Paradroid

It was remade as Paradroid 90 for the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST home computers and as Paradroid 2000 for the Acorn Archimedes. There exist several fan-made remakes for modern PCs. In 2004, the Commodore 64 version was re-released as a built-in game on the C64 Direct-to-TV, in 2008 for the Wii Virtual Console in Europe and in 2018 on the C64 Mini.

• Title — Paradroid • Developer — Graftgold • Publisher — Hewson Consultants Jester Interactive Publishing • Designer — Andrew Braybrook • Released — 1985 • Genre — Shoot 'em up, puzzle • Modes — Single-player • Platforms — Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST, Acorn Archimedes, C64 Direct-to-TV, Virtual Console, iOS

• Illustration — Paradroid on the C64. The player controls the 139 droid. Enemy forces have hijacked a space fleet by turning its robot consignment against the crew. The goal is to neutralize all the robots, thereby rescuing the humans. The player controls a prototype influence device that allows them to move the hostile robots. The game is set on a spaceship viewed from a top-down perspective. The ship consists of numerous rooms and levels, each one populated by hostile robots or androids. The player, in control of a special droid called the Influence Device, must destroy all the other droids on the ship. Each droid (including the player) is represented as a circle around a three-digit number. The numbers roughly correspond to the droid's power or level, in that higher-numbered droids are tougher to destroy; there are 24 droid types. The Influence Device is numbered 001. The primary way in which the Influence Device destroys other droids is by linking with them, effectively taking over them. When the player takes over another droid, the previously controlled droid is destroyed. Taking over a droid is done via a minigame involving basic circuit diagrams and logic gates. Each droid has one side of the screen, with a series of logic gates and circuits connected together. The droids have a number of power supplies that can apply power to one circuit. Higher-numbered droids have more power supplies. At the end of a short time period, the droid supplying the most power to the circuit wins. The logic gates are the key to allowing lower-numbered droids to beat higher-numbered droids. There is also a strategy in timing when power is applied to a circuit (as two supplies of power to the same circuit result in the later supplier of power gaining control of the circuit). It is possible for the transfer game to end in a draw. A replay will take place If this occurs. In either case, the droid being controlled by the player is destroyed. If the player beats the droid in this minigame, they take control of that droid. If not, either the droid is destroyed and the player is returned to the game simply as the Influence Device (if they were previously controlling a different droid), or the player is killed, ending the game, if they were not already controlling another droid before the takeover attempt. While in control of another droid, the player effectively acts as that droid, meaning the player has access to its maneuverability, armor, weapons and power supplies (used during the droid-control minigame). If the droid has weapons, the player can destroy other droids by shooting them instead of taking them over, though higher-numbered droids can require several shots to destroy and might fire back. The player has control of a droid only for a limited amount of time (which is inversely proportional to the droid's number). If that time elapses, the controlled droid self-destructs and the player reverts to the Influence Device (001). The spaceship has 20 decks, each with many rooms; the game has more than 400 screens. Doors and elevators connect the rooms and the decks. Only droids in the player's line of sight are visible, although doors being operated by out-of-sight droids can be seen moving. Many rooms have computer terminals that provide access to maps of the current deck and the entire ship as well as droid information. Each droid can access information about itself and all lower-numbered droids (this access is available to the player based on the droid being controlled).

Despite the instructions referring to a finite fleet, the Commodore 64 game never ends. When clearing the eighth ship called "Itsnotardenuff", the players are just placed back on the final ship with higher-ranking droids on each deck.

During development of the original game, Braybrook kept a diary that was published monthly in Zzap!64 magazine, in which he stated: The game was influenced by several different computer games and movies, and has some similarities to an IBM mainframe game called "Survive" written by Braybrook a few years earlier while working for Marconi. Braybrook said in a Retro Gamer interview that the droid-swapping idea came from an arcade game, Front Line, where the player could enter a tank and had to leave it when it got hit. In another Retro Gamer feature, he stated that the cover of the Black Sabbath album Technical Ecstasy influenced him, where two droids "interfacing" can be observed, along with the corridors of the film Aliens. Development started right after Braybrook finished his previous game Gribbly's Day Out and even shared some code with Gribbly's. Later when Braybrook was working on Morpheus, he did another diary for Zzap!64 where he revealed that the then recently released Competition Edition of Paradroid was 50% faster than the original. In the same series, he revealed that they had redone the Paradroid graphics in the new (Morpheus) style, which was later released as Heavy Metal Paradroid. Andrew Braybrook did another diary during the development of Paradroid 90 for Amiga Action.

• 1985 – Paradroid • 1986 – Paradroid Competition Edition – Released as a double pack at Christmas with Uridium+, plays faster than the original, mainly due to scroll code enhancements. • 1987 – Heavy Metal Paradroid – Paradroid Competition Edition with Morpheus style graphics (budget release in 1989). • 1990 – Paradroid 90 (Commodore Amiga, Atari ST) • 1993 – Paradroid 2000 (Acorn Archimedes)

Freedroid Several Freeware or free and open source software clones of the game have been published: • Nighthawk for Linux. • SDL Paradroid for Windows and Linux, current version 1.3 (March 2004), which garnered favourable reviews at the Home of the Underdogs. • Freedroid Classic for Windows, Linux, OS X and Sharp Zaurus, current version 1.0.2 (2004) • Project Paradroid for Windows, current version 2 (2006) • Paradroid Redux is a reimplementation of the original Commodore 64 code, fixing bugs and adding features. • Freedroid RPG is a Diablo-style role-playing video game based on Freedroid Classic, inheriting only the main theme of fighting hostile robots, the takeover-game, and the robot models. • Urbanoids

Andrew Braybrook's Graftgold partner, Steve Turner, wrote a version of Paradroid for the ZX Spectrum called Quazatron in 1986, also published by Hewson. Gameplay was similar, but on an isometric playing field, and based in cities rather than spacecraft.