Volfied

One or two of you may remember a rather forgotten classic game for the old Commodore 64 computer called Volfied.

The idea of this game was to move a small ship in a rather ‘etch-a-sketch’ style fashion in a way of dissecting the screen into smaller and smaller pieces to protect your home planet from the alien forces. The whole time you’re trying to reclaim your territory back from the alien boss and its minions you have to avoid them touching either your ship or the trail you’ve left behind your craft as this will either destroy you instantly or leave you in a race to try and save your life (by connecting the lines before the alien trail-blazer catches up with you).

The way this game works is by cutting rectangles out of the territory on the screen. This is achieved by selecting the right time to make a dash for it. Claiming territory consists of moving your ship at right angles to be as daring as you like. If you manage to capture the minions in your territory, they’ll be destroyed and you’ll gain extra points. Although its not necessary for you to destroy the minions or the boss, it will certainly help your survival rates if you can do so as less bad guys to beat in the final stages can make all the difference between success and failure.

You start the game with 5 lives and you will progress to the next stage once you’ve managed to claim a minimum of 80% of the screen’s territory for your side. You know when you have been successful with your attempt in converting the territory as the area will turn to your colours (which alternate with every level).

You may think that being doing rather suicidal missions is a rather thankless task, however, you have the odd power-up which becomes available to you, should you capture it within your territory. The power-ups will either freeze the opposition for a few seconds, letting you have a relatively easy time in claiming as much of the screen as possible. The other bonus is laser beams which auto-fire in the direction you’re facing for a few seconds. The lasers are only able to destroy the minion alien craft but do nothing to the level boss. Additionally, although the aliens may be frozen, should you bump into one, you’ll still die!

Overall then this is a superb reproduction of the classic computer version and its just as enjoyable now as it ever was. The only thing that I found a little awkward were the controls which (when using the d-pad) would randomly decide to either activate the cutting movement or simply move within the existing lines. That being said, it’s all good fun and made the game a little more challenging and amusing.

Rating 91%

Positives

Good graphics

Excellent fun and highly addictive

Perfect recreation of the original game

Lots of levels with increasingly difficult opposition

Negatives

Controls were a little awkward

Sound effects were pretty poor

A tad repetitive