Encaved

Darkness. Your head aches. Where are you? What happened to you? Then you remember the steady beep of a technical device. You start groping for the source of the tone and find a PDA laying near your legs. You grab it and watch its display.

You stare at the screen and can’t tell what the numbers stand for. You stand up and move a step to the right and come to know that the small dot on the screen represents your position. You continue walking, but a wall abruptly stops your movement. You are in a giant maze and the PDA screen shows the map of this big dark surrounding!

While examining the electronic device in your hands you find a button and a small stick. Your curiosity and raising panic results in pushing the button instantly. You are still standing in complete darkness, but the screen shows something like a spotlight. It seems to be produced by a radar spot scanning the caves. Moving the small stick while the button is pressed moves the spotlight around the maze on screen. You spot ways and walls on screen and decide to follow the lanes and hope to find an exit somewhere… unfortunately you come to know that the numbers in the top right corner of the screen are counting down and you feel that it can’t be any good if this timer reaches zero.

Encaved is Simon Quernhorst’s fourth Atari 2600 homebrew game! The game starts with the screen showing a black maze within border lines. Your position is represented by the small cursor in the left down corner. Moving the joystick starts the countdown timer and you player moves through the maze. You can’t move further when you run into walls. Pressing the fire button lightens the spotlight on your screen. You can move the spotlight around with your joystick while you keep the fire button pressed. A box is hidden somewhere in each maze. Locate it with your spotlight and collect it with your player to gain more time. As soon as you found an exit and moved through it with your player, you receive the remaining time as points. If you know the maze very well already and manage to navigate through it without switching the spotlight on, you score double points. After having escaped a maze a door closes behind you and you come to know that the next maze is already awaiting your exploration…