BENEATH ITS SLICK PRESENTATION, GRAFTGOLD’S PARADROID IS A TEST OF SKILL, STRATEGY AND DECISION-MAKING UNDER PRESSURE. ANDREW BRAYBROOK REVIEWS HIS CEREBRAL MID-EIGHTIES SHOOTER, AND THE ITERATIONS THAT WERE RELEASED IN THE YEARS THAT FOLLOWED

Words By Rory Milne

» Paradroid creator Andrew Braybrook is currently working on a space shooter called Astierods.

Paradroid is something of a contradiction. It’s a shoot-’em-up, but it often discourages shooting. It’s an arcade-style game, but it requires as much strategising as reflexes. It’s a system exclusive, but there are numerous variations across various platforms. And for all its depth, it was designed in an evening, as creator Andrew Braybrook explains. “I’d likely had a ‘tough day at the office’, trying to come up with some sort of game scenario using cute robots in a hi-tech situation. I’d then given up,” Andrew says of rejecting the brief given to him by Graftgold founder Steve Turner. “I left Steve’s at 5pm as usual, and the old brain was still running at full steam. The release of the constraints of trying to merge cute and hi-tech just caused a torrent of thoughts, which I wrote down on the now infamous blue sheet when I got home. Most of the design of Paradroid was there.”

The sheet describing Paradroid began, “Cute & hi-tech don’t go together,” and as if to emphasise this point, Andrew incorporated a sniper-like gunsight into its design. “I tried two different gunsight types,” Andrew points out. “The first was inactive while the player was moving, but when you stopped, holding down fire allowed you to move the gunsight and fire instant shots at it. The issues were that it was hard to line it up with moving robots, and the player was immobile while using it, making them vulnerable. The second ran along in front of the player, moving further away the faster they moved. But with that one you had to move towards your target, which wasn’t usually prudent.”

With some reluctance, Andrew scrapped Paradroid’s gunsight, and implemented eightway firing based on direction of travel – except when you were in ‘Laser mode’. “You held the button down, and then chose when to fire and in which direction by nudging the joystick,” Andrew says of the mode. “It was just a bit more sophisticated than either firing in a fixed direction or only in the direction you were moving, and it was perfectly valid to use it on easier droids. What stopped you using it all the time was that the little lasers didn’t hurt the big droids at all. But you could fire behind you while fleeing from them, which was running away, but with dignity!”