Funware

Funware produced modules for the TI and were one of the earliest of third party manufacturers.

Hen House

This is the first Funware module. You control a farmer at screen bottom who has two conflicting tasks: to protect his hen house from poachers and wolves, and to collect eggs.

If too many eggs are dropped or the wolf reaches the hen house, the game is over.

The game starts slowly, but as the score increases so does the speed. As you reach 10,000 things are really zipping around, and you have to make fast strategy decisions: do you take the chance on letting an egg fall in order to get your gun?

The instructions are a bit thin... the rifle is stored at screen left, to pick it up or drop it, move to extreme screen left. The eggs are collected by standing under a chute (without the gun!) and when the chute is full you press the fire button (joysticks are optional). You then move to screen right to drop the eggs into a red lorry (which is invisible on black and white displays : it is there though!).

A simple game perhaps, but the animation in neat and as it speeds up things do get tough.

Rabbit Trail

If you saw the 'review' in Personal Computer News, forget that. As usual, the instructions are thin, and the PCN reviewer didn't work them out...

You control a lovely bunny who has the arduous task of collecting carrots. When all the carrots on a screen are collected, you move to the next. I understand there are seven screens, but I've only made screen four so far.

To prevent you reaching the next screen, there is a timer and various hazards such as weasels, hawks, traps and so on. You can leap over these with care,or hide from the hawk.

Joysticks optional. To jump over two weasels close together or over a trap, you must jump while moving : this involves using both sides of the keyboard: Use O to jump and J or K to move, or Y to jump and S or D to move.

Level one is a simple run, level two is a little harder, level three more complex, level four adds an elevator (or lift).