Pushover

Pushover is a platform puzzle game developed by Red Rat Software for the Amiga. It’s similar to games such as Lemmings in the fact that the game is simple on the surface yet when you delve deeper you find some pretty tough gameplay that can become pretty darn vexing. You take the helm of an ant called Colin Curly, who at the time was the mascot for Quavers crisps, advertising anyone? In fact I’d go as far to say that this was one of the most blatant uses of in-game advertising throughout the entire history of video games; with crisp packets placed conveniently around the various stages and even being offered as bonuses at certain points.

The game is centered on dominoes that are scattered around various platforms, the aim is to knock every single last one down and reach the exit before the time runs out. Sound simple? It isn’t. You’re not allowed to break a single domino along the way and there are many ways that can happen, if that wasn’t enough there are a total of ten different dominoes; each one reacting differently once hit.

There are your basic yellow ones that simply topple over; these are most likely to be found in the earlier levels. Then you have ones that bridge platforms to walk across; these are vital when the exit is separated by gaps. Then there’s exploding ones, vanishing ones, blocking ones and an assortment of others with equally random abilities. It starts to get really tough when you’re faced with a handful of them all at once, especially when there’s only one way to complete the puzzle and you’ve exhausted almost every possible combination. Then just to add to the challenge you must knock over the ‘trigger’ domino last, this opens the exit door and leads the way to another level, one that’s usually tougher than the last.

The graphics were more than competent for it’s time, each theme bringing the bland colours of the dominoes to life with pretty backdrops and varying platforms.

All-in-all Pushover makes for a simple yet compelling platform puzzler that will leave you scratching your head time and time again, if that’s not your thing then you won’t find much value here, but if it is then there are 100 utterly perplexing levels for you to play through.

Craig Bryan, NoobFeed