Ranarama
Ranarama (also Rana Rama) is a top-down "Gauntlet"-like action game developed by Graftgold and published by Hewson Consultants in 1987. It was released for the Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum home computers. The title appears to be a pun on "rana", a genus of frogs. The game concept is similar to a previous game by Steve Turner for the ZX Spectrum called "Quazatron", which was itself inspired by "Paradroid", created by Turner's Graftgold colleague Andrew Braybrook. In 2004 it was featured as one of the games on the C64 Direct-to-TV. Plot . The main character is Mervyn, a sorcerer's apprentice whose botched spell turns him into a frog just in time to save him from an invasion of evil magic-users who slay his mentors. Mervyn's arcane capabilities are intact, and the game's aim is to hunt down the attackers. Gameplay. Mervyn has four types of magic and eight increasingly potent and power-consuming spells for each: "Offensive" spells serve as projectile weaponry, "defensive" spells reduce damage etc., "effect" spells activate special abilities or act as area-effect attacks, "power" spells fuel the other kinds. The first three are  usable indefinitely, but power spells degrade with damage and with a constant drain caused by the other spells that can vary from minimal to vast depending on supply and demand. They drop to level one on expiration; expiring on that level is lethal and ends the game. Commonly found energy crystals replenish some power. The game is set in a dungeon split into eight levels that are freely traversable (but not necessarily immediately survivable), each of which is split into a labyrinthine network of rooms and houses some benevolent glyphs, 12 hostile wizards, hordes of monsters and monster generators. Rooms  aren't visible before they're entered, and their inhabitants only from within. Monsters cause damage by contact, attack "en masse" and fall easily, while wizards are much tougher and use attack spells. The latter "can" be defeated by attacks, but contact with them triggers a sub-game of unscrambling the mixed up word "RANARAMA" within a strict time limit. Failure expires the current power spell, but victory destroys the wizard and scatters four runes that can be used at Glyphs of Sorcery to change spells. On average there need to be 7.5 switchings of the letters. The starting positions  which require the maximum of 16 switchings of the letters are "MAAAARRN" and "MAAAANRR". Reception. "Crash" gave the Spectrum version an overall score of 90%, calling it an "innovative" "Gauntlet" clone. "Computer + Video Games" gave the Commodore 64 version an overall score of 8.5 out of ten, stating that the game requires "a high degree of strategy".