The Speccies is a remake of “The Brainies” (European title: “Tiny Skweeks“) 
which was originally made for the DOS, Amiga, Atari ST, Mac, Amstrad CPC 
and SNES platforms, but was never released on the ZX Spectrum. Until now. 
The change of platform also means a change of title, and with its new 
name it suits the ZX Spectrum even better.

You play as The Speccies – a species of small rotund creatures – that has to 
work together in groups of up to 8 – to solve puzzles that ultimately will 
see them sitting on their respective ‘home-pads’ (a blue Speccie will have 
to find its way to a blue home-pad, etc. for differently colored Speccies). 
They will have to deal with several items on the levels, some that will help 
(like extra time) and some that will make things more difficult (like arrows 
that will force them to change direction, or bombs that will kill them…unless 
you have a ‘Joker’). Other tiles in the playing area can be occupied by 
teleporters or ‘bouncers’ that will send you back in the direction you came 
from. In other words – lots of potential for a brain-workout.

This game also supports ULAPlus mode. This is a proposed hardware standard 
that has been decided on and will eventually work on a real Spectrum, 
but until then is supported by various emulators. I prefer using ZXSpin. 
The whole idea of this is that – among other things – it allows the 
possibility of a larger palette – which is used to great effect here 
to make the game easier to play for people that suffer from color 
blindness. See an example of the new palette below. It may not be as 
pleasing to look at as the ‘normal’ version, but people with normal 
eyesight are not the targetgroup for this mode. But the orange does 
look quite pleasing, doesn’t it. ;)


Gameplay description:
You must guide the Speccies to their respective home-pads of the same color 
as themselves. The mechanics of the game is basically that you can only 
set the direction of movement, after which the Speccie will roll and react 
automatically to things it passes over, and only stops once it reaches 
something that blocks it. On later levels you will encounter locks that 
will disappear if a Speccie of the same color passes over – but acts as 
a solid stopblock for everyone else, or colored switches that will activate 
previously inactive home-pads. There’s also teleporters that lets you jump 
from place to place and bombs that will kill Speccies of the same color 
(unless you have a joker), but let everyone else through unharmed.

…and it’s all done against a ticking clock, naturally. ;) 


Controls:
QAOP and SPACE to control the game.

All keys can be redefined.


Copyright:
This remake was programmed by Soren Borgquist – AKA. Sokurah, 2013.
Spectrum graphics designed by Craig Stevenson aka. RedBalloon.
The music was done by Chris Crowley.

The original game was programmed by Titus Software, and all interlectual 
property for gameplay and leveldesign belong to them, while all graphics 
and code in the remake belongs to Soren Borgquist and Craig Stevenson..