JSW Central - Resource Centre for ZX Spectrum games based on Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines

Resource centre for ZX Spectrum games
using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines

II. Jet Set Willy (JSW48)

A. New games using Matthew Smith's original Jet Set Willy game engine for the 48K Spectrum and its modifications

36. Goodnite Luddite

Author: Andrew Broad

Publisher: Broadsoft

Year: 2002

Reissued: 2003

Language: English

Goodnite Luddite is the second part of Andrew Broad's Kari Krišníková trilogy (the first one being We Pretty; the third part has not been released so far).

The game is set in the distant future, when Selesianity (the worship of Monica Seles, the tennis player) is an established religion. It is set in the Holy Land Monastery of Selesia. The spirit of the art-murderess Kari Krišníková has been summoned up and has entered the monastery, so she has the power to haunt the brethren in their dreams. To exorcise it, the player has to collect all the colour-cycling items from around the monastery before the end of the world (which comes at midnight). Only then will they be able to sleep safely.

A diary included in the game's release package presents the storyline that underlies the game. Reading or understanding it is not essential for playing the game.

Andrew Broad's inspiration for Goodnite Luddite came from many diverse sources, including personal experiences, dreams, television, computers, tennis, religion (Selesianity is strongly influenced by Christianity, and also by the Jedi religion from Star Wars) and music - particularly the works of David Bowie. His album 1.OUTSIDE gave Andrew the idea of writing Goodnite Luddite as a concept game, based on an underlying plot (documented in a diary) and characters. The plot was partly influenced by the movie "A Nightmare on Elm Street", and is more coherent than the plot of Goodnite Luddite's prequel, We Pretty.

Goodnite Luddite was written for advanced JSW players. It is intended to be outstandingly difficult, as a challenge to the experts. According to the author, the gameplay requires both manual dexterity (a need for pixel-perfect and time-frame-perfect accuracy of movement) and lateral thinking.

The game deliberately exploits a wide range of the so-called quirky features of the game engine, including some that had not been used before (such as items which appear only when the player enters a room from /some/ directions, Earth cells behaving as conveyors because of the rope and guardians that change their appearance as other things move around the screen because they take their sprites from video RAM).

Goodnite Luddite uses a custom font. It features a 24-hour clock and a changed colour of the arrows (cyan rather than white). The fall-any-height POKE is turned on by default, so that the player - who playes as Kari Krišníková - at least does not have to worry about falling from excessive heights.

After its release in 2002, the game was reissued the following year due to changes in the Readme; the TAP file remained completely unchanged since the original release, though.

Number of edited rooms: 64

Number of rooms accessible without cheating: 64

Number of rooms which need to be visited to complete the game: 64

Number of items to collect: 256

Bugfix needed after original release? NO

Spare lives at the start: 7

Completable without loss of life? NO

Lives which need to be sacrificed to complete the game: 1

(A life has to be sacrificed to collect one of the items in "SELEBBATH WORSHIP" [54]).

Starting time: 14:00

(The game uses a 24-hour clock.)

Best documented completion time with no unnecessary loss of life: 17:03

Download links

Homepage	Archival version of Andrew Broad's Sinclair ZX Spectrum Download Page

Official release	ZIP of the official reissue of the game, with the game file in TAP format, the Readme, Technical Notes, the Kari Krišníková diaries and a picture of Miniature Luddite Forest

Direct game download	Game file in TAP and TZX formats

World of Spectrum	The game's page on WoS

Spectrum Computing	The game's page on Spectrum Computing

Speccy Screenshot Maps	The game's map on Speccy Screenshot Maps

JSW Central	RZX walkthrough of the game showing the best documented completion time