Games That Weren't^®

199? Scienide

Platform: Amiga 500

Blork was a very stylish underwater shooter being created by the demo group Scienide (http://www.scienide.de/) around the mid-late 90s, where you control a cute fish main character and his octopus friend within a very dark and gloomy underwater world. Development was by Ply2, with music by Exodus and graphics by Blork and Nytech.

Thankfully we’ve been able to play a preview of the game which was available from Scienide’s website, containing around 3 levels in total. The quality of the game is brilliant and the overall design very slick with plenty of promise overall. The whole mechanism of the water rising in different areas as you progress works very well. In some ways, the game feels a bit like a mixture of Blood Money and R-Type.

It was Scienide’s first real game project on the Amiga 500, which is impressive considering the smooth scrolling, animations and effects throughout. It was progressing well, but then suddenly the Amiga market began to disappear – so the team made the tough decision to halt production.

What you see here and can download is essentially all that was developed in the end, and we’re thankful that the team were willing to just release what they did and share it with the world. It is hoped that some day we’ll get to talk to the team to learn more about the game and what the plans were, had the Amiga gone on for a few more years.

With thanks to Grzegorz Antosiewicz for highlighting the title and the screenshots.

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