Paradroid
C64 strategy welded to arcade reflexes
Andrew Braybrook’s 1985 masterpiece blended shooter action with territory control aboard a hijacked robot freighter.
Released in 1985 by Hewson Consultants, Paradroid puts you in charge of unit 001, the Influence Device — a small, almost defenceless control unit dropped onto freighters whose robot crews have turned hostile. Its own weapon is feeble; its real power is that it can transfer into any other droid on board and use that machine’s body instead. You roam the deck plans, and when you meet something stronger than you, you fight it for control in a tense logic duel over its circuitry.
Fast facts
- Developer: Andrew Braybrook.
- Look: a monochrome deck plan with the droids picked out in colour — a deliberate restraint that keeps a busy screen readable, and dodges the C64’s two-colours-per-cell limit rather than fighting it.
- Reception: ZZAP!64 gave it a Gold Medal in November 1985, announcing it as “PARADROID IS BORN” and calling Andrew Braybrook’s “elegant new game … a monster Gold Medal”.
Written up as it was written
Paradroid is unusually well documented for a 1985 bedroom-coded game, because Braybrook wrote it up as he went. His Diary of a Game ran in ZZAP!64 through 1985, and the October issue explains the transfer mechanic in the terms the game itself uses — the Influence Device that “escapes to possibly fight another robot” when its host is destroyed, left “beneath, but with low energy”.
That is a rare thing in this period: a contemporary account of how a game was built, published while it was being built, in the magazine that would go on to review it.
Legacy
Paradroid inspired sequels (Paradroid ’90) and spiritual successors. Its blend of arcade action with tactical planning remains a touchstone for C64 aficionados and modern indie designers alike.