PrinceWatercress plays Pentiles for BBC Micro

Here's a game for the BBC Micro that's easy and fun to play but difficult to master. Have fun with this one!

Longplay

Pentiles for BBC Micro is a shape-moving game in which you move shapes made out of five smaller blocks known as "pentiles" onto a red rectangle. Your goal is to move all 12 pentiles onto the red target zone without anything sticking out and without leaving any gaps.

When you get a pentile, you have to rotate it with the Space Bar first. From here, you can press Up when you are done, then place it on the red zone with the arrow keys and the Copy Key (End on a modern keyboard). Keep in mind that when you move a pentile, you're pushing it into place, not dropping it down, so you have to make sure that you can push the pentile into the place you want to move it into.

There are eight different pentiles, and you'll see each one twice making for a total of 16 pentiles with which to achieve this goal. 

If any part of the pentile sticks out of the red zone when you place it, you will lose five points for that pentile. If it fits entirely within the red zone, you gain an additional five points. Different pentiles have different point values. If you cover the red zone completely, you'll gain 500 additional points. If there is a single uncovered tile by the time there are no moves left to make, you'll only gain 200.

There are two difficulties: easy and hard. Easy allows you all the time in the world and a way to practice. The red zone also has a depth of six tiles. Hard, on the other hand, only gives you three minutes to complete it, and the longer you go, the longer a yellow barrier that travels from the left side of the screen to the right will travel and eventually block your path. Using snap judgement and making good moves ahead of time is essential on the hard difficulty. You also have a random depth of three to five tiles on the red zone. Thankfully, you can move your tile just slightly off-screen to the right near the end on hard difficulty.

The game ends when you completely covered the red zone, have used all sixteen pentiles or are unable to move any pentiles into the red zone. The game also ends on hard mode if you run out of time.

Easy starts off with a tile value of ten points and has a maximum score of 2,750 points. The hard more starts with a tile value of 25 points and has a maximum score of 3,650 points.

When you play the game, play it with one hand. Otherwise, you'll confuse yourself and press the wrong thing at the wrong time. The yellow bar at the bottom will show the tile value for your current tile, the amount of pentiles you have left as well as your present score.

This puzzle game for the BBC Micro is simple to figure out and play, but very difficult to master, especially if you're going for the maximum score. The graphics, sound and play control are all very basic, but they get the job done and don't get in the way of a very simple time. You may be playing this for only a couple of minutes at worst, but you can do much worse when it comes to puzzle games for the microcomputer. This one is definitely worth checking out once.