Projectyle

Title		Projectyle
Game Type	Sport
Developers	Eldritch the Cat
Company		Electronic Arts
Players		1, 2 or 3
Compatibility	A500
Submission	Chris Burns

Review
One of the Amiga's crop of 'Future Sport' games - but there's no metallic
graphics to be seen!! What's going on? The 'plot' such as it is, is
this.  A svengali, named Uncle M.Troid, spots some kids playing a fast
and furious game on the streets of Jupiter's second moon. He exploits the
game's concept and before any of the kids can utter the sentence 'what
about our artistic rights and cut of the franchise?' he has developed a
media extravaganza sport called 'Tribal'.

Tribal is a bit of a weird game, played with three teams (or 'Tribes' to
give them their proper name) across five pitches, which are arranged in
the shape of a cross with exits/entrances connecting them. Each Tribe has
a pitch containing their goalmouth (their 'Defence Zone'), two 'Attack
Zones' (which are the 2 other Tribes' Defence Zones) and there is also
another pitch (the 'Frantic Zone') which has three goalmouths, one per
Tribe. The fifth pitch is, of course, the 'Central Zone' and simply
contains exits to the other four. The home Tribe starts off defending the
top pitch and their 'Defence' and 'Attack' Zones rotate clockwise after
each of the three 'halves' of the game (excepting the bottom pitch, which
is always the Frantic Zone); this way everyone gets a chance to attack and
defend each pitch. So far, so wacky. Luckily the object of the game is
straightforward and familiar enough - score more goals than the other two
Tribes by putting the 'projectyle' of the title into their goalmouths!

The Tribes are, of course, wildly named - The Vectors, The Eldritch Cats
and probably best of all, The Jovian Jello Juggernauts, to name just a
few. Each has five players, one per pitch; no player may stray from his
allotted pitch which again makes the game unusual - there's no-one to pass
to or help out! The players are not in human shape but rather in the
shape of discs, coloured and designed according to their Tribe.
Apparently the players have 'evolved' into this state to better enable
them to play Tribal (did I mention you needed to suspend any disbelief you
had, in order to play this game?)

Naturally, since the players are disc shaped and the projectyle itself is
disc shaped, accurate shooting is rather tricky and often all you can do
is crash into the projectyle and hope it will ricochet off you in the
direction you want it to go. Trust me, it doesn't seem to happen often
and I usually have to herd the projectyle right into the goalmouth.

The action is frantic enough as the projectyle pings between the five
pitches and there are plenty of the usual sorts of bonus items to pick up
on the pitch: Extra stamina, cash, power and sliding boosts. Plus
there's some jollier ones that will freeze your opponents, seal the pitch
exits or teleport the projectyle to the Frantic Zone. Of course, you can
spend the cash you've picked up on enhancing your team's strengths after
each 'half'. You can take part in league or knock-out competitions and
there is also an option for three human players to take each other on.

The in-game tunes are quite hummable but the graphics are merely
servicable, even by 1990 standards.  I mean they're colourful and hardly
ZX81-like but definitely nothing to shout about. At least the graphics
change though, as you tour the other Tribal, er, tribe's grounds.

Projectyle is definitely a sports game although one cheat site I read
defines it as a 'puzzle game'!  That might not be a bad description really
as it can be a rather frustrating game. There is too much of an element
of luck in controlling the projectyle, although I'm sure there are Zen
Master Projectyle players out there who have no problems. 'Interesting
and original but flawed' would probably be my assessment. It would have
been interesting to see what the Eldritch the Cat development team would
have come up with next but I think they split quite soon after this
unfortunately.

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