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Farmer
Jack in
Harvest Havoc!
(2006)
Story
Jack loves his
home-brew wine.
What started as a
hobby, with a lone demijohn of elderberry wine
bubbling away in the under stairs cupboard, has become big business for
him in a few short years, and the number of allotments he owns, to grow
the fruits, is getting bigger every year. Big business isn't
easy
though - this year another supplier has been flooding the market with
cheap nasty wine, but Jack's wholesome organic produce still rules the
market - despite all the competition tried.
But last night,
at the end of another fabulous growing season, when he
had started collecting the fruit for this year's vintage he heard a
clanging of metal, smelt the foul smell of big business, and saw huge
steel monsters roaming the allotments, trampling the paths and
destroying his crops!
"By eck! Me
'arvest! It's a rum-do this!" Jack exclaimed, and off he
set again to gather his harvest, and deal with the competition's
mechanical menace that was threatening his livelihood...
Feedback
MicroMart - "The
graphics are nice and bright ... special
mention should be made to the wonderful AY music ... Farmer Jack in
Harvest Havoc has a good amount of polish to it, and is kind of naive
fun which will please most of you out there in the wide world of retro"
- 8/10
RGCD - "Quite
simply, this is the best
single-screen arcade
game I've ever played on the 128K Spectrum ... Everything about it is
pure class, from the ace backing music to the crystal-clear graphics
and pixel-perfect collision detection." - 86%
ZXF - "The
graphics
are extremely pleasing to look at and the music is superb. It's the
kind of game your six year old could get into, and to hell with the
PSP. In fact, this is exactly the sort of game we need more of to get
that generation interested in the Speccy." - 86%
ZX-Shed - "Farmer
Jack is a modern day ZX Spectrum classic. I kid you not. It is
extremely playable, fun and addictive ... But don't take my word for
it, Buy it, play it. You will love it." - 93%
Notes
As Dominetris was
well received I decided to turn my attention to
converting an arcade game which I liked and the Speccy never had a
decent version of - "Mr. Do!". Improving my coding all the
time, and
using TommyGun to design all the sprites, the resulting game strayed a
little from the arcade by replacing the "magic ball" with a number of
bombs (it's my game and I never got the hang of that ball!).
Largely
well received it set the character of Farmer Jack firmly on-track to be
used again in future games, such as "Farmer Jack and the Hedge Monkeys"
which followed early in 2008.
The game also
marks the beginning of a fantastic partnership with Lee
du-Caine (found via a "Wanted..." add in the WOS forums) who did all
the music & sound effects for this and all my games since, and
literally adds another dimension to the games. His input into
the
final result, and the creative process cannot be underestimated. |
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