THE SPECTRUM GAMES DATABASE

MAZIACS

PUBLISHER
DK'Tronics

AUTHOR
Don Priestley

YEAR
1982/3?

CATEGORY
Maze

DESCRIPTION
Explore a randomly generated maze looking for gold and fighting
nasties!

CONTROLS
Redefinable keys, Kempston Joystick

INSTRUCTIONS
These instructions are taken from the game itself.

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<PICTURE OF YOU>
This is YOU, the HERO of this ADVENTURE.
To SUCCEED you will need to

Run through a complex MAZE
Collect of box of TREASURE
and then RETURN

EASY?

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<PICTURE OF A SECTION OF MAZE>
The MAZE is VERY BIG (64 times this section)
& has NO EDGES!

A whole NEW MAZE is generated for each adventure
(This takes time)

The DISTANCE to the TREASURE varies but is never short!

Randomly placed in the maze are SWORDS, PRISONERS and BOWLS
of FOOD, all to HELP you in your search

There are also many MAZIACS
They are slightly LESS helpful

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PRISONERS can show you the ROUTE to the TREASURE or,
if you already have it, the way back to the START

The route shown only lasts for so many "moves" or for
so much time

You then need to find ANOTHER prisoner

The ROUTE is shown in YELLOW

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Having a sword will enable you to kill a MAZIAC, but after
a fight you will need ANOTHER

Fighting MAZIACS without a SWORD takes LONGER and you will
PROBABLY be KILLED

IF you are SITTING down, any attacking MAZIAC will ALWAYS
send you to YOUR MAKER

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MAZIACS are the GUARDIANS of the TREASURE

Although they know where you are they're no intelligent
enough to find any but the most direct route to get at you

Sometimes their behaviour is UNPREDICTABLE

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The MAIN screen will show you only a FIFTIETH of the MAZE

VIEW will show about a TWELFTH

This helps locate SWORDS etc BUT although MAZIACS can still
move YOU CAN'T !

(Any key restores MAIN screen)

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ENERGY & FOOD

Running through the MAZE and fighting MAZIACS uses ENERGY

EATING FOOD will INCREASE your ENERGY
(First find the food !)

If your ENERGY runs out then the adventure ENDS in a quick
death by STARVATION

Your ENERGY METER will be to the right of the screen

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The TREASURE will be at least 200 MOVES from the start

You can't carry the Treasure AND a Sword

You CAN swap Sword and Treasure at any time

Killing rather than avoiding MAZIACS on the way to the
TREASURE will help (a bit !)

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DEATH or GLORY

If SUCCESSFUL your SCORE will be the MINIMUM number of Moves
needed compared with the ACTUAL moves you made as a PERCENTAGE
PLUS 0 10 20 or 30 for the level of DIFFICULTY chosen

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DIFFICULTY LEVELS

Use MENU & "D" to CHOOSE FROM

1 EASY

2 Lose ENERGY during VIEW

3 As 2 but also lose ROUTE during VIEW
Route duration is TIMED

4 As 3 but Prisoners can only be used ONCE


IN ADDITION the more difficult Levels have LESS Swords,
Food and Prisoners but the SAME number of MAZIACS

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All these instructions are easily accessed (with pictures) from
the game itself!


INLAY CARD TEXT
I don't have this, but I imagine it would be much the same as the
instructions I have included above.

CHEATS


SEQUELS/PREQUELS
Rumour has it that Maziacs is based upon (i.e. much the same game
as) Mazogs on the ZX81.

SCORES RECEIVED
Unknown. Possibly released before Speccy mags came about.

URL
Maziacs is available from a number of sites, this is just one of
them :
ftp://ftp.dcc.uchile.cl/pub/OS/sinclair/snapshots/m/maziacs.zip


GENERAL FACTS
Some games of Maziacs are much harder than others, I imagine this
is because of the randomly generated maze.

Don Priestley went on to write a whole heap of top games for a
number of companies including Piranha and Mastertronic. These
include Popeye, Trapdoor, Through the Trapdoor, Benny Hill's
Madcap Chase, Minder, and Gregory Loses His Clock. He became
famous for producing Speccy titles with huge colourful sprites!
Maziacs, as you will see, isn't one of these titles.

NOTES
Maziacs is simple and fun (and very frustrating at times)! Try
and complete it without using the map or without using any
swords!