Atic Atac

Atic Atac was released by Ultimate Play The Game in 1983 and it is one of those titles that raised the ZX Spectrum bar by a whole step. The Stamper brothers wrote it, and forty years on it is still obvious why Ultimate had the reputation it did: the game looks unlike anything around it, it runs smoothly, and its structure has a depth most arcade titles of the year did not even attempt.

You are locked inside an enormous haunted castle built from dozens of screens connected by doors, staircases, trapdoors and secret passages. The goal is to find the three pieces of the ACG key, assemble them and leave by the front door. At the start you pick one of three characters — knight, wizard or serf — and the choice is not cosmetic. Each has a different weapon, a different pace, and above all different shortcuts: a door that means nothing to the knight opens for the serf, and the wizard has his own network of hidden routes. In practice that is three different castles.

Health is handled elegantly. A roast chicken rotates in the corner of the screen and is eaten away on its own as time passes. Fail to find food and you starve. Food is scattered through the rooms, so foraging becomes a second layer of play alongside the key hunt.

The weaknesses are period-specific. There is no map and no save, so you have to draw the castle on paper or you will get lost. Enemies spawn irregularly and can catch you the moment you enter a room. And the pace is merciless — one bad corridor can cost you half an hour of progress.

The long-term user score in the ZXDB database sits around 8.4 out of ten across hundreds of votes, which is top-tier for a Spectrum title. Deservedly so: this is still a playable game, not just a museum piece.