The Sentinel (computer game)

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The Sentinel
Publisher Firebird software
Senior Developer Geoff Crammond
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 1986
platform C64 , Amiga , Amstrad CPC , Atari ST , BBC Micro , DOS , ZX Spectrum
genre puzzle
Game mode Single player
language English

The Sentinel is a surreal computer game from 1986. It is a mixture of chess and puzzle and was developed by Geoff Crammond . The game appeared for all common systems of the time (initially by Firebird for the Commodore 64 ) and received positive reviews. In 1998, Sentinel Returns from Psygnosis was a successor for PlayStation and Windows PCs.

Game flow

The game consists of 10,000 levels, which are set up like a chessboard, but the fields are at different heights. The aim of the game is to defeat the Sentinel of each level and thereby get to the next level. Your own pawn is a robot that stands on a field within the chess board. Your own robot has three or more energy points. The Sentinel stands within a level on the highest field, rotates slowly around its own axis and thus sees over the entire level in a period of about one minute. If he looks at a field with an object that has more than one energy point, he removes energy from the object and at the same time creates a new object (a tree) with an energy value of one on another field. The Sentinel therefore withdraws energy points from the robot and creates new trees in other fields (one for each withdrawn energy value of the robot). He converts a pedestal into a tree and at the same time creates a new tree in another field.

The player can collect energy points during the game by playing objects such as B. absorbs a tree or a pedestal and thus adds the corresponding number of energy points to its robot. From its point of view, your own robot can only act on fields that it can see from above.

In addition to the Sentinel, there can be several guards on a level. The Guardians perform the same role as the Sentinel, but the player must defeat the Sentinel to win the game.

Toy figures and objects

Robot (own character) 3 energy points
Pedestal 2 energy points
tree 1 energy point
Guardian 3 energy points
Sentinel 4 energy points

Game strategy

The player can win against the Sentinel as follows:

  • With his own energy points he has to create a pedestal on another field. Then he can set up another robot (next to his currently active robot) on the pedestal. For both actions he must spend a corresponding number of energy points.
  • Now the player can transfer himself to the new robot and absorb his previous robot. He takes up the corresponding number of energy points again.
  • The player or his robot is now higher up and can now see more fields from above and thus influence these fields. In this way he can act on fields that he has not yet been able to see from his lower position and create objects on them.
  • These actions are repeated until the player and his robot can see the field of the sentinel and absorb it. Finally, he has to transfer himself one last time with his robot to the field of the former Sentinel and "warp" himself to one of the next levels.
  • For each energy point that the robot has at this point in time, the player jumps one level further. Is the player z. B. in level 15 and has 12 energy points at the time of warp, he jumps directly to level 27.
  • The player now receives an entry code for the level and can start the next game directly on this level.

The player loses against the Sentinel if it can see his field and wants to reduce the energy value of the field to one. The player's robot then loses one energy point at a time. If the robot's energy points drop to less than three, the Sentinel wins and the game is over.

Optical game display

The player sees the level from the point of view of the robot and looks at the 3D landscape of the level, which looks like a small mountain landscape. As a result, when standing on a lower field within a level, he has only a very limited view of the level and orientation within the level is difficult. In the course of the game, the player or his robot works his way to higher fields within the level and thereby gains an ever better overview of the entire level.

Web links