Mama Llama

"An unusual arcade game combining fast action and detailed graphics with strong strategic elements. You control a family of three llamas and a telepathically-controlled combat droid. The battle action is unique - no bullets - required to complete the game. The whole is accompanied by a superb sound track arranged by James Lisney."

Another one of those games with too many ideas and probably not comping together as well as intended. It gets a lot of mixed reactions mostly as it is not initially intuitive to play even with the manual at hand. Even for this longplay, although I think I have the general idea, i don't have the strategy down for getting the most out of the level grid.

You take control of the llamas and can wall them left and right as well as jump. The three llamas represent number of lives. If one is killed the level ends but you can go back in and continue that stage if wanted with number of enemies being where you left it. Enemies will appear on screen and you are to destroy them with the droid which is flying all over the screen and is inertia bases only adding to the challenge. All the while the enemies will be attack the llamas bleeding you of valuable energy. When you have a free moment you can lay down and rejuvenate your energy. At the end of a stage a teleport is available to leave the level. This can also be called any time if the level suddenly gets too aggressive but you only have a handful of get outs for the whole game.

The opening map screen shows a grid of 100 levels(waves). Each symbol is a planet and the colour indicates how populated it is. The indicator on the right shows blue as low population and red the highest. The game is constantly progressing so you are against the clock. Each time you see the border flash, something has changed. Some strategy is required here and I don't fully understand it. you can move levels around the grid but must note an empty levels will count as an error and too many will end the game right there. You can place anti-genesis devices on any tile you move into the flashing square and that will stop more enemies populating the level. An can also set a retro-genesis device which is the more useful of the two which will start attacking enemies while you play other levels leaving just one enemy to zap if left long enough. If a level gets overpopulated it is lost. The game ends when all waves are beaten, one way or the other.

At the start of the game, you can set a difficulty level and adjust its parameters. For this longplay, I set the game to the easiest possible setup in order to maximise number of levels shown. Each parameter can be set between 1 and 9 with 1 being hardest and 9 easiest. at the end of the game I show a quick run of the hardest difficulty and well, i don't last long.

Overall, its not the worst game ever but I cant imagine it being much fun on any other setting than easy. Mastering control of the droid is quite the handicap already without having to worry about avoiding enemies and game timers. The music though ... why wasn't their a disable key, or maybe it had driven me so mad It was blocking me from finding it. I guess the game was built for score chasers. If left on default difficulty settings a game might only last ten to fifteen minutes.