Croid is an original arcade game that came from Australia, and was Andrew Simpson's first assembly language project. In it, you play a rebel Croid, who is trying to escape a large maze, populated by other Croid's, and by Cruds (small squares that crawl along walls, and will suck energy from you if you get too close). To escape the maze, you have to build a bomb, and to build a bomb, you need to collect power for it, by running over charge plates (every room has one). This also helps charge your own power up. Once the charge gauge is high enough, you head for the red Bomb room on the map, and walk over the hole in the floor. That starts the timer, and you have to make it to white exit on the map before the timer has run out. Then you go to the next maze. The game is visually impressive with nicely draw shapes and presentation. It is a little slow, and the 3D perspective of the walls makes it hard to gauge when you are running into walls (which drain your energy). It also uses two button joysticks (or you can use the button on the 2nd joystick to duplicate the 2nd button), and requires that you hit the 2nd button to start the game. In gameplay, holding down the 2nd button engages movement in your joystick direction; Button one fires your shot; if you hold the button down, you can steer your shot with the joystick. I found it very difficult to avoid getting drained by the cruds if they got close (supposedly if you run into a wall just ahead of them, they will freeze for 5 seconds... but this has never worked for me). With a few changes, it could go from a good game to a great one.
Title: Croid
Author: Andrew Simpson
Publisher: Andrew Simpson
Released: 1988 or 1989
Requires: Color Computer 3, 128K RAM, disk, joystick (2 button joystick recommended).