Game 16: GravAttack (1987)

That title screen is a bit psychedelic, isn't it? The game stats at the bottom are actually a result of me playing this on an emulated PAL Amiga. I only learned afterward the game only works glitch-free on NTSC Amigas.

United States
Released 1987 as Shareware
Genre: Arcade
Developer: Scott Hjalmer Peterson
Date Started: 06 Jan 2025
Date Ended: 06 Jan 2025
Total Hours: 1
Difficulty: 5/5
Final Rating: 21

Today, I’ll give GravAttack a short review. This is a gravity-based action game that is very obviously inspired by classic arcade games like Gravitar and Thrust. You control a ship that can rotate and thrust in the direction it is facing, and you must navigate through a series of increasingly difficult levels while avoiding obstacles, keeping an eye on your declining fuel, and collecting items, in the case of GravAttack, these are, rather weirdly, small keys hovering over spots around the level, often very close to the deadly walls or other hazards. In terms of Programming: it seems a decent effort, though I noticed some slow down if too much stuff is happening on screen at once; it gets a 4/10 here. The Controls are a bit tricky to get used to as you have to use the x and y keys for rotating and the . and / keys for thrusting and Shooting, and Space for the shield, instead of just using the joystick. But I get that was an effort to make this similar to the controls of the classic arcade machines. It gets a bit easier once you get used to it. On a funny side node, you bounce off the sky if you try to move off-screen, which needs a bit of getting used to. Overall it gets a 4/10. GravAttack has a slight psychedelic Vibe to it, which is more than nothing, 2/10. Graphics are decent and almost a bit too colorful at times (leading to the psychedelic vibe), 4/10. There is no Story to speak of, so it gets a 0/10. In terms of Audio there is only basic stuff going on: Your typical explosion and shot samples, as well as a bouncing sound for the keys or hitting the upper screen limit, which gives the game a somewhat comic feel: 2/10. I had a bit of Fun with GravAttack, but I’m just too bad at it to get very far. I think this was a nice challenge back when there wasn’t that much else around: 5/10.

Final Rating: 21

Overall:
GravAttack feels like a decent attempt at recreating a gravity-based arcade game. It has its charms, like a certain psychedelic vibe, but also a few flaws like the somewhat clunky controls, and, well, it’s really hard.

Scott Peterson, who wrote GravAttack in 1987 “instead of getting a summer job”, moved on to work on the commercial Dr. Plummet's House of Flux which looks like a more polished version of GravAttack released by MicroIllusions, with a different (and even more psychedelic) art style apart from the actual game. According to an archived Usenet post from 1990, this didn’t work out too well, leaving the game being “unplayable”. Tragically, also according to the same post, Scott Peterson took his own life in 1988.

Game 15: Kingdom at War (1987)

The intro screen screen presents the game’s backstory. Apparently, mentioning Absoft (the developer of AC/BASIC) at the bottom right on the title screen led to some confusion.

United States
Released 1987 as Freeware Genre: Turn-based strategy
Developer: Michael J. Howe
Date Started: 29 June 2025
Date Ended: 01 July 2025
Total Hours: 2
Difficulty: 4/5
Final Rating: 28

The next game I’m digging out is called Kingdom at War and is a turn-based strategy game by Michael J. Howe. Set in a medieval world, after the death of the king you control one of 5 factions, and have to move your units around the map, engage in battles, and recruit new units, all in a turn-based manner.

The game map with the different factions and their territories. The “SELECT FROM MENU” message at the bottom hints at the game being overly mouse-driven.

The game is played on a map that is divided into territories, and your goal is to either conquer 19 territories as well 3 of the enemies home castles or to remove all other 4 players from the game. Most available actions on the main map are executed via a central hero-type of unit that has a specific number of action points (or Leader Points as they are called in-game) and that you can assign your army units to move them around. Each turn consists of two stages: In the first stage, you can move your units, while battles are fought in the second if you moved your leader into enemy territory or the enemy moved into yours. If you are fighting against a human player, battles are fought in a separate tactic screen which allows you to move your units separately, with different terrain types affecting combats. Battles involving an AI opponent use quick battles. Each round you also get income points for each territory you control, which you can use to recruit new units.

The “Territory Battle Screen” showing the player’s units and the enemy’s units. I sense a bit of a Chess influence here.

Kingdom at War is very hard, I played a few games and each time I was quickly overrun by the computer-controlled foes. If I’d had put more time into it, I’m sure I could have figured out some strategies to survive longer or even topple one or a few of them. As things turned out though, my leading unit was removed from the game after a few turns and had to watch the remaining players duke it out, which they happily do without you having to click anything until the next turn starts.

Let’s see how it fares in my rating system:

Programming:
Kingdom at War feels very solid for an early non-commercial Amiga game of this type. I encountered no bugs or glitches, though it felt a bit slow at times. The game also allows saving and loading on the next start which is not a common feature in early Amiga games, especially not in non-commercial releases.

Score: 7/10

Controls:
The game is completely mouse-driven, which, as so often, turns out to be a mixed bag. In this case, you’re forced to use the right click game menu to initiate all game actions like moving your main character. You do the latter by simply clicking at the target field, so it wasn’t some kind of technical limitation but apparently a design choice. To be honest, it’s a bit hard to understand why the author stuffed some of these into the menu while it would have been so much more intuitive to just click on the unit to move it.

This roundabout way of doing things is also present on the “Territory Battle Screen”, which opens if after moving a unit into enemy territory. Here, you can click on the unit to move as you would expect, but instead of just pointing to the target field and letting the game figure out the path, you have to select the “MOVE UNIT” button on the right side, which opens a little control panel which allows you to move your unit around, a bit like a joystick. And no, you can’t just use the cursor keys, either.

Score: 3/10

Vibe:
Kingdom at War has an interesting vibe going for an early turn-based strategy game on the Amiga, mainly thanks to the soundtrack, which I’ll talk about in the audio section.

Score: 4/10

Graphics:
I actually like the minimalist graphics style quite a bit. It surely wins no awards, but it doesn’t look amateurish either, it’s functional, and each unit type it clearly distinguishable without too much visual noise, based on a simple color palette of green, brown, and gray.

Score: 5/10

Story:
Kingdom at War has a very simple story setup about a kingdom in turmoil and the struggle for power among its factions. Apart from that, there is not much of a story to speak of, the game is mainly about mechanics.

Score: 1/10

Audio:
The soundtrack is interesting. While the start-up screen is underlaid with a very simple, slightly mournful 2-note brass tune, the game proper is primarily underscored by a short tribal drum loop, which heighten in intensity when you enter a battle. Again, very simplistic but effective, and it fits the game’s theme well. Alas, the actual battle sound sample which is overlaying this, is played in every round for quick battles, and thus is rather annoying. Other than that, there are no sound effects in the game.

Score: 4/10

Fun:
I had a bit of fun with Kingdom at War, but the enemies were just too tough to get much out of it. Playing this with a few friends certainly would have been fun back then, not least because of the tactic battle screen only available for human players (even if it did look like a lot of micromanagement). Score: 4/10.

Final Rating: 28

Overall:
Another solid early Amiga title and a bit of a surprise, as I wasn’t expecting a well-polished non-commercial turn-based strategy game from 1987. This is for now the highest rated game on this blog next to Amoeba Invaders, and it’s well deserved this time around.

I wish I had more knowledge about early games of that genre (medieval/fantasy-themed turn-based strategy games involving leader units and conquering territories). The closest early candidate this game reminds me of is Warlords (which I’ve never actually played myself, admittedly), but this came out in 1989. So what might have been the inspiration for Kingdom at War? It certainly doesn’t feel like a n original concept, it’s too well thought out for that. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any information about the game’s development or its inspirations, the developer is never mentioned anywhere else, and the game’s manual isn’t shedding any light on that either. Maybe I’ll come across some information in the future of my blog, we’ll see.

Well, and I guess I actually have the chance to contribute something to early Amiga software history with this blog, in this case correcting some credit information: Kingdom at War is credited to Absoft in the TOSEC collection, as at is on several game sites, but this seems to be incorrect. Absoft was a company that, among several other things, developed the AC/BASIC programming language for the Amiga which was a compiled version of the BASIC language. As to my knowledge, they never developed or published any games, it rather seems this was just a case of confusion, as the mention of Absoft on the title screen of Kingdom at War simply relates to AC/BASIC. Maybe it was a legal requirement to mention the programming language used for the game, or the author just wanted to give credit where credit is due.