We are still waiting on a suitable Amiga AGA emulator with robust recording features before tackling such games.Beambender
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Player's Review
After 5 hours with Deflektor, this game was a breath of fresh air in comparison. I was tired of hearing the same one tune over and over again, and it wasn't hard solve each level, but it was frustrating as those things flying around kept changing my stuff.
Beambender is not a Deflektor clone, but it has similarities and is a much better puzzle game than Deflektor and wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Deflektor, as the idea for the game came from it.
Beambender has many different tunes (a total of 40 minutes, and you can choose which one to listen to every 5 levels), level passwords, better graphics, runs smoother, and even has a pause button (bottom left corner). If I would have one complaint, it would be to rather (or also) have the pause function on a key on the keyboard, as moving the mouse down to the left corner every time after each move so you could plan your next move got boring and annoying really quick. Luckily I emulated this game, so I could use space to pause/resume emulation. This way I could have one hand on the keyboard and the other on the mouse. This way also meant I didn't have to include or edit out all the time I spent thinking while it was paused, as pausing the emulation also pauses the recording. Normally I don't think the pause button was meant to be used after each move, but that's how I used it. I most of the time even paused after I picked up a piece to see if I needed it somewhere, hence why it was so annoying (for me anyway) to move the mouse down there every time.
I had help from one of the devs of the game - "Bernhard Aichinger" - graphician/musician/misc, according to Hall of Light. His brother did the coding. I was provided with a partial walkthrough, which I took help from every now and then, mainly in the beginning. Before playing I had a quick look through the manual and forgot when started playing that I could double click on cannons and/or exists to stop cannons from shooting lasers three times, as a third time could destroy stuff, which made me fail many times. I learned/noticed it much later tho, so started playing better
I kinda took my time on the first few levels, showing the viewers a bit of how the game works. Later on I just go for the correct build straight-up, as it's so easy to fail things if I goof around too much, thus taking much longer to complete each level.
Read the manual (http://hol.abime.net/3754/manual) if you want to know more about the game and how the lasers/etc work.
Now when Deflektor and Beambender are done, there's a third similar game left to do: "Mindbender", also known as "Deflektor 2", which I normally would have longplayed after Deflektor, but as Beambender was a request, I did that first.
Developer comment:
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Beambender was our first and – unfortunately – our last game for the Amiga. 1997, when it was released, the Amiga was already far beyond its best times. It was a typically "some dudes come together to make a game, and they have no plan whatsoever" project. We started with the design of the playfield and after quite some time we had a few mockups, with all the elements, that should be included in the game. Most of the level design was made with little paper-squares and a sheet of paper with a grid on it. Of course we made more than 80 levels, but we excluded a lot of ideas and variations of levels, otherwise it would be too much of the same. The music was also a challenge. We did not want to have some bugging noise, but also no background, that does not seem to be much. So we ended up with a electro-funk-hiphop-bigbeat-thing. Tracks from Amiga and PC are different. I hope you enjoy.
You can download the Amiga or the PC version and the PC-Soundtrack as mp3: https://amiga-arena.jimdo.com/beambender/
And you can find a detailed Interview (in German) about Beambender on Amiga Arena if you are interested: https://amiga-arena.jimdo.com/bernhard-aichinger/
Last but not least thanks to Olaf, Alexander and Miriam for providing the game on Amiga Arena, and of course Ironclaw for the great playthrough and all your effort.
Kudos!
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Beambender is not a Deflektor clone, but it has similarities and is a much better puzzle game than Deflektor and wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Deflektor, as the idea for the game came from it.
Beambender has many different tunes (a total of 40 minutes, and you can choose which one to listen to every 5 levels), level passwords, better graphics, runs smoother, and even has a pause button (bottom left corner). If I would have one complaint, it would be to rather (or also) have the pause function on a key on the keyboard, as moving the mouse down to the left corner every time after each move so you could plan your next move got boring and annoying really quick. Luckily I emulated this game, so I could use space to pause/resume emulation. This way I could have one hand on the keyboard and the other on the mouse. This way also meant I didn't have to include or edit out all the time I spent thinking while it was paused, as pausing the emulation also pauses the recording. Normally I don't think the pause button was meant to be used after each move, but that's how I used it. I most of the time even paused after I picked up a piece to see if I needed it somewhere, hence why it was so annoying (for me anyway) to move the mouse down there every time.
I had help from one of the devs of the game - "Bernhard Aichinger" - graphician/musician/misc, according to Hall of Light. His brother did the coding. I was provided with a partial walkthrough, which I took help from every now and then, mainly in the beginning. Before playing I had a quick look through the manual and forgot when started playing that I could double click on cannons and/or exists to stop cannons from shooting lasers three times, as a third time could destroy stuff, which made me fail many times. I learned/noticed it much later tho, so started playing better
I kinda took my time on the first few levels, showing the viewers a bit of how the game works. Later on I just go for the correct build straight-up, as it's so easy to fail things if I goof around too much, thus taking much longer to complete each level.
Read the manual (http://hol.abime.net/3754/manual) if you want to know more about the game and how the lasers/etc work.
Now when Deflektor and Beambender are done, there's a third similar game left to do: "Mindbender", also known as "Deflektor 2", which I normally would have longplayed after Deflektor, but as Beambender was a request, I did that first.
Developer comment:
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Beambender was our first and – unfortunately – our last game for the Amiga. 1997, when it was released, the Amiga was already far beyond its best times. It was a typically "some dudes come together to make a game, and they have no plan whatsoever" project. We started with the design of the playfield and after quite some time we had a few mockups, with all the elements, that should be included in the game. Most of the level design was made with little paper-squares and a sheet of paper with a grid on it. Of course we made more than 80 levels, but we excluded a lot of ideas and variations of levels, otherwise it would be too much of the same. The music was also a challenge. We did not want to have some bugging noise, but also no background, that does not seem to be much. So we ended up with a electro-funk-hiphop-bigbeat-thing. Tracks from Amiga and PC are different. I hope you enjoy.
You can download the Amiga or the PC version and the PC-Soundtrack as mp3: https://amiga-arena.jimdo.com/beambender/
And you can find a detailed Interview (in German) about Beambender on Amiga Arena if you are interested: https://amiga-arena.jimdo.com/bernhard-aichinger/
Last but not least thanks to Olaf, Alexander and Miriam for providing the game on Amiga Arena, and of course Ironclaw for the great playthrough and all your effort.
Kudos!
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