Waving goodbye to I, Ball 2 we look to the future, crossing our fingers and hoping that our next title in the Your Sinclair Top 100 will be something quite frankly brilliant. Then to see that we have real life British music, film and television greats involved in our next release it can only mean that No.#34 must be great…right!? Then in enters Deus Ex Machina from Automata UK.
Deus Ex Machina was created by Mel Croucher, Andrew Stagg in 1984; this highly-original game starts in the final bowel movements of a dead mouse, and following this we see the fertilisation, gestation, birth, life and subsequent death of a human being (here known as a defect) within the Machine. The game was “played” to a rather excellent recorded musical narration of numerous stars which included Jon Pertwee, Ian Dury and Frankie Howerd amongst others.
I highlighted “played” above as in truth Deus Ex Machina doesn’t have to be played at all. What you’re really watching is a piece of artwork unfold on your ZX Spectrum as Jon Pertwee plus Frankie Howerd narrate and Ian Dury rhymes. This is not a game! The most difficult part of Deus Ex Machina is making sure that you start the tape when instructed to do so at the beginning and that’s it – you truly could sit back a watch this lightshow unfurl in front of you if this is your bag, and unfortunately it isn’t mine at all. You spend numerous minutes becoming bored as empty sub-games, that are timed to the audio tape, slowly spew out in front of you. If they were interesting you wouldn’t mind but they are truly twaddle and the sad thing is these confusing moments – which in truth serve no really purpose – distract you from the only interesting thing in the “game”, the narration and singing on the audio tape.
Mel Croucher and Andrew Stagg have delivered a wholly original piece of work on the ZX Spectrum I agree, but it’s not a game that fits into the Your Sinclair Top 100. However, as for the narration and music that runs alongside the art installation, this I truthfully enjoyed. I could listen to this without the bouncing infant and the coloured bars disturbing my day anytime.
Six years ago, in 2010, Deus Ex Machina 2 was released on the PC with Sir Christopher Lee lending his voice to reworked game. Reading the reviews on Steam people are enjoying it just as much as I enjoyed the original release.
Originally published July 25, 2016. Updated October 25, 2022.
