Exile

"Returning from yet another special mission, your thoughts are of a quiet life back on Planet Earth. Suddenly, your ship picks up a mayday signal from the nearby planet of Phoebus. It appears that a deranged genetic engineer known as Triax was exiled to Phoebus many decades ago, and now he has somehow built up a new lab, kidnapped a colonization party and begun his evil experiments again. You decide to land on Phoebus, rescue the surviving crew, and thwart Triax's mutant monsters.
EXILE is the first of a new breed of true arcade adventure games, a virtual world with a true simulation of Newtonian mechanics gravity, inertia, momentum and buoyancy - all give a convincing representation of free motion as you explore a vast labyrinth of underground tunnels and caves in your mission to rescue the two kidnapped spacemen...
EXILE features dozens of intelligent creatures to fight against or co-operate with, countless puzzles to solve, pass-keys to CoNect, teleports to control, weapons to master and objects to manipulate. It will probably take you many months to complete the entire mission - even the game's creators take over SIX HOURS to finish their own game! Described by Gary Penn in Amiga Power as "The future of Arcade Adventures", EXILE has received many accolades..."

Exile was notorious for its copy and in game protection and it took a long while for a perfect crack to appear. The game is played with the Galahad crack with distribution permitted by the developer at the time it was released. After completing the game twice I am going through this version without a guide and depending on my own memory of my previous playthroughs to get me through. Again this is by no means an optimal run and the solutions may be different than intended. That's the magic of the game with some things possible to get through in multiple ways.

The game is an exploration adventure with the end goal of recovering the Destinator device to return home. Extra points are earned for rescuing the colonists, the robot and fluffy. The map is vast and various puzzles will need to be solved to progress. Mainly finding keys and switches to open doors but there are a couple of other useful items and weapons to find. There is nothing to guide you telling you where to go or what to find next. There is also nothing to tell you that you have messed up, loosing an item or destroying a pathway. For this reason the game has a built in ram/disk save system that should be used regularly with up to twelve save slots. There is also a transporter system where you can remember your position up to five times and you backtrack through them by using the transporter at any time other than when holding objects. You cant die in the game but when you energy is critically low you will be transported back to your most recent recall point.

The physics in the game can make it interesting or aggravating. You can aim and throw objects as well as boost to give them momentum. You also get knocked around all over the place when coming under attack. Later in the game when you need crystals you need to be quick to pick up and store them before they explode which can be difficult if you want to avoid the influence of the mushrooms. There can be multiple ways to tackle some obstacles and its always a good idea to save before trying something. Extensive save states were used to keep up the pace in this video but under normal play nothing goes right the first time you try something, sometimes not even after ten times. There can be lots of trial and error to get through but save states have been used extensively here to keep up the pace of the video with not too much waiting around for things to happen.

Destroying enemies usually causes them to drop a powerpack which adds to your jetpack power when collected. They explode if not collected. Some areas in the map will drop many of them and you can redistribute power that jetpack power to any of your weapons or suit for ammo and protection. Later in the game you can feed crystals to chatter who can be told to drop powerpacks. Quite handy to have around. You will also get to pickup fluffy who is good at getting into tight spaces bringing you any items within.

Overall this is probably the best version of the game. It looks and plays like the C64 game but with a simplified map to make it easier to remember and traverse as well as a few puzzle changes, especially the final area. There is a much more detailed Amiga 1200/CD32 version with some changes most notable near the final area being able to shoot through the floor to the upper switch but it is harder to play overall with it's zoomed in look and I don't think it would play to well without a keyboard.

A year after release a Discovery disk was released which includes twelve save game files with hints at various points in the game so if you get stuck there should be a save you can start from to get going again. There is a kind of checkpoint system shown as large transporters with blue mist but they don't activate copy protection in this version. These are where the discovery saves mostly are. I've added some time stamps listing some important collectables.


00:00:00 Title Music
00:03:40 Game Start / Pistol / Booster / Flask / Torch / Get RCD
00:08:55 Get Green Key / ICER / RED Key
00:11:26 Activate Transporters / Raft / Black Key
00:17:37 Fluffy and Blue Key
00:23:12 Rock Bottom / Red Key / Treasure
00:29:32 Fluffy / Whistle 2 / Damage protection Suit / Treasure
00:37:50 Treasure x2 / Radiation protection Pill
00:53:37 Chromium Crystals / Radioactive Rocks
00:52:56 Happy Fish / Radioactive Rock
01:00:35 Triax Lair / Get Chatter / Whistle 1
01:07:10 Invisible Birds / Plasma Gun
01:11:02 Fireproof Device
01:14:28 PX312 Blaster / Snail / Mushroom Immunity Device
01:22:52 Load up chatter with crystals / Green Key
01:27:06 Get Cannon Activator
01:29:57 Get Cannon / Save Fluffy / Save Chatter
01:36:44 Move Desk and Cannon
01:42:47 Save Colonists / retrieve Destinator / Win Game