Decton

Published on Magic Disk 64 01/90

Decton is a gravity-based action game similar to Muse Software's Space Taxi from 1984. Instead of passengers, you have to fetch nondescript cargo from several platforms placed across the level and transport it to the starting point. Expect to swear a lot when playing this one.

That is one colorful title logo, I have to say. So colorful in fact, it uses all of the C64's available colors, except for one. Sorry, Violet, this party's just not for you.

What stands out the most on this screen is the energetic music, which is quite awesome. Awesome enough for me to make a video about it:

The track was composed by Rudolf Stember who also created the rest of the game (except for the title logo, which received separate credit). His name appears in various other games, but in all of them, he's "only" credited as the musician. As far as I can tell, Decton is the only game he created himself.

The score display on the title screen is a bit of a curiosity, as it doesn't show the best result like almost every other game does. Instead, it celebrates the score of the last played game, even if it was a total disaster. I can't quite understand why it was done this way. Maybe it's intended to be a philosophical message, that our successes are fleeting and get lost as time goes by. More likely it's just odd programming.

Pressing F7 for the EXTRA GAME results in a load error. It's explained in the diskmag instructions that this was intended to fire up a level editor. Unfortunately, the author couldn't finish this part in time for the magazine's release, so it had to be postponed to the next issue.

With F1 being the only remaining option, I'm pretty much forced to start a NORMAL GAME:

Right, let's press fire and go!

Oh, whoops. Thwarted by gravity right from the get-go.

Turns out, when you press fire, the ship retracts its landing gear and almost instantly crashes on the ground and bursts into flames. Makes me wonder what kind of hyper-volatile substance the ship's hull is made of.

What you actually have to do is press the joystick up before retracting the gear, so the vertical thrusters activate as soon as the ship's feet disappear. Horizontal movement also has inertia, but acceleration is much more extreme. Pressing left or right for just a second causes the ship to shoot across the screen and most likely end up in a wall.

The way Decton's controls work is very similar to Space Taxi's model. Unlike in many other thrust-based games, like Asteroids or Thrust, the vessel's orientation remains upright all the time. This means that pressing up/down always increases/decreases your vertical thrust, and moving the joystick sideways increases the ship's momentum in only that direction. What's more, your horizontal movement is affected by friction. Your ship comes to a halt with only a small delay once you've stopped moving the joystick sideways.

This makes navigating Decton's narrow corridors significantly easier, as you never end up drifting at an awkward angle that forces you to quickly rotate the ship and steer against its trajectory.

The only spots where you can safely land are the white starting platform and any of the blue platforms. As soon as you pull out the landing gear, you can't steer the ship left or right anymore, so you better make sure you're aligned correctly when making any landing attempts. You also need to slow down quite a bit before touching the ground, or the ship will just phase through the platform and explode.

Here I've landed successfully on the closest blue platform, a feat which almost cost me another ship. Unsurprisingly, keeping the craft under control while it's in the air is Decton's main challenge.

As soon as I take off from the blue platform, it turns yellow, which makes it inaccessible for the rest of the level. I also get awarded 10 points, as I supposedly picked up the invisible cargo at that location. Now I have to fly back and land on the starting point in order to deliver the mysterious freight. If I don't unload the ship, I can still land on any of the other blue platforms, but they don't turn yellow when I take off of them, and thus they don't count as visited.

Landing on the starting platform with a loaded ship and taking off again grants 20 additional points, and the craft is considered empty again. However, if the ship crashes beforehand, the cargo is lost.

This is basically Space Taxi's game concept, but with (invisible) passengers waiting on every pad, and all of them wanting to get to the same destination pad. There is no fare counter in Decton. Instead, a bonus timer counts down as long as the ship is in the air. As soon as the ship lands on a platform, the timer freezes, allowing the player to take a breather between tense moments of maneuvering.

That first platform was quite easy to reach, but getting to the ones behind oscillating light barriers requires some fast reaction.

Evidently, faster reaction than I possess. Now that I'm replaying Decton, I can vividly recall when I first tried beating this level as a kid, and how I got increasingly frustrated at the game when I kept losing all my lives repeatedly. I had similar emotions while playing Timezone, but it took a truly difficult game like Decton for my mind to form a hypothesis: These diskmag games may look and sound more attractive than older titles, but they sure as hell don't play as well. Unfortunately, this would become a recurring theme.

Oh, hey, I managed to finish the level without losing another ship. Completing a stage results in a congratulatory message whose text lines seem to trespass on each other's personal space. Meanwhile, to the right, the remaining bonus time is multiplied by ten and rapidly added to the score with a satisfying counting sound. This almost makes the effort worth it. Almost.


LEVEL 2

Great, more light barriers. I'm only on level 2 and the sheer amount of blinking obstacles is already off the charts. At that rate, level 9 will be completely made out of light barriers and nothing else.

Despite the numerous barriers, the real challenge is navigating through the narrow gap of this broken pillar.

Luckily, the ship's elongated shape helps getting through spots with low ceilings. The sprite always reminded me of the ship from Interceptor Software's version of Defender. Here they are side by side:

There certainly is a resemblance, but I wouldn't go as far as calling it a rip-off. Decton's ship has a unique look that makes it stand on its own. You know, because it has landing gear.

Since I'm playing on an emulator, I can use the PC keyboard's arrow keys to move the ship, which makes the controls quite a bit easier. There is a lot of swift countersteering involved, which is harder to do with a joystick where there is more physical movement required to switch directions. The joystick I had as a kid wasn't a particularly well-made model, and that just amplified my difficulties with the game. At least that's what I tell myself to justify why I didn't get very far in the game.

The top right platform is another spot that's hard to navigate. Especially when taking off, it's very easy to accelerate right into the ceiling.

If I were to give one advice to new players, I'd recommend taking the difficult routes first and thus front-load any potential ship losses. Otherwise, you might end up completing most of the level only to get a Game Over right at the final platform.


LEVEL 3

Compared to the previous level, the number of light barriers has gone up again, but this time only by one. However, the vertical corridors have become narrower, and the top platforms are partially obstructed by the brick work. What's more, the barriers create a lot of areas that force the player to remain in mid-air and wait for a certain light barrier to switch off.

Let's just say, by the time I managed to tick off both top platforms, my hands had become rather sweaty. I'm not sure, but I think the light barriers are oscillating faster than they were in the previous level. There is hardly any time to get past a disabled barrier before it turns back on.

Well, that was nerve wracking. I have to give it to the game, it certainly delivers a lot of tense moments. We're only on level 3, and there are seven more to go.

Right, I'm out. Level 4 is where the author is basically giving the finger to the player.
Look at how many barriers you have to pass before reaching the bottom right platform. Not to mention that you'd also have to go back the entire way to land on the starting platform. I'm not enjoying Decton enough to want to play through this level in any earnest way.

I actually had more fun playing the game at half its regular speed (made possible by the wonders of emulation). Maybe that just means I'm an old man with old man reflexes who doesn't have the required dexterity to be any good at Decton. As a kid I found the game to be extremely frustrating as well, and I don't think I ever managed to reach level 2 without losing at least one life.

Instead, let me just skip trough the levels and see if there's at least an ending that makes the ordeal worth the trouble:

Short answer: No.

This is level 10, or, as the game calls it, LEVEL :. I encountered a very similar bug in No Mercy where I dedicated a separate text box to explain why the number ten can accidentally become a colon. I get the impression that Decton's author never expected for a lot of players to get this far.

Finishing level 10 loops you back to level 1, so the only way to end the game is for you to lose all your ships. Or if you turn off the game in frustration, which is probably more likely to happen.


CONCLUSION

Decton is very much inspired by Space Taxi but unfortunately lacks any of the classic's charm. It's a frustratingly difficult game, almost as if the author tried to compensate for its low number of levels by making them hard as nails.

On the plus side, the graphics are quite well done. I'm getting a vague ancient sunken city vibe from the levels which I quite like. The sound effects in the game are nothing special, but I really like Decton's title theme which is an awesome piece of SID music.

The controls, while feeling precise, are way too sensitive for my taste. Pressing left or right just for a very brief time causes the ship to accelerate at an extreme rate which often results in me hitting a wall before I can counter the momentum.

The levels do not ease you into the game at all. This is something I've seen a lot in C64 games that were made by one person. The author used his skill at the game as the main benchmark to design the levels, not realizing that the process of creating the game and its controls made him very adept at playing it. Decton lacks any proper introductory stages. Right from level 1, you are presented with every type of obstacle the game has to offer. In my opinion, the first few levels should've been made without any light barriers. The game only has 10 stages. Doubling that number and adding more player-friendly levels would've helped to make Decton a more enjoyable experience, I think.

That said, I'm probably not the ideal person to play this title. I am not a big fan of gravity-based games. My dislike might even have its origin in Decton, as it was probably the first game I encountered that had inertial controls, and I was unfortunate enough to come across a bitingly hard one.

To sum it up in one sentence: I just don't like games where I spend most of the time steering in the opposite direction of where I want to go.