A part of its lovingly curated Gold Grasp Sequence, Digital Eclipse’s exploration of Llamasoft is a complete and interesting bundle. Primarily an interactive museum, Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story presents documentary snippets, archival supplies, and, most significantly, the video games.
A really singular voice, Minter has been cranking out psychedelic bullet hells and light-weight synthesisers because the start of console gaming. The legacy of his chaotic, but rhythmic audio-visual model will be seen all through indie growth even to today.
The compendium divides Jeff’s journey into 4 eras, the occasions of that are unfold throughout aesthetically pleasing and easy-to-navigate timelines. Every level on a timeline incorporates a recreation, documentary phase, pristine high-res photograph, or 3D mannequin to peruse. There are handwritten notebooks providing a glimpse at Minter’s imaginative and prescient of recreation design and most supplies are accompanied by a quote from Yak himself. This stuff supply intriguing perception into the struggles of indie recreation growth in these tumultuous early days, whereas nonetheless protecting the highlight firmly on Jeff’s place in all of it.
As for the video games themselves, they start with vibrant spins on current properties (Defenda, Centipede) and shortly transition to bonkers explosions of color and sound. Mechanically, Llamasoft at all times tried to construct on current developments, however aesthetically, these video games are pure Jeff. The sunshine synthesisers (which energy the menu backdrops) are nonetheless able to consuming hours of time, whereas the curios (something with ‘Camel’ within the title, actually) may have you pissed off and intoxicated in equal measure.
It’s unlucky that Llamasoft’s newer titles usually are not included, apart from a superb Gridrunner replace. Fortunately, we do get a crisp model of Jeff’s enduring masterpiece, Tempest 2000.
Very similar to final yr’s The Making of Karateka, Digital Eclipse’s format units a excessive customary for retro collections going ahead. It is made the story of those video games accessible to all audiences. As a portrait of Jeff, it’s a heartwarming and academic depiction of a character each gamer ought to find out about.