Olli and Lisa

Copyright : Firebird | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

It?s a dark and stormy night, you and Lisa are having a quiet night in when all of a sudden some nasty guy comes along threatens you at knife point and kidnaps your girlfriend with the threat "do what I say or you?ll never see her alive again". You spring into action and say that you will do what ever he tells you to do, he takes you and Lisa to Shilmoore castle, a haunted dark and strange place in which only the brave would enter.

You have been instructed to pick up the items of jewelry and treasures that lay around the castle and bring them to your captor before he throws Lisa into a pot of boiling water.

Well that?s not the exact story to the game but it sounds a lot better than the one Firebird came up with for the original game and kind of makes more sense. Olli & Lisa is a strange platform game and as you will see it?s not everyones cup of tea and is far from being a walk in the park.

Graphics

Olli & Lisa is kind of a strategy based puzzle platformer in that you need to get the items the nasty ghost is telling you to pick up but need to be very careful about doing it and make sure you don?t fall or get hurt by any of the inhabitants of the castle.

The graphics are very well drawn and funny, the colour scheme is sort of going back to the very early basic ZX Spectrum titles in the case that only 3-4 colours have been used to colour in the various levels of the game. Firebird have also only drawn a few rooms for you to solve puzzles in, not so much a castle but a bungalow in the middle of nowere. Our main character Olli also gets lost behind the green walls because they have coloured him in exactly the same colour - clever! CPC Zone Warning: If you suffer from epilepsy please don?t look at the screen when your game is over, there are severe strobing effects in action.

Sound

Sound is okay but very quiet so you may need to turn up the speakers in order to hear anything at all, there aren?t any breakthoughs though because they mainly sound like an old black and white TV without a picture - "fzzzzz" (for those who have no idea what I mean).

Gameplay

As for the gameplay, well it?s not a bad little game but it is a little difficult and frustrating. You only have one life to complete the game with (possible? perhaps but I doubt it) and if you hit anything or fall off any step higher than the 3rd you will find yourself scratching your head and starting at the begining again - minus the time you need to get the object and deliver it the ghost. Providing you are careful you may just be able to complete the game but you really do have to be careful.