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NOW here's an odd one. Is Ziggurat an adventure or some other sort of hybrid game? Ziggurats were the multi-storey temple towers of the ancient Middle East and the game is clearly set in some such structure, although it has modern lifts and other artefacts in it.

Reading the insert won't tell you anything at all but it soon becomes clear that the aim is to escape unscathed from this labyrinth with as many precious objects as possible.

There is a vast number of rooms, each depicted in graphics but all looking pretty similar, except for the occasional special place.

Text is entered in verb/noun combinations and the interpreter is friendly enough.

It is not a highly verbal adventure and cannot possibly compare with more expensive productions. Despite that it becomes gripping purely because you want to get out of the maze and back into the light. Maybe it appeals to the reviewer's claustrophobic tendencies.



Richard Price

ZIGGURAT Software Supersavers Memory: 48K Price: £2.99 Gilbert Factor: 5

Ziggurat was an adventure game which could just about be called a 'graphical' rather than 'text' adventure as there was a 3D pictorial view of each location in the top half of the screen.

The Spectrum and the Amstrad versions were both programmed in BASIC by John and his schoolfriend Paul Ranson, who designed and wrote the games while both still at school in the sixth form.

The game was published by Software Super Savers, which was Software Projects newly formed budget label, which we don't remember releasing anything other than the initial batch of games which Ziggurat was a part.

Ste Pickford writes:
"I don't remember much about Ziggurat because, as with Ghost Town, I wasn't much involved.

I do seem to remember that it was planned as the first of a series of games (or I may be wrong and a series of games was planned by John and Paul after Ziggurat) starring Guy Manly, and that there was a game being designed set in the tombs of Sumaria. I was going to draw a comic strip which would be the introduction to the game (I was more into comics than video games at the time), and I'm sure Paul's brother was involved as well, so it was going to be a multi-family / brother affair.

I think it all got put on hold and forgotten once John and Paul got jobs programming games full time at Binary Design."