CRASH put Driller on its December 1987 cover and called it “the game of the year”. Its three reviewers gave it 97%, 98% and 97%, and four months later the magazine’s readers voted it best game of 1987. What they were praising was not speed, detail or colour. On the Spectrum, Driller drew its world in black, white and cross-hatching, and redrew the whole view every time you moved. It was the first game built on Incentive’s Freescape system, and it let a Spectrum owner walk up to a building, look up at it, drive round the back and see it from behind, all drawn as solid shapes in true perspective.
The mission
The moon Mitral, a former penal colony, has been mined until gas has built up beneath its surface. A meteor is on its way, and if the gas goes up it will take the planet Evath with it. You have four hours of real time to make Mitral safe. The moon is divided into 18 sectors, and in each one you have to find the gas pocket, teleport a drilling rig down on top of it, and release at least half the gas.
You start in an excavation probe on caterpillar tracks. Its controls go beyond the usual four directions: you can tilt the view, raise and lower it, and set how far each step or turn will take you. The screen shows your x and y coordinates, so you can note a good drilling spot and find it again in the next game. Later you can dock the probe with a reconnaissance jet, if you can solve the puzzle that opens its hangar, and fly over all but the tallest structures. Laser beacons shoot at you, and your energy and shields are topped up by shooting rubicon crystals. Many of the puzzles are switches: shoot the right cube, pyramid or panel and a door opens or a lift starts.
Placing a rig is a game in itself. Sinclair User found it “largely involves trial and error, picking up the rig and moving it to achieve a higher gas percentage”. The Games Machine noted that the first sector marks the spot with a big X, and that the later ones are much less obliging.
Major Developments
Incentive formed an in-house team, Major Developments, to build Freescape. Sinclair User named its members as Chris Andrew, Stephen Northcott and Paul Gregory, and said they had worked on Driller for 14 months. In Your Sinclair, Ian Andrew gave their handles as Linefeed, The Bug and Waferthin, and said “the basic program design was all Linefeed’s work”. Writing began in September 1986. Chris Andrew, Ian’s brother, had first had the idea in 1985, and Retro Gamer later reported that the team developed the system on an Amstrad CPC, Chris’s own machine.
Incentive sold the game in a large box, at £14.95 on cassette and £17.95 on disk. Inside were a 32-page booklet explaining Driller and Freescape, a novella telling the story behind the mission, and a sheet of card that folded into a 3D model of Mitral for mapping.
How it was received
| Magazine | Version | Score | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| CRASH | Spectrum | 97% | December 1987 |
| The Games Machine | Amstrad CPC / Spectrum | 95% / 94% | December 1987 |
| Sinclair User | Spectrum | 9/10 | December 1987 |
| ACE | Amstrad CPC / Spectrum | 956 / 931 (out of 1000) | January 1988 |
| Your Sinclair | Spectrum | 9/10 | January 1988 |
| ZZAP!64 | Commodore 64 | 96%, Sizzler | January 1988 |
| Amstrad Action | Amstrad CPC | Mastergame | January 1988 |
CRASH’s reviewers knew the graphics were slow and did not mind. “After a couple of hours you don’t notice the jerkiness of the graphics, either,” wrote Mike, and Nick called it “an amazing achievement, considering that whenever you move all the graphics have to be recalculated and filled in again”. Paul thought Freescape would have “more success on the Spectrum than Ultimate’s Filmation” and summed the game up as “written now, but conceived for the future”. Your Sinclair’s Phil South noticed “a slight delay between ‘screens’, as the picture updates itself for a change of view”, and still found the game “surprisingly playable”.
Sinclair User’s reviewer opened by listing the many games that had promised to change “the whole face of gaming” and turned out dull, before concluding that “Driller, I’m relieved to say, isn’t quite such a game”. He found it more a thinking game than an action one: “you never get into any sweaty-palm combat”.
In the 1987 CRASH Readers’ Awards, published in April 1988, Driller won Best Game with one vote in five, and also took Most Imaginative Game, Best Graphics, Best Game Packaging and Most Accurate CRASH Review. It came third in one more category: Most Overhyped Game.
The versions
The Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64 versions came out for Christmas 1987. The Games Machine found that the Spectrum version ran slightly faster than the Amstrad one, “because there is less to shift around”, and faster still on the +3. The Amstrad version was in colour, which made blocks that stood close together easier to tell apart.
The Commodore 64 version was the hardest to write. Sean Ellis, who worked on later Freescape games, told Retro Gamer that the code was optimised assembler, “not a good basis for translation”, and that the Commodore 64 was “the nastiest platform to port to”. Its processor had to do all the 3D work itself, and in Paul Gregory’s words, “it struggled”. ZZAP!64’s reviewers had seen the other versions at the PCW Show and doubted the 64 could manage. They gave it 96% anyway: “The screen update looks remarkably slow, but when you’re playing it feels quite fast, and doesn’t at all impede progress.” The C64 version also had a 15-minute soundtrack by Matt Gray, which ZZAP!64’s readers kept in their music chart through the summer of 1988.
Sean Ellis converted the game to the Atari ST and Amiga in 1988. ACE previewed the ST and Amiga versions in October 1988 and reported “a substantial redesign of the instrument panel”. Ellis later explained what the extra memory bought: the data stayed in the same format, which left room for better dashboard graphics, sampled sound and faster, memory-hungry routines. Incentive signed a deal giving Epyx the exclusive right to distribute the Freescape games in the USA, and CRASH reported in January 1989 that Driller already had half a million dollars’ worth of advance orders there. Epyx published it as Space Station Oblivion, in its Master’s Collection for experienced players, at $49.95 on the Amiga.
Afterwards
Driller was the first of four Freescape games from Incentive. Dark Side (1988) used the same engine in a new setting and CRASH gave it 93%; Total Eclipse (1988) took 93% and Castle Master (1990) 85%. Then Incentive sold the engine itself as the 3D Construction Kit. CRASH’s review of the kit in 1991 still cited “Driller (97%, Issue 47)”.
The game was re-released more than once. Your Sinclair re-reviewed it at 90% in September 1989 as part of a compilation, noting that it was “showing its age ever so slightly”. When The Hit Squad reissued it at £2.99 in 1991, the same magazine declared that “Driller has been a Megagame, is a Megagame and will always be a Megagame”. In 1991 it also appeared on Virtual Worlds, a compilation with Total Eclipse, Castle Master and Castle Master II: The Crypt.
In February 2023 ScummVM 2.7.0 added support for Driller and Space Station Oblivion through a reimplementation of the Freescape engine, so the PC, Amiga, Atari ST, Spectrum and Amstrad versions can be played on modern computers, with the original data files.
Sources
- CRASH issue 47, December 1987, contents page (the cover feature) and pp. 24–25: Spectrum review (price, authors, the mission, controls, the booklet and card model, reviewers’ comments, 97%).
- The Games Machine issue 2, December 1987, p. 98: Amstrad CPC and Spectrum reviews (14 months’ work, the box contents, step size, relative speed, the Commodore 64 version due a month later).
- Sinclair User issue 69, December 1987: review, and the Major Developments team and their 14 months’ work.
- Your Sinclair issue 24, December 1987, “Programming” feature: interview with Ian Andrew (the idea in 1985, writing from September 1986, the team’s handles, Linefeed’s design).
- Your Sinclair issue 25, January 1988: review by Phil South (9/10).
- ACE issue 4, January 1988, pp. 76–77: Amstrad and Spectrum reviews (956 and 931).
- ZZAP!64 issue 33, January 1988, pp. 12–13: Commodore 64 review (96%, Sizzler, the soundtrack, doubts after the PCW Show).
- Amstrad Action issue 28, January 1988, pp. 49–50: Mastergame review.
- CRASH issue 51, April 1988, pp. 56–58: the 1987 CRASH Readers’ Awards.
- ZZAP!64 issues 38 (June 1988), 40 (August 1988) and 41 (September 1988): readers’ music chart (Driller main theme, Matt Gray).
- ACE issue 13, October 1988: ST and Amiga versions nearing completion.
- CRASH issue 54, July 1988, pp. 77–78 (Dark Side, 93%); issue 60, January 1989, pp. 32–33 (Total Eclipse, 93%); issue 76, May 1990, p. 42 (Castle Master, 85%); issue 88, May 1991, pp. 38–39 (3D Construction Kit review); issue 91, August 1991 (Virtual Worlds).
- CRASH issue 60, January 1989, p. 105: the Epyx deal and US advance orders.
- Ahoy!’s AmigaUser issue 5, January 1989, p. 22: Space Station Oblivion from Epyx, $49.95.
- Your Sinclair issue 45, September 1989 (re-review, 90%) and issue 65, May 1991 (Hit Squad re-release, £2.99).
- “Freescape: The Complete Lowdown”, Retro Gamer issue 22, 2005, pp. 26–29: interviews with Sean Ellis and Paul Gregory (Chris Andrew’s idea, development on the CPC, the ports, the PCW Show launch).
- Spectrum Computing, “Driller” (database, secondary): Sinclair User score. https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/1521/ZX-Spectrum/Driller
- ScummVM release notes, version 2.7.0, 26 February 2023 (web, secondary). https://docs.scummvm.org/en/latest/help/release.html