Flood Amiga Bullfrog Productions Sean Cooper and Kevin Donkin 1990

Flood Amiga 1990

Bullfrog released Flood for the Amiga in June of 1990. Flood is a scrolling platformer notable for its climbing controls, rising water level and atmospheric audiovisuals.

Flood consists of 42 levels of play presented on three types of landscape. In controlling a green blob-like creature, Quiffy, the object of Flood is to explore flooding caverns and collect a certain quantity of trash that is scattered about before entering a teleporter that leads to the next level (accompanied by a fancy screenwipe).

Flood's levels are effectively timed because rising water gradually floods the caverns; the rate depending on the number of water sources (taps) installed in the cavern. Quiffy can swim underwater, but his oxygen supply eventually depletes, killing him. A couple collectables can pause the flooding or speed up the rate of flooding (plungers and droplets). Switches can be found that reveal secret passages; there are also in-level teleporters.

What makes the rising water technically notable is that the water has a source and its flow can be observed streaming down and through the caverns, gradually flooding them.

Real-time flooding of levels was also employed by Captive of 1990.

Quiffy can move left and right, crouch, jump and climb up and down most walls as well as upside-down on most ceilings. Limited flight is possible via balloons and parachutes.

The caverns are populated by hazards and hostile creatures such as the Bulbous Headed Vong. In order to deal with them Quiffy employs grenades, boomerangs and shuriken as ranged weapons. Impressively, the grenades bounce along the ground before exploding. Audiovisually, the explosions are impressive. In addition, Quiffy can fire flamethrowers and set delayed-blast dynamite. Quiffy never begins a level packing hardware: weapons must be found.

Quiffy is followed by the hostile ghost of his aunt, Matilda. The ghost mirrors Quiffy's movements with a 15 second delay, but its rate of movement exceeds Quiffy's. Thus, the ghost can catch up to and damage Quiffy.

Flood was programmed and design-led by Sean Cooper and Kevin Donkin. Flood graphics were drawn by Simon Hunter, and its audio was composed by Charles Callet.

Flood was distributed on 1x 3.5" 880 kB diskette.

cf. Platform games:

• Bubble Bobble Amiga 1988 Software Creations David J. Broadhurst
• Ghosts 'n Goblins Amiga 1990 Elite Systems
• Ghouls 'n Ghosts Amiga 1989 Software Creations
• The New Zealand Story Amiga 1989 Choice Colin Gordon
• Commander Keen IBM PC MS-DOS id Software 1990
• James Pond Amiga Vectordean Chris Sorrell 1990
• Rainbow Islands Amiga 1990 Graftgold Andrew Braybrook
• Gods IBM PC MS-DOS 1991 Bitmap Brothers
• Parasol Stars Amiga 1992 Ocean Software Mick West
• Joe and Mac: Caveman Ninja IBM PC MS-DOS 1992 Elite Systems

Indexes:

• Amiga Games Reviews (Index to all Amiga game reviews)
• Computer Game Reviews (Index to all computer game reviews)
• History of Computer Games (Master Index)