Minotaur Arcade Volume 1 Reviews

Amazing! LOVE Grid Runner in VR, it's beautiful and a nice trip. GoatUp is absolutely bonkers. I LOVE IT!

Gridrunner is great in VR. Proper old school arcade shmup. Fast, fluid, great sounds, powerups galore. I don't think there is a better pure arcade game on the Oculus.

Grid Runner alone is worth the asking price. It's a very addictive game with old school 80s arcade feel but with a modern twist. Grid Runner is the best game Llamasoft has done for years! Goat Up is just a nice filler and a bonus game to fill the B side of the main song Grid Runner.

Having been a follower of Jeff since the early 80's it's amazing to see a new version of Gridrunner which Jeff has once again taken to another level, combined with GoatUp and for £10 .... Amazing! Gridrunner is shooty blasty action at it's best and this version is right up there with GR Revolution in gameplay while GoatUp is a sneeky stratergy reaction game that's just too sodding addictive, I've named my goat Charles, just sayin ... Nice one Jeff and Giles, Llamasoft continues to please over 30 years since it began and show little signs of slowing down. 10/10

Jeff Minter has re-visited Gridrunner many times over the years but this is easily the best version I've played since the original VIC-20 classic. The audio-visuals are typical Llamasoft and are powerful, but without being too overwhelming. The controls are easy, especially using the mouse. Goat Up is a fairly simple platformer. It's initally frustrating but is quite good fun after a few games. It's packed full of references to old computer stuff and games. It's a nice change of pace to Gridrunner. My ancient laptop is below the minimum specs and runs both games perfectly fine. (i5 2.40GHz, 6Gb RAM, GeForce GT 330M, Win 10).

This is a fascinating pair of games from a legendary British designer - Jeff Minter. Goat Up first appeared as an iOS game, and gains a new perspective here. A clever mix of platforming and object gathering, drawing some classic influences from retro games. Gridrunner is Llamasoft's longest running series, having had multiple iterations from its original inspiration by Centipede. Where else can you get levels named after British politicians and their mistakes, and strange looking fruit attacking you? Shoot 'em up fans will love Gridrunner and Goat Up is an incredibly quirky and challenging platform game that more people should play.

Goatup is great if you like Doodle Jump type games, Llamasoft type games or psychedelic type games. I like the references to cool retro games like Bounty Bob, Miner 2049'r, Manic Miner, City Connection, etc. I want to go farther to see what other crap they reference. At one point there are also bridges that explode and poison mushrooms and platforms that seem to slide me quickly in one direction or another. I don't think I even know all the references. I looked to see if Tywyn Wharf station really had ham sandwiches at the restaurant and it seems they do not, unless it comes in a vending machine or something. But what do I know, I have never been to Wales.

I bought this as soon as it became available on Steam (21st December) but have only just got round to playing it today and what a treat it is. I had Gridrunner for the iPhone, going back a few years, and always felt it was a game that I would have enjoyed being able to play on the PC, and lo - now you can. This is a game that builds on the arcade classics with a fresh twist for modern hardware. The sounds, the art, the gameplay mechanics, it's an utterly sublime game that I know I'm going to lose a lot of time too - and I'm looking forward to it. All for a bargain at £10. What are you waiting for? Buy it and enjoy some great arcade action that offers superb gameplay and a real treat for the senses.

[b]Gridrunner[/b] This game is the main attraction of volume 1. Gridrunner originally came out on the Vic-20 in 1982 and has seen multiple reimaginings since with this being the latest version. Building on a working formula allowed Llamasoft to make this a masterpiece. This is a true arcade game that would fit in a cabinet were it not that it's best played with a mouse although a trackball comes in second. The game is really fast wading into bullet hell territory with stunning particle effects. The sound effects although sometimes peculiar are also great. Occasionally the game goes really fast with fountains of particles obstructing your view and the sound cues will allow you to keep going without actually knowing the exact location of your ship. One of the game mechanics I really love is bulling. At the start of a level and after grabbing a power up for a moment you are invincible and you can run into enemies to destroy them. Destroy enough enemies or a boss enemy and a new power up is spawned allowing you to keep bulling if you get it in time. The power ups themselves are neat too and can be stacked. Like several earlier Llamasoft games there are three modes to play in: in Endurance mode you only have 3 lives, in Pure mode you start with 3 and you get an extra live each time you finish a level and in Casual mode you get the extra lives as well and you can continue your best game. There are supposedly 100 levels, each level is unique with their own grid and view angle, different combinations of one type of regular enemies with other returning enemies and scripted events. Where the enemies sprout is semi-random. They do follow paths you can learn but it's not the same everytime. Overall the levels increase in difficulty but there are easier levels in between and the length of levels variate. Here's a video of a good run I did in Pure: https://youtu.be/G4cT4NanSfc [b]Goat Up[/b] This is an improved version of Goat Up for iOS. At first sight it may look silly and not that impressive for a platformer, however once you start playing you'll see it's a totally unique platform experience which is quite catching. Your goal is to reach the top while the view is going up in a steady pace and if you fall off the screen you have to start over again from the very bottom. On your way up you'll hop through different worlds based on classic platformers some of which I've actually played on my commodore 64 back in the 80s. The platforms are procedurally generated. The enemies you encounter are based on characters from those games. While going up you have to kiss goats and eat grass. While eating grass objects will appear which you have to collect. After first having kissed a goat eating enough grass and objects will spawn a kid, having kids allows you to destroy enemies either through 'bopping' or using your kids as a whip. When your goat makes contact with an enemy without bopping you'll lose one kid, when you make contact with an enemy without having one or more kids you die. Reaching the top is a decent challenge. The game doesn't stop there though. After you've reached the top, you have to make your way down without enemies but at a rather quick pace. Once you're back at the bottom you start a new climb to the top but with more enemies this time.

This is hard game to describe.. really hard. It's fun, frantic, hectic, confusing, but offers Occulus and 3DTV support if you have it. It's divided into two games, the first is a Centipede like clone that is played on changing surfaces. You must shot a variety of incoming "centipedes" like objects that are racing towards you, leaving other obstacles in their wake and launching projectiles to avoid. Also, you must avoid laser gun that are trying to train on you from the left side and top of the screen.. further adding to the difficulty. Still, it is fun but hard to progress further. The second game is a llama that must continuously jump from platform to platform, saving sheep and avoiding enemies while the screen progressively is moving upward. You fail if you fall or the screen scrolling catches up to you. It's reminiscent of Tower Toppler. It's fun but also difficult. All in all, another Jeff Minter game. It's cheap and fun to play with an xbox like controller. I recommend it.