Acia

Published on Game On 01/90

Acia is a real-time puzzle game with minor action elements. It's not directly based on an existing game, as far as I am aware, so this might be a rare case where we have a unique concept at our hands.

But first, just look at that psychedelic logo!

This effect is done with a set of custom characters that represent the animation frames: The entire animation consists of ten different characters, let's call them in order a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, and j. Each frame, the characters in the title logo are cycled (e.g. a becomes b, b becomes c, and so on, and j cycles back to a). The reason why you can see several waves go through the logo is because there are clusters of characters whose cycles are offset by one character to the ones next to them. So a string of characters like "aabbccddee" becomes "bbccddeeff" in the next frame, causing a horizontal wave effect. It's also interesting to note that the colors remain static, only the characters change. There are some C64 demos around that make great use of this kind of effect, like this part in Lash by Fairlight.

The font used below the logo consists of many characters that take up the entire width of 8 pixels, which results in neat horizontal lines that link letters together, giving them an interesting cohesive feel. Professional font designers would probably leave the room screaming upon seeing the typographic sins committed here, but I always found a more playful font a neat bonus in a C64 game.

It's also nice to see that the author has been playing his own game enough to fill the entire high score table. I don't know what the deal is with FGFGF in eighth place, though. The scores get saved to disk, so this is likely somebody else's gaming effort.


There is a backstory to Acia, explained in Game On's diskmag part, but it's so painfully obvious that it doesn't have anything to do with the actual game that I won't bother reciting it here. Instead, I'll just use some of the names mentioned in the story to make explanations easier.

With that out of the way, let's just jump right into the game:

Here's the first level, in classical programmer fashion referred to as level 00. There is quite a lot to take in, so let me break down the game elements for you:

This is MZ-12, a micro tank robot thingy which you move around the playfield. The controls are somewhat similar to Pac-Man: When you push in a direction, the tank simply keeps going, even if you release your joystick. If it hits a wall, MZ-12 bounces back and goes the opposite way. You can always change directions, but you can never stop the tank, unless you keep on pushing it into an obstacle.

Running over one of those fields changes your tank's dome to that color. This isn't just a feature to pretty up your tank, but something relevant to gameplay. I'll get to that in a moment.

There is no clear indication how large MZ-12 is, but going by its description as a micro tank, I like to think that it is about the size of a regular six-sided die, and its colored dome is actually an LED. This makes the entire playfield smaller than a chess board, which is rather cute.

In order to open the exit of a level, you need to smash a certain number of these colored blocks. If MZ-12's LED has the same color as a block, the latter disintegrates on touch with a satisfying sound.

Later levels feature blocks that have two colors. To destroy one of these, you need to hit it with one color first, and then a second time with the other.

These are light barriers that toggle on and off periodically. They destroy your tank if you run over them while they are lit, so you better time your movement accordingly.

Touching any of the patrolling enemies is also a bad idea. Each type has a different patrol pattern. One only travels vertically, the other moves horizontally, and the third navigates by going straight and turning left or right whenever it encounters a wall.

There is a time limit in each level. If it reaches zero, you don't lose a life, but all enemies become much faster, which makes evading them all the harder.

Teleporters always appear in pairs of the same color. Enter one, and you get warped to the other. The teleporter where you materialize gets disabled for a couple of seconds, so you don't immediately get beamed back.

Tiles that look like warning stripes can only be traversed by MZ-12. Enemies treat them like solid walls.

Yellow tiles like the one to the left have the opposite function of the striped tiles, namely they only allow enemies to move over them.

The red, green, and blue tiles can only be crossed by MZ-12 if its LED displays the corresponding color. Enemies are exempt to this rule, and they can move freely over all of them.

One of my favorite levels in the game makes clever use of these. More on that later.

Arrows on the playfield can only be entered and left along the way they're pointing. For enemies they're always considered obstacles, regardless from where they're being approached.

Door blocks only disappear if you run over the dots of the same color. Contrary to what one might expect, it doesn't matter what color your tank currently is. I've been confused about how doors work almost every time I decided to give Acia another go. Maybe now that I've forced myself to write the game elements down, I won't forget (spoiler: I probably will).

Occasionally, a destroyed block leaves behind an "E" which is an extra that gets collected and activated as soon as you move over it. An extra can have one of the following effects:

• FIST: The next colored block you touch will disintegrate, regardless of your tank's color. Fists also work on blocks with two colors, which is nice.
• 50 POINTS: Does what it says on the tin. More of a consolation gift than anything really useful.
• SHIELD: For ten seconds you become invulnerable to enemies and light barriers.
• CONTROL: MZ-12 is easier to control for ten seconds, meaning it actually stops if you don't move your joystick. Referred to as "CONROL" in the game, which is probably a typo.

Be careful when you are destroying a lot of blocks in a row. Each time you pick up an extra, it overrides the previous one if it's still in effect. Quite a few times I accidentally destroyed my tank because I ran over an active light barrier, thinking the shield was still active.

And finally, the exit, which ends the level when you enter it. Depending on the level, there can be more than one exit, but it doesn't matter which one you take. Exits only appears when you've smashed enough blocks. There is a counter on the right side that tells you how many blocks still need to be destroyed.

Phew, I think that's all. This is probably now Acia's most in-depth manual existing on the web. Not sure how I feel about that.


The graphics are nicely drawn and colorful (which is kind of expected, considering the game's main hook), but clear enough that they do not impede functionality. I particularly like the player sprite for its simple design that, at least to me, supports the way it moves around the playfield. I imagine the micro tank running on a single ball bearing, like an old-school computer mouse, which allows it to change direction without having to turn around.

Soundwise there isn't much to talk about. Music is completely absent. Only a vaguely ominous wind sound is played during the game. Other sound effects are sparse but fit the setting. As I mentioned before, I really like the chunky noise of blocks getting destroyed.


Here's a showcase of some of the game's levels:

Level 01

The rows of green blocks at the bottom allow for a neat drive-by move:

Hearing the sound of repeated block elimination is half the fun of maneuvers like this one.

Level 03

At this point I should mention that for a good while I played all C64 games on a green monochrome monitor. So instead of the colorful playfield above, I saw something more akin to this:

I tried recreating in Photoshop how the monitor displayed the C64's video output. If you look closely, you can see that colors not only differed in brightness, they also had distinctive dot patterns that helped to tell them apart.

Acia has a two player co-op mode that I remember playing with a school friend one afternoon. It was at this level that he had to throw up his hands in exasperation and abandon the game, as he could not distinguish between the shades of green on my monitor. I also distinctly recall being a bit of a dick to him by berating him about his inability to tell blue apart from red. By that time I had the patterns internalized, but for anyone else, this was just a mess of green hues.

Level 04

This level introduces the small dots that unlock doors of the same color. At first glance, the teleporters seem to be a nice but unnecessary addition to the level, until you realize that without them you couldn't ever remove the green halves of the blocks in the lower left.

Level 05

While playing Acia for this article, I repeatedly encountered a game-stopping bug in level 05 that prevented the exit from appearing, even though I had smashed all blocks. If I had to guess, I'd say it happened whenever I removed multiple blocks at once (by moving into a corner of blocks). I was able to avoid the bug by clearing the level at a slower pace.

The thing is, I never encountered this bug when I played the game 27 years ago, so this might be an issue with the emulator or the disk image I'm using.

Level 08

This level forces you to get dangerously close to enemies whose movements are hard to predict. Luckily, they can't cross the arrows, otherwise one of the red blobs would inevitably get stuck on the green color field in the top left corner and make the level unwinnable.

Level 09

This is the level I mentioned earlier that uses the colored tiles in a smart way. The stage is basically split into two sections that you can only cross over by changing the tank's color.

Level 10

Level 10 plays like a simplified Metal Gear: You have to get past the patrolling enemies by sneaking after them through corridors and hiding in wall alcoves to let them pass. Of course, the exit appears in the bottom left corner, so you have to sneak all the way back once you've removed all blocks.

Level 12

As simple as it looks, this is one of the hardest levels in the game. You have to cross the rows of light barriers several times because the color fields and the matching blocks are never on the same side. Multiple times you are forced to start smashing blocks while you're still standing on light barriers, so the right timing is essential. What's more, the level gets increasingly harder, as you inevitably free the enemies when you remove the blocks that have them trapped.

Level 15

You won't find this level in your copy of Acia because I made it specifically for this article. There is an editor built right into the game that allows you to add your own stages and also save them to disk. The editor's interface is a bit unwieldy, but with a printed list of all the shortcut keys it becomes accessible enough. Coming up with interesting challenges in your own levels is a lot of fun, and it extends the game's lifetime considerably.

Which brings me to one of the few gripes I have with the game: Acia allows for up to 100 levels, but it only comes with 15 (numbered 0 to 14), which take about half an hour to finish. Why didn't the author create more? Thanks to the editor, it doesn't really take long to make additional levels, and this is arguably the most fun and rewarding part of the entire game design process, at least for me.
Speaking from experience, when I worked on the Puzznic clone Japure during a game design assignment, I could hardly stop myself from making new levels, even though I had a deadline to meet.


My other complaint has to do with this:

Believe it or not, this is a different game.

It's called Weaver II, and it was released in December 1990 on the German C64 magazine 64'er which also came with a disk. Did someone steal the game and release it as their own? No, turns out it's the same author who apparently had the balls to sell the same game to two different magazine publishers. Admittedly, there are some differences: Weaver II has 19 levels, which is a slight improvement over the 15 of its twin. On the other hand, 4 of these are identical with levels from Acia, which strikes me as a bit cheeky. Apart from the different levels and title screens, you wouldn't be able to tell these two games apart.

If you are wondering about the "II" in Weaver II, there was indeed a game called Weaver, which was also released in 1990 in a 64'er issue, but a couple of months after Acia had appeared on Game On.

Despite its later release, this is obviously the first game in the trilogy. The graphics are less slick and gameplay is a bit rougher, but the main ingredients, as well as the editor, are already present.



CONCLUSION

Acia is a fun game that mixes puzzle and action elements in an interesting way. While the controls seem to be a potential source of frustration at first, it's really not that hard to get used to them.

If I had to compare Acia to existing games, Crillion is probably the one that comes closest to it. In both titles, you have to smash blocks by changing the color of your player sprite. Both games have unusual control schemes that need some getting used to. They also play a very similar wind sound during the game, now that I think of it.

While I lament the lack of levels, the ones that are in the game are nicely designed and not too devious to be frustrating. The editor is a very welcome addition if you're feeling creative enough to make your own stages. I guess the bigger problem is finding someone who is still willing to fire up an emulator to try out this game, 17 years after its release. Maybe it's time for a faithful remake.

Acia gets a recommendation from me. In my opinion, it's the best title on this issue of Game On and still well worth playing today.

If you want to know what else Acia's author, Peter Kaul, has worked on, you can find a list of his games on his website: http://peterkaul.de/games.html