A Chance In Hell

Steven Flanagan

Status: Full Game, Findability: 4/5

“The Devil has invaded your coastal village, and has kidnapped the village population. As the village priest, you alone must defeat the devil and rescue your flock. A main road goes through the village, but don’t expect anyone to stop for you as they have heard the news.”

This is introduction to a game by Steven Flanagan which was recently salvaged from an old tape thanks to Mat Allen and could have well been lost in time. Steven originally produced the game in the hope that it would be published on the likes of Commodore Format (Or even Commodore Force) with their cover mount. It is very possible that the game was sent away to them.

What makes this particular game very curious and interesting to check out is that it is a rare game constructed in the 3D Construction Kit released by Domark around 1991.

So not your typical SEUCK, but a title created in a package which we never really got to see much in the way of user imagination. Only a few titles really surfaced – though Steven has since highlighted that there was a 3DCK club which had offerings of a few other creations. Sadly these are not yet preserved, but we hope these may follow like A Chance in Hell has.

Overall the game is a short game that can be complete in one sitting. The puzzles are straightforward – there are no ‘obscure’ puzzles. The game is always completeable – there is no situation where the player cannot complete the game according to Steven. It’s quite a polished effort, and certainly one of the best home brew efforts I’ve seen created in the tool – could well have been released by Incentive themselves!

Of course, Freescape has a tendency to be a bit on the slow side on the C64, so Steven has created two flavours of the game in the download above. You can grab a standard version or extreme version to play. With the Extreme version, if you have a Super CPU, you can play the game at a much better speed. Or alternatively you can just turn up the speed settings in your favourite emulator.

More instructions and details about the game and its versions can be found in the read me file in the above download. A new download added has a number of new enhanced versions for Super CPU, Ultimate 64 and fast emulation. Also a version with music by Richard Bayliss.

It’s been fantastic to see Steven’s game saved, and a shame it never quite made one of the covermounts. Here’s to more salvaging of 3DCK games!

Case closed!

Contributions: Steven Flanagan, Mat Allen

Supporting content

Update history

12/08/20 – Additional download added.

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