PrinceWatercress plays Ossie

It's been a while since I played an arcade-style BBC Micro, so here we are...with Ossie!

Longplay

Ossie the Osprey has five chicks in the nest. These chicks must be kept alive by feeding them with fish. At random intervals, a poacher climbs the tree to steal a chick.

Z moves left, X moves right, : moves up, / moves down and Return allows you to dive (if you don't have a fish) or drop a fish (if you do) on the BBC Micro keyboard. When the game is over, press Spacebar to start a new game. Press Break at any time to end the game.

The numbers at the top of the screen, from left to right, are your current score, the amount of lives/chicks you have left, the amount of time you have left before you lose a life/chick and your highest score for the play session.

You lose a life by failing to drop a fish in the nest in time, or from the poacher reaching the nest.

The poacher can be killed by flying into him from any direction. He will come back, however.

The height of Ossie above the water before diving determines which row of fish is accessible.

When a fish is caught, fly Ossie to a point above the nest and drop the fish. Ossie will not dive from above the tree.

There are twenty (20) seconds on the first sheet (screeN0 to catch a fish and drop it in the nest. If you exceed the time limit, you lose a life.

If you drop a fish in the nest within the time, the timer restarts. On subsequent sheets, the time reduces by two (2) seconds per sheet to a minimum of eight (8) seconds (which happens on the sixth sheet and thereafter).

After the third, fourth and fifth sheets, an extra life is given. (The game says it happens after the second, but you have to beat three sheets to even get one, so you'll have to play well.)

You'll score ten (10) points for catching a fish, five (5) points for dropping a fish in the nest and twenty (20) points for killing a poacher.

When you start the game, press Spacebar to start flying around and diving for fish.

To get a fish on the top row, you'll need to dive down from just above the bottom of the nest. With all of the rows, if you are at just the right distance from the fish when you drop down, you'll be right above it when you reach the row.

To get a fish on the row second from the top, you'll need to dive down from just above nest level. You'll need just a little bit of sky below you between the left and center mountains in the background.

To get a fish on the row second from the bottom, you'll need to line yourself up with the peak of the center mountain in the background. 

To get a fish from the bottom row, you'll need to position yourself just below the center of the cloud in the upper-left corner. Be sure you're fairly ahead of the fish so it is below you when you reach the bottom of the screen.

You will need to be exact with the elevations you drop from to get a fish from a certain row. Diving from higher elevations will not get you any fish from the higher rows, so you'll be forced to know where to dive from in order to get all the fish. Not surprisingly, this is the hardest part about the game, but once you get it figured out, it's easier and more fun to play.

This is one of the more original ideas I've seen for arcade-style games on the BBC Micro so far, and while figuring out where to dive from was a bit of a task, getting it figured out makes this game easier to play and more fun to enjoy, and it also allows you to make the game look easier than it is. It can be a little hard to tell where Ossie is at times because of the white on the mountain peaks and the clouds, but at least the graphics are easy to identify and the gameplay is responsive. If you need an arcade-style game for BBC Micro, this is definitely one to recommend.