THE SPECTRUM GAMES DATABASE



MAZIACS



PUBLISHER

DK'Tronics



AUTHOR

Don Priestley



YEAR

1982/3?



CATEGORY

Maze



DESCRIPTION

Explore a randomly generated maze looking for gold and fighting

nasties!



CONTROLS

Redefinable keys, Kempston Joystick



INSTRUCTIONS

These instructions are taken from the game itself.



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<PICTURE OF YOU>

This is YOU, the HERO of this ADVENTURE.

To SUCCEED you will need to 



Run through a complex MAZE

Collect of box of TREASURE

and then RETURN



EASY?



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<PICTURE OF A SECTION OF MAZE>

The MAZE is VERY BIG (64 times this section)

& has NO EDGES!



A whole NEW MAZE is generated for each adventure

(This takes time)



The DISTANCE to the TREASURE varies but is never short!



Randomly placed in the maze are SWORDS, PRISONERS and BOWLS

of FOOD, all to HELP you in your search



There are also many MAZIACS

They are slightly LESS helpful



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PRISONERS can show you the ROUTE to the TREASURE or,

if you already have it, the way back to the START



The route shown only lasts for so many "moves" or for

so much time



You then need to find ANOTHER prisoner



The ROUTE is shown in YELLOW



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Having a sword will enable you to kill a MAZIAC, but after

a fight you will need ANOTHER



Fighting MAZIACS without a SWORD takes LONGER and you will

PROBABLY be KILLED



IF you are SITTING down, any attacking MAZIAC will ALWAYS

send you to YOUR MAKER



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MAZIACS are the GUARDIANS of the TREASURE



Although they know where you are they're no intelligent

enough to find any but the most direct route to get at you



Sometimes their behaviour is UNPREDICTABLE



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The MAIN screen will show you only a FIFTIETH of the MAZE



VIEW will show about a TWELFTH



This helps locate SWORDS etc BUT although MAZIACS can still

move YOU CAN'T !



(Any key restores MAIN screen)



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ENERGY & FOOD



Running through the MAZE and fighting MAZIACS uses ENERGY



EATING FOOD will INCREASE your ENERGY

(First find the food !)



If your ENERGY runs out then the adventure ENDS in a quick

death by STARVATION



Your ENERGY METER will be to the right of the screen



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The TREASURE will be at least 200 MOVES from the start



You can't carry the Treasure AND a Sword



You CAN swap Sword and Treasure at any time



Killing rather than avoiding MAZIACS on the way to the

TREASURE will help (a bit !)



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DEATH or GLORY



If SUCCESSFUL your SCORE will be the MINIMUM number of Moves

needed compared with the ACTUAL moves you made as a PERCENTAGE

PLUS 0 10 20 or 30 for the level of DIFFICULTY chosen



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DIFFICULTY LEVELS



Use MENU & "D" to CHOOSE FROM



1    EASY



2    Lose ENERGY during VIEW



3    As 2 but also lose ROUTE during VIEW

     Route duration is TIMED



4    As 3 but Prisoners can only be used ONCE





IN ADDITION the more difficult Levels have LESS Swords,

Food and Prisoners but the SAME number of MAZIACS



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All these instructions are easily accessed (with pictures) from

the game itself!





INLAY CARD TEXT

I don't have this, but I imagine it would be much the same as the

instructions I have included above.



CHEATS





SEQUELS/PREQUELS

Rumour has it that Maziacs is based upon (i.e. much the same game

as) Mazogs on the ZX81.



SCORES RECEIVED

Unknown. Possibly released before Speccy mags came about.



URL

Maziacs is available from a number of sites, this is just one of

them :

ftp://ftp.dcc.uchile.cl/pub/OS/sinclair/snapshots/m/maziacs.zip





GENERAL FACTS

Some games of Maziacs are much harder than others, I imagine this

is because of the randomly generated maze.



Don Priestley went on to write a whole heap of top games for a

number of companies including Piranha and Mastertronic. These

include Popeye, Trapdoor, Through the Trapdoor, Benny Hill's

Madcap Chase, Minder, and Gregory Loses His Clock. He became

famous for producing Speccy titles with huge colourful sprites!

Maziacs, as you will see, isn't one of these titles.



NOTES

Maziacs is simple and fun (and very frustrating at times)! Try

and complete it without using the map or without using any

swords!

