Published by Psygnosis in 1994, Flink is one of those games that looks really nice but is frustrating to play, although it does eventually evolve into something worth playing.

If you’re like me: it will take some time to get used to the fact that Flink – the main character in this game – has a ‘speed up’ that kicks in after he’s been running for about five seconds. Meaning that: it’s very easy to forget this happens and run to your death accidentally… I tore my hair out trying to get past the first level in this, because it has a few weird idiosyncrasies that you have to get used to in order to play it properly. The aforementioned ‘speed up’ being just one of them.

Flink, though, does get better as the game progresses. New mechanics, such as throwing boulders onto seesaws to launch yourself into the air, and ropes that you can grab, are introduced as you go – keeping the gameplay interesting. In fact: I was eventually won over by Flink, after initially not thinking much of it.

Graphically, it’s beautifully drawn and coloured, with a nice separation between the foreground and background (take note: Zool‘s designers!), and some lovely parallax scrolling, giving the landscape depth. The sprites are quite wonderful too, with quality animation making this stand out somewhat.

Flink also has a ‘unique’ spell-casting system, which can be brought up via a menu during the game. It’s less than intuitive and not obvious what you’re supposed to do, but it allows you to combine certain items to perform magic.

While Flink is no Mario, it is at least a decent platform game in its own right. It’s certainly better than some CD32 platform games I’ve played previously. No names being mentioned… [Zool]. 🙂

One interesting thing to note is that Flink is an original CD32 title that was never converted to the Amiga. It did make its way onto the Sega Megadrive, though, although the Megadrive conversion is a cut down version of the original.

More: Flink on Wikipedia