ZX Spectrum Vega game #0036
Dear Readers,
Today I'll talk about the sequel to the wonderful Alter Ego, where the box headed character and its mirror image continue their puzzle platforming adventures! Denis Grachev of retrosouls.net made this one also.
The loading screen is very pretty and colourful, with the box headed character and its mirror image standing near a beam of yellow, purple and blue light with a long thin vine that grows hearts as fruit. Very pretty!
Nice credits screen too with more people involved this time and the game title's here in a lovely animated shimmery rainbow.
Upon going to the title screen, you're hit in the face with gorgeous music! It's that lovely bubbly remixy music that carries that retro 8-bit microcomputer feel. The font of "DREAMWALKER" is presented very nicely.
The gameplay is more of the same wonderful position switching in order to collect stuff, but there are extra bits added, though it still controls the same. There are items that make your mirror image reflect vertically instead of horizontally. There are also items that either you or your image can collect so that's nice too when you're trying to come up with a logical level strategy. There's another layer of depth this time. There are also items you can collect while switching, which is quite nice too.
The game's separated into different named worlds that each have their own music. The first world is called "First dream, Strawberry Fields", where the platforms are red and magenta with white speckles. Its music has a nice tune that's kind of like a ballad and you can imagine lyrics being set to it. When it goes into the chorus there's a UFO engine chugging sound effect that I quite like.
The second dream, Land Of Abandoned Bridges, plays a lonely tune that you would hear in a mysterious introduction cinematic to a video game. You get a sense of mystery and something deep and vast like outer space, or indeed a large abandoned area, like this world full of crumbling bridges.
One stage in this world had me really stumped and it looked like a ladder was out of reach and it had four skulls marching back and forth on the platform underneath. Fortunately, the gap in the bottom rung didn't mean anything and I was able to climb it anyway! Yay :)
The third dream, Valley Of Skulls lives up to its name too. Lots of manoeuvring to be done around them here. The music that plays here is a rocking build up of a tune that makes the game sound like it's getting serious. It's pretty cool!
This is about as far as I got for now. The game seems quite long and uses a password feature. Lots of content and improvements, which makes it a very good sequel to an already great game!
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