PrintStar’s Blog

Moraff’s Entrap is a odd little game from Steve Moraff.  Moraff games were well known in the early days of Super VGA for somehow managing to make the most out of any of the many chipsets available early on.  Entrap, for example, can be played in a variety of graphics modes, from lowly CGA all the way up to 800×600 Super VGA.  I played the game today in 640×480 VGA with medium performance on the 486 as 800×600 mode was far too slow.

The game itself is an interesting puzzle.  On a quasi-3D board, the player must navigate from one end to the other while avoiding robots that are programmed to kill.  This task is complicated by the playing board itself.  The board is made up of tiles and voids.  The player can remove a tile in any direction from where he or she is standing by pressing Shift+<direction>.  The directions are controlled via the number pad, and the diagonal equivalents work as well.  Voids can be subsequently filled in with a tile using the Alt+<direction> combination.  The game board itself appears as shown below:

The game does not occur in real-time.  In other words, when the player makes one move, the robots do as well.  One nasty detail is that removing or adding tiles also counts as a move, meaning the robots can take the opportunity to move while the player remains stationary.

While the game is visually stunning (at least in VGA mode), it is also fun to play.  A significant amount of strategy is necessary to progress at all.  I was able to make it close to the end of Level 3 before I was captured, but even that attempt required a handful of unsuccessful attempts that didn’t even get beyond Level 1.  The map in the upper left of the screen is invaluable because often the robots can enter from the sides of the visual game board and the path towards the end must be pre-planned long in advance.

The graphics are uncomplicated, but the game itself is visually stunning.  I specifically wanted to include this game in my Retrochallenge this year because of the amazing use of colors on VGA hardware.  Moraff games early on were known mostly for utilizing VGA hardware to its fullest potential, but many of the Moraff games would also work on lowly CGA systems.  Sadly, the game did not work at all on the Tandy 1000 HX, but that may be due to the Tandy’s eccentricities.  An example shot from DOSBox in CGA mode is shown below:

One odd feature of the version of Moraff’s Entrap that I played today was that it also included advertisements for AMD math coprocessors.  I’m not sure if this was some sort of deal between Steve Moraff and AMD.

Some of the additional information available from the menu is entertaining as well.  I highly suggest that everyone read through some of the “Important People and Friends” entries.  Mr. Moraff seems to be advertising a screenplay via this game as well.  I think Steve Moraff has really taken advantage of the Shareware model to try and sell as much as possible through this game (not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s simply interesting…).

Moraff’s Entrap is a rather simple game with stunning graphics on the appropriate VGA hardware.  While it does make a nice early-1990s VGA demonstration, the game is also fun to play.  The instructions and this description make Entrap seem easy, but a considerable amount of thinking and strategy is necessary to even make the smallest advances in Entrap.  The game has great replay value simply based on the gameplay, but the colors alone will probably have people coming back for another look.

• Moraff’s Entrap

As I said above, the game does not seem to work correctly on the Tandy 1000 HX.  The screen appears, but the game does not seem to play properly.

Tags: 31 Games in 31 Days, Games, Vintage Computing //