Bombuzal

Bombuzal is a cute puzzler released by Image Works in 1988 for the Amiga, Commodore 64, Atari ST. Later it was ported to MS-DOS, SNES, and other platforms. The Amiga version was distributed as a cover disk of the Amiga Power magazine.

The game, that in the US was know with the title "Ka-Blooey", was designed by Antony Crowther (Captive, Knightmare) and David Perry (Disney's Aladdin). The goal is to clean all the 130 levels from the bombs by exploding them. To activate the bombs, our friend Bombuzal must walk on them and use the fire button of the joystick. The problem is, as soon as he moves to go away, the bombs detonate. Sounds dangerous, right? As a matter of fact, only the smallest can be activated safely. The other ones must be eliminated, using chain reactions. In some cases, the chain reaction must be created with some well-plotted movements. This is possible because some of the bombs, the ones placed on rails, can be relocated. To make things more complex, there are also "dissolved" tiles, that disappear once you walk on them (so you can use them only once), "iced" tiles, where you cannot stop, and so on.

It seems easy, but of course, it's not. We are talking about a classic puzzler whose basic rules are simple but require imagination and problem-solving skills. As long as you go ahead, the game becomes more and more addictive. If this was not enough, many legendary game designers contributed to Bombuzal by designing their own levels: Jon Ritman (Head Over Heels), Andrew Braybrook (Uridium), Geoff Crammond (Stunt Car Racer), Jeff Minter (Attack of the Mutant Camels), Dave Korn (Sensible Soccer).

Not bad, right? With this list of names, do you really need to know more?

Just go and play. You won't regret it!