Game 5: Tunnel Vision (1985)
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| Quite a lot of going on in terms of UI elements, though only a few of those are actually usable. |
United States
Released 1985
Genre: Maze, Puzzle, FPS
Developer: David Addison
Date Started: 22 June 2025
Date Ended: 22 June 2025
Total Hours: 1
Difficulty: Moderate (3/5)
Final Rating: 23
After a few board game and arcade adaptations, I get to play a game that offers a bit more interesting experience: Tunnel Vision by David Addison, who also brought us his board game adaptation of Monopoly, also in 1985, which was by far the best game I’ve played for this short blog so far, especially in terms of production quality.
This looks like a more sophisticated version of the Labyrinth game that was originally released in 1980 for the Commodore PET and CBM and got later ported to the C64 and other platforms.1 In Labyrinth, you navigate through a randomly generated maze from the entrance to the exit from an ego perspective that these days is mostly associated with early Dungeon Crawlers. Your task is to remember the maze layout that is displayed at the start of the game, and then navigate through it without getting lost. Let’s see what Tunnel Vision does with that concept.
While my TOSEC collection has a bootable ADF version of this, dated to 1986, I played the version I found on issue 34 of the KickStart PD series. The BASIC game code actually dates this to 1985. That version initially refused to run with an “insuffient stack” error, but a thread on the English Amiga Board suggested to set the stack size via stack 8000 in the shell, which did the trick.
As per usual with David Addison's games, Tunnel Vision was written in ABasiC and again looks quite polished for such an early PD game on a young platform as the Amiga was at that point. The first thing you notice when starting the game is the use of the Amiga’s text-to-speech capabilities, with the voice greeting you by saying “Tunnel Vision”. As we’ll see, it will also be used to utter “ouch" when you hit a wall, and make some other comments. Certainly a nice gimmick in 1985, though it sounds somewhat uncanny today. Before the game proper starts, you are offered a few options intended to lower the difficulty: leaving a trail (so you know where you’ve been treading already), enabling an automap, and enabling extra passages when generating the map that make your way through the maze easier.
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| The map is being generated. |
After watching the map beeing generated (accompanied by somewhat worrying sounds), you are presented with the first-person view of the maze. You can move by clicking or holding the (F)ront, (B)ack, (L)eft, and (R)ight buttons in the lower right corner and keep your orientiation with the compass to the left. In the lower center under the FPS view you see a tiny map view if enabled. Left and right to the FPS view are two gauges inticating your battery (which depletes when you backtrack) and your damage (which increases when you hit a wall).
The FPS display is as simple as it gets but quite pleasing, one reason being the black edges drawn around the maze walls that makes them stand out in a nice way, another is the effective shading of the different wall segments, even we have not wall texture whatsoever at that point in time. One visual aspect I found confusing was with wall color that changed with every move. I have no idea if this is some kind of randomization or if it’s intended to indicate something—or maybe just to deliberately confuse the player. Another confusing aspect (which Tunnel Vision shares with similar FPS games using a step-based movent) is you constantly end up misjudging the distance to walls, often leaving you in front of walls after turning. My rule of thumb was to always make another step while my gut feeling made me believe I was already at the correct place. Screen redraws are also a bit slow which can lead to slight disorientation when turning.
Every crash is commented by Amiga’s text-to-speech voice saying “ouch”, followed by increasingly sarcastic comments like the final “Now you’ve done it. Bye-bye!”. After that, you manually have to end or restart the game by using the “Abort” button in the upper right corner.
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| The actual FPS maze view. For some reason I really like the black edges around the walls. |
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| The startup screen mentiones a “Short Range Scanner” and “Long Range Scanner”, but I never figured out what these actually refered to, maybe the map view? |
Let’s move on to the ratings:
Programming:
As usual with David Addison's games, Tunnel Vision feels pretty fine for an early Amiga non-commercial game written in the earliest BASIC interpreter available on the system. While I have no way to proof I guess this came after Monopoly, but if that’s the case, technically this is a step up. 6/10
Controls:
The controls do what they should but I’m really missing keyboard shortcuts. Controlling movement with the mouse only gets pretty tedious. 3/10
Vibe:
There is a slight mechanical or technical theme going on with the gauges for battery and damage as well as the UI elements. The use of the quite robotic voice adds to this, but it’s all a bit gimmicky, ultimately. 2/10
Graphics:
Pleasant and effective, I especially like the little mapping computer graphic below the FPS view. The FPS view itself is kinda bland without any textures, but does what it should. 5/10
Story:
Nonexistent. 0/10
Audio:
The audio is minimal, we have some beeps and boops, and the robotic voice provides some feedback. 4/10
Fun:
I imagine this to be a bit of fun in the early days thanks to the visuals, but it’s ultimately a rather boring affair. 3/10
Final Rating: 23
Overall:
Tunnel Vision is a decent early attempt at a 3D maze game on the Amiga, written with the earliest BASIC interpreter available. It’s a bit of fun for a moment with pleasant graphics, but all in all, this feels like another historical curiosity rather than a game I’d want to play again.
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