![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() If you do manage to pick up from where you left off you’ll find yourself on the exact screen you were on before with all your items and facing the same direction, but – and this is a big but – you’ll resume with nothing more than the base 200 HP, regardless of what you had when you left off – and your HP can go all the way up to 9999. Should you find yourself in need of a break from your underground adventures the password save option on the sub-menu can be brought up whenever you feel the need to use it, although the twenty-eight character kananumeric jumble it brings up takes some careful scribing (or a quick photo on your phone) if you want to use it later due to the deliberately stylised space-font. All of this help is still no replacement for a real automap (some good old graph paper and a pencil helps a heck of a lot with this one), but it’s enough to guidance you get to where you want to be – or at least know for sure where you’ve already been. Even without these tools Photon’s floors aren’t especially large or cruelly designed when compared to other Eighties explorathons: There are no one-way doors, spinner plates, silent teleporters, game-ending traps, or any other vicious low points of early dungeoneering design to wearily give up to – Photon even takes the time to leave hints lying around, warning you of the existence of these fake walls and floors (and some other more cryptic messages) too. Further assistance comes in the form of a compass and a counter – with these you can see at a glance which direction you’re facing and also pop into the menu at any time to check your exact X,Y,Z coordinates within the maze (one segment excepted). What saves this from becoming a tedious walking-into-every-wall exercise is a wonderful item you’ll bumble into early on called the Sensor (if I can find it by accident then I’m sure you will too), which prints a simple “DOOR” message on the screen if one of the walls next to you can be walked through. As your own (potentially faulty) mental map of the place builds up over time there’s a definite feeling certain levels are more dangerous places to linger in than others, and as you explore with new items in tow or discover a whole new shaft your progression begins to change from pure luck and aimless wandering into something slightly more purposeful and methodical.Īlthough having said that you will spend a fair bit of time aimlessly ambling around as Photon’s stuffed with that old dungeon-gaming favourite – fake walls (and sometimes floors too). Yes this means these areas are essentially magical lifts with their own special keycard for access but the slightly surreal presentation elevates (hah!) them beyond their otherwise unremarkable function, especially as the open nature of these areas allows for a sense of continuity that would be lost if you were made to stand in a metal box and then press a numbered button for your floor. Deep shafts pierce the dungeon in different places, granting access to new areas on new floors: many appear to be natural caves (as far as can be represented with an 8-bit grid system), but others are lined with glowing pillars, alien architecture, or even pulsating globs of organic matter – so long as you can find the coloured stone that matches the bright glow of that shaft, enabling you to float up and down to new levels safely. The game’s pseudo-3D point of view may feel a little “stiff” (especially as you can’t pivot on the spot) but it always accurately represents your strange surroundings: If there’s an object lying on the floor on the left hand side then you’ll clearly see a generic but bright orange blob up to three spaces away in the right place, and if there’s a hole in the floor up ahead or a crossroads coming up that will be reflected in what you can see at any distance as well. ![]()
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