MERGED! Two hot topics - and about money again

Hi! Autumn has arrived in the northern hemisphere, and Spectrum game developers continue to write games and delight us with their creativity.

New game

For example, just a couple of days ago a game called MERGED! was officially released by an author with the nickname Dimon, who had not previously been published with us. It's a casual logic game about arranging shapes - something in between 2048, match-3 and Color Lines. Although the game is simple in essence, it is addictive and unusual for the Spectrum. Why is it so unusual? Well, first of all, most games of this type had fairly simple, unpretentious graphics, while in MERGED! it is top-notch - and it even comes with smooth animation. The user interface is designed for mouse play - the controls are large. You can also find controls that have never been used on the Spectrum at all (for example, switches). And, of course, pay attention to the sound - the game supports both beeper sounds and AY sounds and even General Sound (if present). The base version of the game was released in TRD format, and therefore there is a technical possibility of automatically saving progress to disk. The high score table is also saved to disk - so you can easily compete with your family or friends. Since the game does not use additional memory beyond 48K, it is possible to get a TAP version of the game for the ZX Spectrum 48. If you are interested - write in the comments.

Hot pies still baking

Sanchez Crew - the authors of the continuation of the series of games about the evil wizard Vradak - have announced the release of Vradark’s Revenge already this October. The game will run on the ZX Spectrum Next, and besides the digital version there will also be a physical version from the SincLAIR studio - with colorful covers and inserts smelling of fresh printing ink - everything as you like it. Judging by the videos, this will be a game completely unlike the previous parts of the series, and in general there have never been games with similar gameplay on the Spectrum. We are looking forward to it! Also this month, the release of an unusual game from the Era Creative Group team with the long title "Once Upon a Time in a Kingdom" is expected, telling about the adventures of a group of "so-called" friends who set off on a dangerous and thorny path to save a princess who found herself in, um... an interesting situation. "Once Upon a Time in a Kingdom" is an explosive mix of a board game with a die and "Heroes of Might and Magic", where you won't be able to just lazily press one button, rolling the die and watching everything happen by itself. On the contrary, you will have to make decisions on every turn, fight off hordes of enemies, planning options for future turns and setting up dirty tricks for your competitors. The graphics and sounds in the game are top-notch, because it is designed to run on TS Conf. And if you haven't yet acquired this ZX Spectrum-compatible machine, you can use the Windows version of the game.

Payment changes

Everyone knows that Paypal is the most convenient payment system for most countries, which guarantees security and speed of transactions. But, unfortunately, such a monopoly position leads to the company not hesitating to set predatory rates for sellers. For example, if you donate 1 euro to some game, the game's author ends up receiving only 40 cents. Previously we put up with this and even sometimes paid extra out of our own pocket, but the project is growing and this cannot continue. Therefore, we had to make a difficult decision and introduce a special 10% fee on payments via Paypal. At the same time, I note that Paypal is not the only payment method - in ZX Online it is now also possible to pay via the Unitpay system, which has proven itself well in other projects and is our reliable partner. By the way, European users can also save a little on taxes - when paying via Unitpay, VAT does not need to be paid. If the Unitpay form is not displayed in the list of payment systems, it means your country is not yet supported. On this note I will end today's news story. Download new games, help authors with money to raise their motivation and continue making masterpieces for Spectrum users around the world and, of course, share our news on your social networks and public pages. Thanks for your attention! /The image for this post was created by the MidJourney neural network/