Gameplay:

You start the game as a small, octagonal green creature, with yellow legs and eyes and no other features, called Pango. You are trapped in a maze filled with little pink blocks, three of which contain yellow diamonds (those are important; we’ll come back to those later). You are being chased by floating hexagonal yellow creatures, with blank staring eyes, which poison you at their very touch. Naturally you are terrified, but you know that this isn’t some horrible fevered dream inspired by last night’s panfried camembert wedges, largely because of the music. The twisted evil funfair morgue-music, made by deranged killer clowns and designed to drive you mad, or at least make your brain matter dribble out your ears.

Apart from the music (turn it on only if you’re trying to protect yourself from a murderous alien invasion), the game is hugely enjoyable as both a puzzle and an arcade set up. It’s reminiscent of Boulder Dash, except you’re kicking blocks around in order to squish your evil faceless yellow foes, as opposed to, eg, dropping rocks on them. And the game speeds up on each level in classic penny arcade style (got to kill you off quick, see? Increases the overall number of pennies). 

But there are ways to make thousands of points very quickly: See those yellow-diamond blocks I mentioned earlier? If you kick them together, into a straight line in either direction, you immediately get a bonus which stuns all the critters currently in the level, while gracing your score with 10,000 points! But be quick! You only have 60 seconds to complete the level. Once you enter the red-zone on the time line, your adversaries speed up and start eating through the walls to get at you. 

As if you weren’t traumatised enough.

Game tips and tricks:

Use the direction keys – o, k, l, and ; – as though they were the cursor keypad, and the space button to kick. Kicking the wall will automatically stun anything next to it, i.e. those nasty, blank-faced, yellow serial killers who are out to get you for no apparent reason. Just pick them up to add more points to your score. Focus on getting the bonus instead of completing the level straight away, simply because the time bonus is so much lower than the special bonus. When all else fails, just keep kicking the wall in order to protect yourself when the game’s sped right up and you’re surrounded.

DOSbox settings:

This game works best when the cycles are between 200 and 300.