Ranarama.

This game is a curious mixture of Gauntlet and Paradroid. You take on the role of Mervyn. He is a sorcerer’s apprentice who has been turned into a frog (“rana” is a genus of frog you see). This saved him from being killed along with his masters. Now Mervyn must strike back. Fortunately his magical abilities are still intact. There are four types of spells available : offence (firing a projectile), defence (protecting you from enemy fire or contact), effect (various special abilities, e.g. seeing hidden doors) and you power(basically it is your power supply, having a higher level one can cope with more powerful spell types).

Your power spell degrades constantly, so you should top it up with the “energy crystals” or change to another power spell type. Mervyn is in a dungeon which is spilt into eight levels. Inside each level are a series of rooms, glyphs, monster generators and monsters, warlocks and necromancers. There are four different types of glyph : power (acts as a smart bomb in the room), seeing (shows all of the explored rooms in the level), sorcery (allows you to change your spell types) and travel (acts like a lift). The warlocks and necromancers can be defeated with a mini-game (cue the Paradroid reference). You have to cast some runes (basically some letters) to spell “Ranarama”. Dyslexics beware! Victory gives you four runes from your conquered foe. Collect them. You can then power-up at the next glyph of sorcery. The game starts off sedate enough, but on later levels it does get difficult. The graphics are rather simplistic and so are the sound effects. It is all about the gameplay – new discoveries (e.g. rooms and spells), the frantic mini-game and shooting those bad guys. It is quite addictive. Go on – help Mervyn out!