It was only last year when long time retro gaming enthusiast Craig Hackney (aka IrataHack) released his debut ZX Spectrum gaming title, Castle Escape. Featuring a small and courageous knight called Wee, Castle Escape saw you take control of Wee as he tried to escape a haunted castle filled with deadly inhabitants while collecting gold coins along the way. Well ZX Spectrum fans, we have a treat for you as we have been granted preview access to the follow up game in the Wee Knight franchise – Forest Escape – A Knight’s Quest.
Following his daring escape from the haunted castle, Wee Knight now finds himself deep within the heart of an enchanted forest surrounded by creatures of the night. But Forest Escape is not your ordinary platform game where your aim is just to go along a straight forward path to get from A to B. You see, Wee’s path ahead is anything but linear as he embarks on a dangerous adventure through the forest that is something more akin to a perilous labyrinth.
In order to succeed with his quest, Wee will need to locate keys to unlock his path to freedom. This means going back and forth across some locations but this never feels too onerous of a task. There are four different coloured keys to be uncovered with each key corresponding to ancient chests of the same colour that hold the secret to escape.
Forest Escape does exhibit similarities to Castle Escape with Wee having to go around and collect gold coins and the little knight’s jumping abilities somewhat restricted without the aid of some form of performance enhancing substance. This time around it is the consumption of magical purple mushrooms that will provide Wee with the ability to greatly extend his jumping skills for a limited time. And this is where the game introduces light strategic elements to its play experience as you will need to plan ahead and be decisive on how you use you enhanced jumping power to reach gold coins and keys located high up on the screen before it runs out.
Adding further depth to game play is the inclusion of cyan coloured mushrooms which, when collected, will temporarily invert the game direction controls. The well thought out placement of these mushrooms means that you will often have no choice but to consume the nuisance fungi and deal with its consequences.
Forest Escape is quite an accessible game thanks to its aversion to one hit kills. You start off with three lives and Wee has a health bar that gets reduced when ever you come into contact with an enemy creature or hazard. However, gravity is not Wee’s friend and any large falls off ledges will result in a large chunk of his health being wiped out, often resulting in a loss of life, so care does need to be taken when making leaps across the screen. But there are many extra lives to be picked up across the game world and this does go a long way to allowing even the most casual retro gamer to see a good amount of what the game has to offer. And there is a lot on offer here. In one of my earlier attempts at the game, I timed myself as playing through it to close to 30 minutes and was surprised to see that I had completed 50% of game.
The production values in Forest Escape are good. The graphics are quite attractive and detailed and the 128K rendition of the Teddy Bear’s Picnic tune as the title track is charming. The controls feel tight and responsive and there are not many instances where pixel perfect jumps are required.
Forest Escape – A Knight’s Quest is a strong modern day gaming title for the ZX Spectrum 48K-128K platform. With its combination of strong production values and non-linear, strategic game play, it is not hard to draw a positive impression of what the game offers. A release date has not yet been set for the game but there are hopes that Forest Escape will be released digitally before the year end, with a physical cassette edition becoming available via Cronosoft a little while after.
