Grell and Falla (Unreleased)
Grell and Falla in the Enchanted Garden. An unreleased (maybe for good reason) conversion of the Spectrum game, developed by Nick Taylor and due to be published by Codemasters destined to be part of a compilation in 1992.
| 
Screenshot |
Player's Review
The game originaly went unreleased but has been documented and downloadable at GTW64 https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/grell-and-falla/
"Defend the enchanted garden from the magic menace. Zap the bad guys and mash the mutants. Repel the invaders then make the garden grow once more.
Grell and Fella are the magic folk's equivalent to rentachap. They set themselves up after a chance meet in the job centre after being dismissed from their last jobs. Fella used to be the Fairy Queen's nectar masseur, while Grell was the chief armourer during the Dwarfish mining strikes. Today they've been hired to tidy the Sorcerer's new magic garden. At first glance it looked an easy job: A few hours hard digging by Grell, a quick sprinkle of fairy dust and bingo, job done. But life just ain't that easy!"
There are two ways through the game. Just kill everything and churn through fifty grinding levels killing all the creatures or go for points and enhance the garden by clearing the mud and creatures (leave one alive till your done) and plant tulips (red) and climbers (purple). Doing this for fifty levels is a real chore and hours of work but your are rewarded with spending money to buy weapons, energy to help your through the levels. The keys do seemingly nothing except cost a lot. The power up seems like a trap and haven't found a way to use it. Luckily you can sell stuff you don't need at the shop.
For the most part you can punch the creatures and collect dropped coins so that you can afford flowers and fairy dust. Some may be tricky to hit and require throwing a star at them. Falla the fairy can be used to drop fairy dust to clear the mud. Grell can then plant tulips on the surface and requires you to clear up most of the mud, one layer can be left. The wall climbers don't mind a moderate amount of mud. Creatures need to be cleared first else they may eat the plants or start digging up the mud.
The game is quite buggy compared to the spectrum original making the longplay challenging. Falla cant seem to earn any wages so must rely on coins dropped from creatures to pay for stars and magic dust. The shop keeper goes awol a lot causing problems when needing to buy items. The game bugs out around level 17 and 18 making the game incompletable. I tried several times but always results in the same where no creatures spawn so impossible to meet level requirement. The game has to be restarted as not even level skipping restores it. I continue on from a trained version level skipping to level 18 and continue from there. Same issue was encountered again at levels 37,38. For some reason I have to use the 'Flamer' to properly kill the creatures and then the following level doesnt spawn creatures.
In the longplay, I try to show the gameplay as intended but this gets tiresome so often just blast through the levels and then do more planting when I need more coins. By level 30 though, id had enough of the game and just want it done as quick as I can. The game falls apart again round level 48 and no way out of level 50 so I just level skip, which loops back to level 1 without any fanfare. Very unrewarding game for the effort expected.
Overall, I cant enjoy this game. At fifty levels, it is just too long when playing properly and should have been more conservative at maybe 10 or 16 levels similar to steg the slug. The bugs in this unreleased game are a deal breaker and perhaps one reason why the game wasn't published. One nasty bug apart from the game falling apart after many levels is the game can outright crash if a creature starts easting the plants. The game runs much faster than the Spectrum game but that's just makes the prospect of longplaying that one even more unpalatable although I don't expect it to have any game breaking issues.
"Defend the enchanted garden from the magic menace. Zap the bad guys and mash the mutants. Repel the invaders then make the garden grow once more.
Grell and Fella are the magic folk's equivalent to rentachap. They set themselves up after a chance meet in the job centre after being dismissed from their last jobs. Fella used to be the Fairy Queen's nectar masseur, while Grell was the chief armourer during the Dwarfish mining strikes. Today they've been hired to tidy the Sorcerer's new magic garden. At first glance it looked an easy job: A few hours hard digging by Grell, a quick sprinkle of fairy dust and bingo, job done. But life just ain't that easy!"
There are two ways through the game. Just kill everything and churn through fifty grinding levels killing all the creatures or go for points and enhance the garden by clearing the mud and creatures (leave one alive till your done) and plant tulips (red) and climbers (purple). Doing this for fifty levels is a real chore and hours of work but your are rewarded with spending money to buy weapons, energy to help your through the levels. The keys do seemingly nothing except cost a lot. The power up seems like a trap and haven't found a way to use it. Luckily you can sell stuff you don't need at the shop.
For the most part you can punch the creatures and collect dropped coins so that you can afford flowers and fairy dust. Some may be tricky to hit and require throwing a star at them. Falla the fairy can be used to drop fairy dust to clear the mud. Grell can then plant tulips on the surface and requires you to clear up most of the mud, one layer can be left. The wall climbers don't mind a moderate amount of mud. Creatures need to be cleared first else they may eat the plants or start digging up the mud.
The game is quite buggy compared to the spectrum original making the longplay challenging. Falla cant seem to earn any wages so must rely on coins dropped from creatures to pay for stars and magic dust. The shop keeper goes awol a lot causing problems when needing to buy items. The game bugs out around level 17 and 18 making the game incompletable. I tried several times but always results in the same where no creatures spawn so impossible to meet level requirement. The game has to be restarted as not even level skipping restores it. I continue on from a trained version level skipping to level 18 and continue from there. Same issue was encountered again at levels 37,38. For some reason I have to use the 'Flamer' to properly kill the creatures and then the following level doesnt spawn creatures.
In the longplay, I try to show the gameplay as intended but this gets tiresome so often just blast through the levels and then do more planting when I need more coins. By level 30 though, id had enough of the game and just want it done as quick as I can. The game falls apart again round level 48 and no way out of level 50 so I just level skip, which loops back to level 1 without any fanfare. Very unrewarding game for the effort expected.
Overall, I cant enjoy this game. At fifty levels, it is just too long when playing properly and should have been more conservative at maybe 10 or 16 levels similar to steg the slug. The bugs in this unreleased game are a deal breaker and perhaps one reason why the game wasn't published. One nasty bug apart from the game falling apart after many levels is the game can outright crash if a creature starts easting the plants. The game runs much faster than the Spectrum game but that's just makes the prospect of longplaying that one even more unpalatable although I don't expect it to have any game breaking issues.
No Comments have been Posted.