PrinceWatercress plays Witch Hunt

Compared to other BBC Micro games that I've played for the Internet, this one is a little more complex and also a little more difficult. Imagine my surprise when I beat this game in one shot.

Longplay

This game was written by Stephen Gray published in Micro User magazine, volume 4, issue 8, in October 1986.

Here is the story according to the game itself:

It's Halloween, and Olive, the wicked with of the West End, is trying to make a potion to cure acne. Unfortunately she forgets to fry the net's crest, and the acne medicine becomes a potion to transport people to the demon world.

Our unsuspecting heroine smears the potion on to her face and disappears, broomstick and all, in an unimpressive wisp of smoke.

"Oh, dear!" she cries, and realising what she has done, she struggles to remember how to escape.

Wasn't there something about the 42 keys of Transportal? Her concentration is broken by an inconsiderate demon who decides to fry her for her insolence. Not surprisingly, Olive runs away.

Witch Hunt is played in the demon world, which is 70 times as large as the screen. Guide Olive through the halls of the demons, collecting the keys as you go.

Watch out for demons lurking in the shadows, and whatever you do, don't touch the walls or anything but the keys.

Z moves you left, X moves you right, * moves you up and ? moves you down.

S turns on the sound, Q turns off the sound, Delete pauses the game and Copy continues (un-pauses) the game.

The aim of the game is to go through the 72 screen maze of Transportal and look for all 42 keys. You have five lives to do this in, and if you lose all of them, the game is over. If you run into a wall, any of the yellow circle things that looks like evil eyes (or underworld portals), or a demon, you will lose a life. If you lose a life, you will be taken back to where you entered the current room from. Once you lose a life, you cannot get it back, sadly, so you'll have to play well to get all 42 keys in one sitting and beat this game.

The evil eye/portal of doom looking thing spawns in a random location in the rooms where it is located. Thankfully, you'll only see one of it in the locations where it pops up. If an evil eye/portal of doom is in your way and you want to make sure you don't accidentally move into it, you can leave the screen you're currently on and return to change the position.

Rooms with the evil eye/portal in them may or may not have a key. Move into the key to grab it.

Head to the left at the start to find a key that can be very easy to miss.

Some screens will have demons, and you'll have to be watch how the demon comes at you depending on how the room is. The way past the demon to where you want to go depends on where you're entering the room as well as where you're wanting to go. Sometimes, you'll have to gun it in a diagonal direction as soon as you get into the room. Other times, you'll have to go around the room in a roundabout way just to get from, say, the west end of the room to the south. If you're going from north to south, you'll have to head almost all the way to the east (left) to fake out the demon, then go all the way to the right and then around when the demon gets close enough to avoid getting caught. If you're going from south to north - which you shouldn't be doing if you've optimized your route through the maze like I did in the longplay - you'll need to go up and left and then up and right around the demon in a semi-circle. If you're going from west to east - or east to west - you may have to go diagonally towards the north wall and then diagonally downwards to the other side around the demon in a semi-circle. Thankfully, the game allows you to go up or down and to the side at the same time by holding two directions at once.

The best way to figure it out is to wait around in the room and watch how the demon approaches you, go back to the previous room before you get caught, then put your plan into action and start moving once you go back in, hopefully without getting caught by the demon or without running into the wall and losing a life. Figuring out how to get past every demon will take trial and error, so be prepared to play this game more than a couple of times to figure out how to get through the demon rooms and master the maze. Thankfully, screens with demons do not have keys in them, so you don't have to go looking for the keys while flying for your life.

Some of the screens are not entered because they are dead ends with demons in them. Since there are no keys in the demon rooms, those dead ends are completely useless. Some dead ends do have keys, however. Thankfully, I stay away from the dead ends with the demons thanks to the map that I have, which is at the bottom of this blog entry.

Once you get the 42nd and final key, you've beaten the game! Enjoy your one screen ending!

(click the pic for the full map)