''Tanglewood'' is a puzzle/adventure computer game published by

Microdeal Microdeal was a British software company which operated during the 1980s and early 1990s from its base at Truro Road in the town of St Austell, Cornwall. The company, founded by John Symes was one of the major producers of games and other softw ...

for the

Dragon 32 The Dragon 32 and Dragon 64 are 8-bit home computers that were built in the 1980s. The Dragons are very similar to the TRS-80 Color Computer, and were produced for the European market by Dragon Data, Ltd., initially in Swansea, Wales, before mo ...

and

TRS-80 Color Computer The RadioShack TRS-80 Color Computer, later marketed as the Tandy Color Computer, is a series of home computers developed and sold by Tandy Corporation. Despite sharing a name with the earlier TRS-80, the Color Computer is a completely different ...

in early 1987. It was released for the

Atari ST Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...

and

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

in 1988.

Gameplay

The 8-bit and 16-bit versions of the game have a different setting and characters but the same basic premise. In the 8-bit versions, Tanglewood is a peaceful glade under threat from a property developer and wizard named Sharck. The player controls five different animal characters who have ten days to defeat Sharck before the bulldozers move in. In the 16-bit version, the premise is that Tanglewood contains valuable minerals that have only been discovered after the protagonist's uncle Arthur acquired mining rights from an unscrupulous company. The company now want to mine Tanglewood themselves and are suing Arthur for the rights back. The player has 10 days until the court case and must find the documents to win the case. Instead of controlling animals, the player controls five remote controlled vehicles.''Tanglewood'' review
Betty D. DeMunn, ST-Log, Issue 28, February 1989

Development

The game had originally been planned to be based on the children's TV series ''

Willo the Wisp ''Willo the Wisp'' is an English cartoon series originally produced in 1981 by the BBC and narrated by Kenneth Williams. It became popular with children and adults, as it bridged the gap between the end of weekday children's programming and th ...

'' but this was dropped.''Tanglewood'' review
Jason Orbaum,

Dragon User ''Dragon User'' was a British magazine for users of the Dragon 32/64 computers published from 1982 by Sunshine Publications. Production of the computers themselves had ceased by 1985 but the user community remained sufficiently active to justify t ...

, Issue 48, April 1987 It was designed and programmed by Ian Murray-Watson with graphics by Pete Lyon. Pete Lyon also produced the graphics for other MicroDeal games including ''

Goldrunner ''Goldrunner'' is a vertically scrolling shooter developed by Steve Bak and Pete Lyon for the Atari ST and published by Microdeal in 1987. Rob Hubbard composed the music. An Amiga version followed, as well as a 1988 sequel, ''Goldrunner II''. ...

'' (1987) and '' Airball'' (1987). ''Tanglewood'' was first released by Microdeal in 1987 in a joint release for the Dragon 32 and TRS-80 Color Computer. It was released on the 16-bit Amiga and Atari ST in 1988 and was also published by Microdeal in the US.

Reception

Reviews were favourable with ''

'' giving a full score of 5/5 with the reviewer stating ''Tanglewood'' is "very hard" but "an excellent game". A review of the Atari ST version in ''ST-Log'' also emphasised the difficulty of the game but gave particular praise to the graphics and sound effects.

References

{{Reflist 1987 video games Amiga games Atari ST games Dragon 32 games Microdeal games Single-player video games TRS-80 Color Computer games Video games developed in the United Kingdom