Wokla: Visorboy Adventures
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Welcome to one of the best bad MZX games you'll ever find in the DigitalMZX archives -- Wokla: Visorboy Adventures. This game is truly amazing in how bad it is, not in a CR2-0 want-to-smash-your-head-into-a-wall sort of way, but in a rather enjoyable way! Due to its Giel-like level of beta testing there are going to be a few things that you need to do in the editor to Fully Experience Wokla. If you don't feel like making all of these fixes, you can take the shortcut through the game, which avoids all of the broken boss fights. This review will take the shortcut, but feel free to play through the rest of the game... you won't regret discovering how bad it is! :)
Bugfixes for a full playthrough:
1) Board "level 2-3", edit the robot at 99,40 and change line 7 to:
SET "bosshealth" TO 10
This drastically shortens the amount of time you have to wait before "VENOIM" kills itself.
1.2) After line 41, add a line:
LOCKSELF
2) Board "level 3-3", edit the robot at 2,46 and add a line at the very start:
SET "on" 1
This makes the first boss of world 3 beatable.
3) Board "3-3-2", edit the robot at 95,37 and change line 4 to:
SET "bosshealth" TO 20
You'll be fighting him all week otherwise!
3.2) After line 14, insert a line:
LOCKSELF
4) Board "4-3", edit the robot at 79,35 and change line 1 to:
SET "bosshealth" TO 100
4.2) After line 30, add a line:
WAIT FOR 1
4.3) After line 44 (should be UNLOCKPLAYER), add a line:
WAIT FOR 1
These waits prevent it from trapping the player in an infinite loop of getting stung.
You start the game off in a level with a pretty awful char 178 background, walking on bright cyan on poop brown ground, with a bunch of enemies that float really slowly down and move back and forth. You attack them by jumping on them with your fixed 8-char high triangle jump, if you can manage to land on them. There's also flying stuff you can jump on that inexplicably doesn't die until you move off of it, and most of the time, you can't jump off of robots. The level is fairly straightforward and the design is laughably bad. The graphics stay this bad throughout level 2, where at the top left, there's a box that gives out infinite bombs. Stand under it and hold the up key until you have about 300 or so lo-bombs, as you'll need these to bomb jump through choice sections of the game. To get the boss to even appear in level 3, you need to stand all of the way to the right until it falls on top of you. Jumping on it a couple of times beats it, and then you move onto world 2. Don't waste bombs getting up to the area the boss was hiding in, it won't do you any good.
World 2 is pretty straightforward. At the top there's a box that moves up but can't be jumped off of, so you have to bomb jump to get up to the portal or use a bug to go there. To bomb jump, hold up and delete at the same time. To use the bug, go to the portal to the far right and at the very edge of the platform, press and hold left and up at the same time -- if you do it right, you'll walk on the air over to the portal without falling. This can be used on any platform in the game. You will be teleported to world 5. In world 5, hit the box and wait for an elevator to come down. Don't go into the room on the right, it's a death trap. This is where the most annoying part of the game comes in.
The first part of the puzzle in level 5-2 is fairly straightforward -- move the box matching the MZX color over the double line (the order is White, Yellow, Magenta, Red, Cyan, Green, Blue), but the second part isn't so much. Without being told exactly what to do (and the game, of course, doesn't), this can be quite a bother to figure out. You need to press B to turn the sliders into boulders, and for EVERY SINGLE ONE, push them into the first char of their respective areas (1 char tall row to the left of the grey lines area for the east/west sliders, 1 char width column directly above where you pushed the boulders in the first part of the puzzle for north/south sliders) and press B again so they turn back into sliders. The sequence is the same as the first part of the puzzle (White, Yellow, etc). You can do the SliderEW and SliderNS parts at the same time, but they HAVE to be in the first char of their areas for the game to count it. I wouldn't blame anybody for using F8 in the editor, here.
After the annoyingly specific "puzzle", you go on to chase some green thing around. This works best if you go to the left side of the screen and touch it from above. You follow it to the next level and have to "climb" a wall, which amounts to jumping into and out of the holes in the side of the wall (or bomb jumping up, but make sure you still have a lot of bombs). You fight Roak and there's absolutely no way to reach the portal at the top of the screen. You *have* to bomb jump up to it -- it works best if you do it directly from below and hold the up key the whole time. In the final level, you get to learn that this was actually A DEMO, and after beating a couple more "puzzles", the game ends. Congratulations!
I'm not sure what's so fascinating about this ugly game that tends to be annoying more often than not, with three bosses that come broken out of the box and another that has so much health that it might as well be too, with terrible gameplay and surprise deathtraps and a nearly unintelligible puzzle. Everything about it just seems so perfectly BAD that I loved it. While it lacks memorable quotes like Blue Buckaroo and Mana Lust, and won't burn itself into your nightmares like CR2-0, Wokla: Visorboy Adventures is a great example of what NOT to do in your game and an instant classic because of it. Add the fixes at the start of the review and play through the whole game! You might not regret it.
Bugfixes for a full playthrough:
1) Board "level 2-3", edit the robot at 99,40 and change line 7 to:
SET "bosshealth" TO 10
This drastically shortens the amount of time you have to wait before "VENOIM" kills itself.
1.2) After line 41, add a line:
LOCKSELF
2) Board "level 3-3", edit the robot at 2,46 and add a line at the very start:
SET "on" 1
This makes the first boss of world 3 beatable.
3) Board "3-3-2", edit the robot at 95,37 and change line 4 to:
SET "bosshealth" TO 20
You'll be fighting him all week otherwise!
3.2) After line 14, insert a line:
LOCKSELF
4) Board "4-3", edit the robot at 79,35 and change line 1 to:
SET "bosshealth" TO 100
4.2) After line 30, add a line:
WAIT FOR 1
4.3) After line 44 (should be UNLOCKPLAYER), add a line:
WAIT FOR 1
These waits prevent it from trapping the player in an infinite loop of getting stung.
You start the game off in a level with a pretty awful char 178 background, walking on bright cyan on poop brown ground, with a bunch of enemies that float really slowly down and move back and forth. You attack them by jumping on them with your fixed 8-char high triangle jump, if you can manage to land on them. There's also flying stuff you can jump on that inexplicably doesn't die until you move off of it, and most of the time, you can't jump off of robots. The level is fairly straightforward and the design is laughably bad. The graphics stay this bad throughout level 2, where at the top left, there's a box that gives out infinite bombs. Stand under it and hold the up key until you have about 300 or so lo-bombs, as you'll need these to bomb jump through choice sections of the game. To get the boss to even appear in level 3, you need to stand all of the way to the right until it falls on top of you. Jumping on it a couple of times beats it, and then you move onto world 2. Don't waste bombs getting up to the area the boss was hiding in, it won't do you any good.
World 2 is pretty straightforward. At the top there's a box that moves up but can't be jumped off of, so you have to bomb jump to get up to the portal or use a bug to go there. To bomb jump, hold up and delete at the same time. To use the bug, go to the portal to the far right and at the very edge of the platform, press and hold left and up at the same time -- if you do it right, you'll walk on the air over to the portal without falling. This can be used on any platform in the game. You will be teleported to world 5. In world 5, hit the box and wait for an elevator to come down. Don't go into the room on the right, it's a death trap. This is where the most annoying part of the game comes in.
The first part of the puzzle in level 5-2 is fairly straightforward -- move the box matching the MZX color over the double line (the order is White, Yellow, Magenta, Red, Cyan, Green, Blue), but the second part isn't so much. Without being told exactly what to do (and the game, of course, doesn't), this can be quite a bother to figure out. You need to press B to turn the sliders into boulders, and for EVERY SINGLE ONE, push them into the first char of their respective areas (1 char tall row to the left of the grey lines area for the east/west sliders, 1 char width column directly above where you pushed the boulders in the first part of the puzzle for north/south sliders) and press B again so they turn back into sliders. The sequence is the same as the first part of the puzzle (White, Yellow, etc). You can do the SliderEW and SliderNS parts at the same time, but they HAVE to be in the first char of their areas for the game to count it. I wouldn't blame anybody for using F8 in the editor, here.
After the annoyingly specific "puzzle", you go on to chase some green thing around. This works best if you go to the left side of the screen and touch it from above. You follow it to the next level and have to "climb" a wall, which amounts to jumping into and out of the holes in the side of the wall (or bomb jumping up, but make sure you still have a lot of bombs). You fight Roak and there's absolutely no way to reach the portal at the top of the screen. You *have* to bomb jump up to it -- it works best if you do it directly from below and hold the up key the whole time. In the final level, you get to learn that this was actually A DEMO, and after beating a couple more "puzzles", the game ends. Congratulations!
I'm not sure what's so fascinating about this ugly game that tends to be annoying more often than not, with three bosses that come broken out of the box and another that has so much health that it might as well be too, with terrible gameplay and surprise deathtraps and a nearly unintelligible puzzle. Everything about it just seems so perfectly BAD that I loved it. While it lacks memorable quotes like Blue Buckaroo and Mana Lust, and won't burn itself into your nightmares like CR2-0, Wokla: Visorboy Adventures is a great example of what NOT to do in your game and an instant classic because of it. Add the fixes at the start of the review and play through the whole game! You might not regret it.