Splat! (video game)
Splat! is a maze video game published for the ZX Spectrum in 1983 by Incentive Software of Reading, England. It was subsequently released for the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, and SAM Coupé.
Gameplay
The player guides Zippy, an X-shaped sprite, through a top-down maze featuring solid walls, hazards, and collectible rewards. The maze view scrolls randomly left, right, up, or down. The objective is for the player to survive for a length of time without making contact with either the edges of the screen, represented as brick walls, or hazards such as water and spikes, all of which result in losing a life. If the player survives, they receive a score bonus and advance to the next level, which is a continuation of the maze with less interval between scrolling steps and a shorter duration. The first level lasts about two minutes, and by the seventh and final level, this duration decreases to around forty seconds. Points are awarded for collecting plums and clumps of grass, some of which are invisible.Completing a level triggers a voice saying "Yippee!". On the ZX Spectrum release, this was remarkable due to it overcoming the Spectrum's rudimentary sound capabilities. It was a very early use of digitized speech sound effects in home computer games.