MERGED! Two hot cakes and again about money

Hello! Autumn has arrived in the northern hemisphere, and the ZX Spectrum 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 was officially released by a previously unpublished author with the nickname Dimon. It’s a casual piece composition game – something between “2048”, “3-in-a-row”, and “Color Lines”. The game is simple in its essence, but exciting and unusual for ZX Spectrum scene. Why is it so unusual? Well, first of all, most games of this type have rather simple unpretentious graphics, but in MERGED! it is up to the mark – and smooth animation is included as well. The user interface is designed to be played with a Kempston mouse – the controls are large than usual. You may also find controls which have never been used on the Spectrum at all (e.g. switches).

And, of course, you should pay attention to sound – the game supports beeper sounds, AY sounds and even General Sound (if available).

The base version of the game is in TRD format, so it’s technically possible to automatically save your progress to disc. A score table is also saved to disc – so you can easily compete with your family or friends.

Since game does not use additional RAM banks upper than 48k, you can get TAP-version of game for ZX Spectrum 48. If you’re interested, drop a message to the comments.

Hot Cakes Still Baking

Sanchez Crew – the authors of the sequel to the Vradark’s Evil Sorcerer series – have announced the release of Vradark’s Revenge this October. The game will run on ZX Spectrum Next, and apart from digital it will have physical version made by SincLAIR studio – with colorful covers and freshly painted inlays – just the way you like it. Judging by the video the game will be entirely different from previous parts of the series, and moreover there hasn’t been a game with similar gameplay on the ZX Spectrum yet. We can’t wait!

Also due out this month is a very unusual game from Era Creative Group with the long title “Once Upon a Time in a Kingdom“, about the adventures of a group of “supposedly” friends who set off on a dangerous and thorny journey to rescue a princess who finds herself in an… interesting situation.

“Once Upon a Time in a Kingdom” is an explosive mix of a classic dice-driven board game and some “Heroes of Sword and Magic” mechanics, where you won’t get to just lazily press one button, rolling a dice and watching it all happen on its own. Instead, you’ll have to make decisions at every turn, fighting off hordes of enemies, thinking through your options for future moves and giving your rivals a hard time. Graphics and sounds in the game are top-notch, because it is designed to work in TS Conf. And if you haven’t got that ZX Spectrum-compatible machine yet, you can use Windows version of the game.

Changes in Payments

Everyone knows that Paypal is the most convenient payment system for most countries, which guarantees the safety and speed of payments. But unfortunately, this monopoly position leads to the fact that the company does not hesitate to set predatory rates for sellers. So, for example, if you donate €1 to a game, the author of the game only gets 40 cents in the dry. Previously, we put up with this and even occasionally paid from our own pocket, but the project is growing and this cannot go on. So we had to make a difficult decision and introduce a special 10% fee on payments via Paypal.

Note that Paypal is not the only way to pay – you can now also pay in ZX Online via Unitpay, which is well-proven in other projects and is our trusted partner. Also, European users can save a little money on tax as well, since they won’t have to pay any VAT when they pay via Unitpay. If you don’t see your Unitpay form in the list of payment systems, it means that your country is not yet supported.

On that note I would like to end today’s news story. Download new games, help the creators with money to increase their motivation and continue to make masterpieces for Spectrum users around the world and of course, share our news in your social networks and communities. Thank you for your attention!

/Authority of the picture for this post belongs to MidJourney’s neural network/