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| Daleks |
You have been transported to the home planet of the Daleks, a belligerent race of aliens bent on dominating the galaxy.
Your mission: prevent the Daleks from leaving their home planet, by junking all their robotic extensions.
Your opportunity: those extensions are really not smart.
Your problem: you are a pacifist, and won't blow up anything. Letting things collide of their own free will is great, though....
Your only defenses are your wits, the robots' lack of wits, and a super electric screwdriver with a limited number of charges. That screwdriver will take apart any robots within arm's reach.
Your strategy is equally simple. Let the robots run into each other and turn into little scrap heaps. They are so STOOPID that they will merrily turn themselves and their peers into smoking rubble, just trying to lay metallic hands on you.
The game is turn-based on a square grid: you move, the robots move. Repeat until they get you, or until they're all gone. If you clean out one level of robots, you teleport into the next level. And so on, until you (or your machine's power) wears out.
When two or more robots attempt to occupy the same space, they collide and leave a smoking heap of scrap. This is good (for you :-) since it means there's less of them to deal with. If one or more run into an existing scrap heap, they just add themselves to that one scrap heap.
When you find yourself in a tight spot, you can use one of the charges on the screwdriver or you can teleport a short distance out of trouble.
Using one charge of the screwdriver obliterates any active robots right next to you. This does not leave you with any scrap heaps! You only gain charges when you complete a level, that is, when there are no more active robots.
Teleportation simply takes you to another empty spot in the level. There's no guarantee that the neighboring spots are empty, though, so it's riskier than using a screwdriver charge. If you wish, you can set a preference to automatically teleport if you are about to be stepped on by a robot.
For each robot junked, you earn a point. There's no extra lives, no things to buy within the game; it's the measure of your success within the game. Higher point values are better.
You control your on-screen representation with the keyboard. Several of these key-controlled actions are also available via menus.
| Keys | Meaning | Description |
|---|---|---|
| number pad | directional movement | Move in that direction ('1' is down and left, '2' is down, etc) |
| 5, space | rest | Remain in place, letting the robots move |
| T | teleport | 'Anywhere is better than here -- lemme out!' |
| S | screwdriver | Use a charge on your electric screwdriver |
| L | last stand | Remain in place until all robots junk themselves or one manages to nab you. Double points! |
To get the number pad to work on many keyboards, you'll need to use the "Num Lock" key to shift to number mode.
If you can stand the jumping around on-screen, you can set the "autoTeleport" preference on. This means that any stupid mistake in movement would trigger a teleport, instead of your immediate death. Often, though, you're teleported right next to a robot, and that's the end of you.
Keep track of the screwdriver charges you use. This is particularly important if you play with "autoTeleport" off.
Make sure you have at least one scrap heap you can get behind. If you run out of screwdriver charges, cannot get behind a scrap heap, and still have a live robot to deal with, you have no way to take him out. He WILL get you (in time), and there's nothing you can do about it except select "Last Stand", perhaps sign in on the scoreboard, and select "New Game" to try another run.
Want to see how others are doing? Have questions or want to report a bug or idea? Wonder whether there's an update? Registering the software, or a high score?
Select "Go To Website" from the leftmost menu (the one with the picture of a dalek), and you can do all of this and more!
Copyright (c) 1997 Be Do Have Software.
All rights not addressed in license reserved.
Daleks is shareware, that is, you can play with it to determine whether you want it, then you register it using the Register application included. Please redistribute the package file as a whole, unchanged, to friends who might be interested.
I wrote this and I own it. If you like it enough to keep a copy around, please register and pay the small fee. Each payment I receive means that I can spend that much more time updating products and satisfying your needs for innovative software.