Zarch

Zarch is a notoriously difficult game for beginners. Controls are extremely sensitive. Simply moving the mouse while taking off can cause the lander to explode on the launchpad.

The lander has one thruster pointing downwards beneath it. Firing the thruster makes the lander fly upwards. The lander has a flight ceiling above which the thruster will not fire. Flying in any direction requires the lander to be tilted in that direction.

The plot is reminiscent of the arcade game Defender, in that the player, piloting a lone craft with limited firepower, must defend a finite landscape against ever-increasing waves of enemy craft. In Zarch, the landscape is being invaded by aliens that are spreading a virus across the landscape. The Seeder vessels are slow-moving, predictable, and easily destroyed, but as the game progresses, they are supported by increasing numbers of flying support craft. These crafts do not scatter the virus, but instead attack the player.

The Seeder vessels scatter red virus particles across the landscape. As they land, they turn the green landscape to brown and red, and cause the trees to mutate. Some flying enemies shoot the mutated trees, to cause themselves to become much more aggressive and dangerous. To clear each attack wave, the player must destroy all enemy vessels.

Braben had access to an Acorn A500 development machine for two weeks in January 1987. He was working on 3D landscape algorithms on the BBC Micro and then wrote Lander using ARM code.

Lander was a demo version of Zarch bundled with new Acorn Archimedes computers. It was completed in less than three months as an illustration of their capabilities. Although the graphical environment, controls and handling of the lander were similar to the released version, neither enemies nor virus were present on the landscape. Points were awarded for destroying trees and buildings.

The game was voted the 5th best game of all time in a 1991 issue of Amiga Power.

The follow up to Zarch was a game using the same landscape engine, called Conqueror. In this game, the player controls a tank, and fights enemy tanks in a realistic manner. It was coded by Jonathan Griffiths and released on the Archimedes, PC, Atari ST and Amiga.