Let the winter magic begin!

December has arrived, and winter has come into its own, painting nature white (well, okay, not everywhere, but at least outside my window it's white as snow), and the cities in a sparkling multicolor. And indeed, now more than ever we all need a little more color and... magic. This December promises to be eventful. The thing is, several creative Speccy enthusiasts are already preparing their new projects for release, and I'll start with one of them, which has just come out.

About RINGO

In a nearby but hidden from human eyes world live the Snugls – magical creatures who love to visit each other in the evenings and drink lingonberry tea. But in this world, light is only possible from the stars. So one brave Snugl named Ringo volunteered to gather stars for all his friends and set off on a long journey full of dangers and mysteries. This is the game RINGO from the well-known developer Denis Grachyov, founder of the RetroSouls label. Denis has a track record of many arcade puzzles – simple at first glance, but addictive in their gameplay. In addition, these games run at the limit of the classic ZX Spectrum's capabilities, in particular, almost all of them use multicolor, and therefore look very dynamic, unusual, and colorful. RINGO is no exception. In it, Denis for the first time used an experimental 64x48 graphics mode, in which every "pixel" has its own color. In addition, the game implements full-screen scrolling, which looks extremely unusual. Yes, the game runs on a classic ZX Spectrum with at least 128 KB of memory, but everything works on the ZX Spectrum Next too (we checked!). ZX Spectrum clones with non-standard timings like the Pentagon are (for now?) not supported, but you can play right on the website, in the online emulator. Add to that the excellent tracks by N1k-O, which change from level to level – and you get a great game for stretching your fingers and straining your brain on a cold winter evening by the fireplace. By the way, if you have children who aren't quite grown up yet – show them this game, it goes down great! The game is already available – but don't rush, first finish reading this longread.

About the new emulator

By the way, we've updated the built-in online emulator. The new version is significantly faster, supports the timings of both classic models and clones, can expand to full screen, and even works on mobile devices. Although for comfortable use with touch screens we'll still need to work on it properly, but that's a matter for the near future. The new emulator currently works only with RINGO.

About the rating system

Feedback is very important for authors – after all, it's what allows them to make games even better and hone their skills, but how do you keep a game page from turning into a circus? We thought about it for a long time, worked on it, and finally finished writing the rating system for ZXOnline. What is it? Every time you play a game, you can now leave your short review of the game – your thoughts, what you liked, what you didn't like, and, of course, rate the game by several criteria. All reviews will be publicly available, and an average rating will be calculated from the scores. To leave a review, you just need to buy the game and play it a little. And to protect against spam and vote manipulation, a certain restriction has been introduced for free games – only sponsors, that is, players who have donated some money to the game, can leave reviews.

About Unitpay

Now, along with the Advcash payment system (which asks for a lot of personal data during registration, and therefore isn't popular), we've added Unitpay – a new payment system that accepts both European and Russian plastic cards, and thereby allows you to purchase physical versions of games from EU countries, as well as avoid the 10% fee on Paypal in any country. If you've long wanted to order a "physical" copy but couldn't – give it a try. Everything should work out. Unitpay doesn't require registration, you just need to enter your plastic card number, just like in any other normal payment system. Phew, that seems to be everything. It turned out a bit long. But it's all for you, friends, and for our beloved Speccy. We're waiting for new releases! And, by the way, thank you for reading to the end.