A curious and complex puzzler which involves unscrambling various famous structures of world famous works of art created by Dr Devious. In the game, you control JJ (JoJo) Maverick, the hero who must do the unscrambling.
The game featured some smart graphics by Bob Stevenson, which sadly many would never get to see as intended. Commodore Format also confirmed that Martin Walker was playing a part in the game too, handling all the various audio duties.
Originally it was rumoured that John Twiddy or Doug Hare were behind the game as developer, but both confirmed otherwise. Doug Hare confirmed it none other than Myth/Salamander creator Peter Baron who was coder of the C64 and Amiga/ST versions.
Peter started out on the C64 version, mainly because he had not quite picked up coding on the Amiga/ST at that point. When Peter finally got there, he did a source conversion in a day and had the game playable, even having Bob’s graphics ported from the C64!
The Amiga/ST editions had taken priority during the C64’s development, and by the time they were complete, the C64 version was 2 months behind. Imageworks spoke to Peter and Bob, and told them to drop the C64 conversion as they felt the C64 was dying out at that point. It had nothing to do with the collapse of Imageworks which came not too long afterwards.
Peter was tracked down in 2005, and very kindly gave a detailed account of the game which you can read in Creator Speaks. Peter tells us that the game was born in a pub whilst drinking with Bob, where they came up with a main character who had mystical powers, and which could walk up walls and on the ceiling.
Although the game was produced very fast and at a good flow, the game was way too complex to play because of cramming too many controllable features into a joystick with one button. Levels had to be simplified down to add a good learning curve, but it was proving difficult. Most of the complex ideas were reluctantly dropped to try and save the C64 version. Even the easy levels were not quite so easy!
The game production lasted about 9 months in total on the C64 before the decision to focus on the other platforms took place.
Martin Walker was to do dynamic music that reacted to the game and the player’s actions. This was a very complicated idea which apparently caused Martin various problems (on the Amiga/ST versions at least). GTW spoke with Martin Walker and he confirmed that he would have been doing the C64 music, had the game been completed. Because he did music at the last minute for games, nothing for the C64 version was sadly ever started.
In 2006, Pete traced all of his C64 disks and passed on remaining code to GTW. In 2006, we presented the first ever release of the C64 conversion, an approximately 80% complete edition in total, so classified as a “preview”.
Thanks to Glenn Rune Gallefoss and Pete Baron, the game was carefully pieced together from its sources to get the Bonus levels working, which were corrupted in the original executable we were given. It was Glenn and Pete therefore who have made it possible to see Devious in its most finished state possible.
The guys originally found a manner of other goodies hidden away in the sources, including a hidden 4 player mode (though not at the same time), and some other various bits and pieces. Not all the pieces could however be put into the game.
Eventually it was decided by Pete to go with the original controls in the new source code, before Mirrorsoft changed everything. This is therefore most complete version of Devious in accordance Pete’s guidance during compiling of a final version. The sources could well be added to the site at a later date, pending if Pete gives permission for this as an additional interest point.
This is a great puzzler which has some really nice artwork by Bob. The extra bonus is that Pete has supplied 6 previews of the game in various early stages. You can find these in the original ported disk images in the download below.
Check out a piece of C64 history for yourself and see just what we missed out on back in the day.
Case closed!
