1988 Softeyes
Platform: Commodore Amiga
Ragnov is one of those early Amiga curiosities that gives a fascinating glimpse into the early days of a development team that would go on to produce other well known titles. Created by Softeyes, a Dutch team formed around 1987, Ragnov was their very first game project and an ambitious one at that.
At the time, Softeyes was made up of Reinier “Rhino” van Vliet and Pieter “TUG” Opdam on coding duties, Ramon Braumuller handling music, and Metin Seven contributing graphics and design. All members had roots in the demo scene, having moved over from the Commodore 64 to the Amiga.
Development on Ragnov began around 1988, initially as a project led by Reinier, with graphics created by both Reinier and Pieter. Metin at this stage was primarily contributing ideas rather than artwork, recalling that “for the demo I only contributed game design, no graphics yet.”
The game itself was a maze based title (similar in a way to Phantom of the Asteroid), featuring a small jetpack equipped character navigating a multi directional scrolling environment. One of its standout features was a split screen two player mode, allowing players to either cooperate or battle each other within the maze.
As Metin explains, “Ragnov featured split-screen, parallax scrolling and was a lot of fun to play in two-player mode, where you could work together or chase each other through the game’s underground maze.”
Technically, the game showed strong promise. Parallax scrolling was implemented, and the demo also included a stylish intro sequence clearly inspired by the demo scene. This featured a real-time 3D vector balls effect, showcasing the talents of the team.
Musically, the demo was powered by a soundtrack created using SIDmon, Softeyes’ own music editor. The tool combined generated synthetic sounds with digitised samples, helping give Ragnov distinctive audio even at this early stage.
In 1988, a playable demo was fully produced and distributed to publishers via disk, sent out by post to a number of major companies. The response was encouraging, with several publishers replying with feedback. Metin notes that “we regarded receiving a response from major publishers as some sort of success”, with companies like Elite, Ocean and Hewson offering suggestions on how the game could be improved to meet commercial expectations.
Despite the positive feedback, it was clear that the game still needed work to compete at the highest level. As Metin reflects, “the game didn’t live up to the increasing quality demands… we weren’t experienced enough yet to deliver the necessary visual impact.”
Work did though begin on improving the game, with Metin starting to produce his first graphical contributions and expanding on the original ideas. However, disaster struck when the project suffered a critical setback, with Reinier losing the source code due to an unfortunate backup incident.
With the core code gone, the team made the difficult decision not to restart development. Instead, they chose to move forward with new projects, including Venom Wing, Digital Mugician and later Hoi. As a result, Ragnov was left unfinished, with only the early demo now remaining.
Although the game itself was never completed, the ideas and assets did not go to waste. Elements of Ragnov were repurposed in later Softeyes projects. Most notably, the concept evolved into the third level of Hoi, where the main character uses a jetpack in a similar fashion. The connection was intentional, effectively serving as a tribute to their lost project.
Other assets also found new life. The segmented dragon enemy reappeared in later titles, and visual effects such as stylised explosions were reused. Even the music lived on, with Ramon’s original Ragnov tune being remixed for Hoi using the Digital Mugician tool.
The jetpack mechanic itself became something of a recurring theme for the team, resurfacing years later in their 1997 Windows title Moon Child (which I’m guessing you may have heard about recently). As Metin points out, reusing unpublished material made perfect sense, as “it’d be a waste to throw the graphics away, as long as they hadn’t been published yet.”
Check out Ragnov for yourself from the download below. Whilst it never reached completion, it is an intriguing glimpse at a project that laid the groundwork for ideas that would shape the team’s later work.
With thanks to Metin Seven for sharing his recollections and for suggesting to cover the title.
Download
Video
Gallery
