our deductions. Each cell can be in three different states:
    
   "Closed"
   It's the initial state, we don't know if it's occupied or void.
    
   "Open" and "Void"
   It's a void cell that we have "opened".
    
   "Marked"
   It's either a cell that we have deduced to be occupied, and as such we marked to help our deductions, or an occupied cell that we tried to "open" thinking it was "void".

Even though we may "unmark" a cell that we previously "marked" (we may think that it's occupied, and then deduce it's not), open cells that are really "void", can't be closed back or marked. "Unmarking" a cell, however, isn't necessary to open it.

Numeric Hints

These indicate the number of consecutive "void" cells. When there's more than a number, it means that between those groups of "void" cells, there's an undetermined number of "occupied" cells.

For example, if you have "5 3 4", it means that, after an undetermined number (that, since we're at a extreme, can be 0) of occupied cells, there's 5 void cells, then after a undetermined number of occupied cells (that, now it can't be 0), three void cells, another undetermined number (not 0) of occupied cells, 4 void cells, and another undetermined number of void cells, that, being an extreme again can also be 0.

Picture Area

A zone where a "real" size version of the current level picture will be drawn when we solve it, so we can observe it better.

As we advance through the game, the levels will become increasingly complex, and will be formed by 4 or even 9 different sublevels, so each 16 x 16 "pixels" level is only a part of a more complex picture. In this area the already solved sublevels will be drawn, so they can help to "guess" the final result, and therefore, and, therefore, the specific part that we're trying to solve in that moment.

We have an initial time of 30 minutes to solve each 16 x 16 level, and that time will be reduced each time we make a mistake and "open" an "occupied" cell. This penalization will start being 2 minutes, and will grow an extra minute each time; so, the first error will subtract 2 minutes, the second 3 minutes, the third error will penalize 4 minutes, and so on.

We have, also, the possibility of "conceding" five minutes of time, in exchange to completely solve a row and a column. For this, we enter in "Help" mode, place the cursor on the row and column that we want to reveal, and press "fire".

Passwords

Since the game has 100 levels, and it takes quite a bit of time to solve each one, there is a password system to allow you to start directly from the level where you left it the last time you played.

For this, you must select the first main menu option, "Initial Level". Once selected, we'll be able to change it freely, using the Left & Right controls, amongst the levels we have already reached, and, if we try to pass over the maximum level we have reached, it will ask us for a password, that we'll have to type in.

The passwords are given before we start each level.

You must take into consideration that in the Level Editor, if we change the Set of levels to play (from Originals to Personalized or vice versa), the "Maximum level reached" data will be erased, and it will be necessary to introduce the password to play any level different from the first.

Game Controls

O - Left, P - Right, Q - Up, A - Down, SPACE - Open cell/Select, M - Mark/Unmark Cell, H - Toggle Help Mode

R - Pause, L - Toggle Music

Level Editor

Just in case the 100 levels we offer aren't enough for you, the game also has a level editor, that will allow you to design alternate sets of pictures to play with, and also to save and load again.

Those sets are limited to a maximum of 100 levels, although, depending on the size of those levels, it's possible to fill the available memory before we reach that limit, that's why we display both Total Levels and Available Memory in editor's main menu.

Entering the Editor Menu, we have two kinds of options: Set and Level.

The "Set" part of the menu makes reference to the complete level set we're going to work on:

1. The first option allows us to select the Set we're gonna play: The Original one, or the Personalized one.
2. The next two options allows us to save the Set in a physical format, or to load a previously recorded Set.
3. The fourth option will be useful to completely remove the Set we have created.

The "Levels" part of the editor has the following options:

1. Create a level
   When creating a level, it's necessary to specify its number of sublevels (1, 4 or 9). Those sublevels will be automatically filled with a vertical lines pattern when they're created. This is because a totally void or occupied level wouldn't be valid (due to how easily you may solve it). The created levels will appear drawn in the superior part of the menu, where we will find the currently selected level to work on, and also (if they exist), the previous and next levels. To move and select another level, we'll use the controls for "Left" and "Right".
2. Edit a level
   This option will allow us to replace the picture of the currently selected level with whatever we want. Since this is the most important option of the menu, it's explained in detail a bit below.
3. Move a level
   Alters the order of levels inside the set we're creating. When it's selected, we'll be able to move the level in the upper bar to any side, and, when it's in the desired place, press "Fire / Selection" to leave it in that place.
4. Erase a level
   If we want to remove a certain level, pressing this option we'll do it with the currently selected level.

Editing Levels

When editing a level, we'll access a screen that's very similar to the game, where we'll see all the board "open", and the occupied cells represented as "Marked". We'll use the "Fire / Selection" control to mark or unmark a "pixel" of the picture, the "Mark" control to erase completely the current sublevel, and the "Help" control to get back to the Editor menu.

When a level has several sublevels, the picture formed by the different sublevels will appear in the upper zone, and the zone corresponding to the sublevel we're currently editing will be marked in other. To change the sublevel we're editing, we just have to move the cursor to the "limit" we want to cross and keep moving in that direction (e.g.: if we're editing the upper left sublevel of a 4 sublevels picture, and we want to go to the lower left sublevel, we'll move the cursor to the lower border, and keep moving down.

When a sublevel has all its pixels void or occupied, it won't be valid for the game, as will be shown on screen. While it's that way, it won't be possible to activate the "Exit Menu", nor changing the sublevel.

Pressing the "Help" control, to go back to the Editor menu, the program will show us the previous and current state of the level that we have edited, offering three options:

1. Make the changes and exit
2. Exit without making changes
3. Keep editing the level

Level Sets

We at CEZGS invite you to send and share with the rest of users the level sets that you create, and to try and enjoy the sets that other users create.

You can do it at our forum: http://computeremuzone.com/forum

Loading

Spectrum 128K only.

Select LOADER or CARGADOR from main menu, and press PLAY on cassette. The game will load automatically.

Game Credits

Code: Steve Benway
Graphics: Anjuel
Music: Riskej
FX & FX Player: Wyz
Levels: Anjuel, AugustoRuiz, Benway, Cht666cht, Dadman, DavidCM, Kendroock, Metalbrain, Riskej, Sejuan, TBrazil
Loader: Utopian
Used tools: Context, Pasmo, ProTracker, SevenuP, Vortex Player and ZX-Modules
Instructions translation: Metalbrain

In memoriam: Mónica Arribas Rodrigo and José Antonio García Martínez