Fire and Ice
First appeared in ZXF issue 7 (Spring 2004)
Author: n-Discovery Group
Download: www.n-discovery.narod.ru/games.htm
Let's put this simply: if Fire and Ice had been released in the late eighties, the ZX press would have gone mad about it. And rightly so. n-Discovery have produced here, as someone very appropriately termed it in the WoS forums, a masterpiece. They have got everything right. Everything.
Fire and Ice is not so much a game as it is a production; every last screen that passes in front of you, every last audio track (and there are plenty) is crafted with exceptional skill. Even the language is perfect: as soon as the game loads up you can choose between English and Russian; I can't speak for the Russian version, of course, but the English text is almost poetic in its construction - a far cry from the broken translations we often experience, noble though those efforts are.
Very clever use of interlacing is used in many parts of the game, including colour mixing in the credits to give a palette of pastel hues and an extremely subtle effect right at the start, where the black text of the n-Discovery logo is interlaced with a slightly fatter version of itself to create a shimmering, anti-aliased feel. Like I said, every aspect of this title is polished. There's even a very detailed help section where information about the game is presented as a comic-strip discussion - and in this there's even a fast forward option!
And the game itself is simple, beautifully presented and utterly, utterly addictive. Your task is to guide novice wizard Dana in her mission to extinguish the flames sent by evil wizard Druidle to melt the peaceful Coolmint Island away. Dana has been empowered with Ice Magic by the queen of the Winter Fairies and can thus create or destroy ice below her; sliding or dropping an ice block onto an evil flame will eliminate it. So its up to you to work out, over the course of 89 levels, how best to achieve this.
Of course, a game like this never could have been released in the heyday of the Spectrum - not in the UK, at least. Fire and Ice achieves its magic because it has lots of space to work in: this is a piece of TR-DOS software, and if you want to experience it, you'll have to get yourself a TR-DOS enabled emulator such as Spectaculator (6.0 onwards) or RealSpectrum (see last issue for a tutorial on TR-DOS, not that you really need to know anything about the system once you've worked out how to load and boot the disk). TR-DOS was embraced by the Russian community, but in the UK we never quite managed to commit to any particular mass media format - and it wasn't for want of choice - and got stuck with tape (or tape conversions on the Plus 3), pretty much until the end of the Spectrum's commercial life. Well, folks - this is what could have been if we'd stuck to a format and explored its potential beyond disk-based adventures and word processing applications. Do we really need a 'Super Spectrum' when a disk drive and great programming can produce something as stunning as this?
If you haven't experienced Fire and Ice by now, head over to n-Discovery's site right now. The game is also available at http://zxeng.raww.net/games/firenice.zip.
