Skill Grid on AGA Amiga

Today I wanted to take a look at the recently released game called Skill Grid by Retream, available for Classic Amiga AGA systems.

The game is available for purchase from RGCD. I have bought many games for C64 cartridge from RGCD and they focus on producing wonderful packaging for their games.

In 2019 they released Powerglove and Tigerclaw for Classic Amiga, covered briefly in my blog here. For Skill Grid they once again did a great boxed product:

Included is a CD32 bootable CD, floppy disk, instructions, badges, stickers and more! Very nice.

I quickly fired up my Amiga 4000 to try it out. Being an AGA game, you need a Amiga 1200, 4000 or CD32 to play this game:

Instructions for the game are included with the software on the CD:

The tricky part of this game is the positive and negative bonuses which affect your game in different ways. They constantly appear during play and you have to collect as many of the "positive" ones as you can while avoiding the negative ones! The manual below outlines the various bonuses to collect and their purpose.

I found with Retream games you do need to read the manual as they implement some interesting concepts in their games that you need to understand better in order to score well in the game (not just survive!)

The CD includes a HD install version you can just copy to the hard disk and launch. Here is the Skill Grid Title screen on my Amiga 4000:

The game moves fast as it is vertical scrolling shoot em up - but the positive and negative bonuses are a key part of the game play, and separate it from the average shooter that provides occasional power upgrades for your craft. You will likely die very quickly in this game, and often, as I did!

As you start it is quiet enough...

It starts getting busier though as the positive and negative bonuses start filling the screen, along with enemies to shoot/avoid.

I am afraid I am not very good at this game so I couldn't explore it as far as I was hoping to, but I keep on trying. Yep. Died again.

I also tested Skill Grid on my repaired Amiga CD32, and it works very well on it. I think the game is better suited to the CD32 controller to be honest!

Skill Grid is an interesting concept, and surprisingly difficult game to make progress in! That said my shoot em up skills are not what they used to be in 2019! YMMV.

The graphics and sound are good and music is ok too.

Definitely give it go!

Blastaway Preview on X5000

Today I wanted to take a look at an upcoming AmigaOS 4 game from Retream called Blastaway.

It is a throwback to games on Classic Amiga, and is in development now. It is being developed in 2019 for Windows and also AmigaOS 4.1.

I am focused on the AmigaOS 4.1 version on my AmigaOne X5000 today. You can download the work in progress game from the Retream itch.io website here for free.

Retream have delivered a lot of great games for AmigaOS 4, Windows, Mac, C64 and more! I have reviewed Huenison in this very blog.

I have previously bought BOH (AmigaOS 4), Skillgrid (Classic Amiga) and C64 games MAH and QUOD INIT EXIT IIm on C64 cartridge from Retream as well! I enjoy their games!

Please support ongoing development of original games for AmigaOS 4.1 and buy some of the games! We need original games too and not just ports of games from other platforms!

This is not the final game and many Blastaway levels and gameplay details are to be completed before the final game is released.

It is looking promising so far, and you can follow along with the very active game development log on their Twitter, Youtube pages as it takes shape!

Here is the Blastaway drawer on extraction:

The game runs in full screen on my X5000:

In the options you can change the video mode to run in a window and lower resolutions, and modify the keyboard controls for the game:

I quickly get into the game:

The game kinda reminds me of Dynablaster and Chaos Engine blended together, with keys to collect to unlock doors, and needing to kill all the aliens on the level to clear.

There are transporters on the level to get into inaccessible areas too and the levels get harder quickly:

You start with three lives, and those are shown at the bottom entrance to each level. If you die you take over the next life from the start point.

I already find the game is playable and fun, and I can't wait to see the final version:

I hope to see this game completed for AmigaOS 4.1 and hope this helps Retream in their efforts to raise awareness of the development work they are doing for our favourite Amiga platforms, both classic and Next Gen!