Following last year’s release of the impressive Defence–the aptly titled defense game–developer Shining have turned their hand to the puzzle genre with their latest game. With Pentomino, Shining look to have produced a mighty fine-looking puzzler.

So we know that Pentomino is a puzzle game, but just what is a pentomino? A pentomino is a shaped object made of five equal-sized connected squares. Right, so now we know what’s what, now we can take a look at the game. The game has 464 puzzles to solve in total–an apt number that CPC fans will recognize. There are three levels of difficulty to overcome, with 32 of the puzzles set as easy, 216 medium, and 216 hard. The aim of the game is to place the pentominos into the grid to complete the puzzle–simple, but addictive.

According to Shining, the idea of Pentomino came about after he wanted to develop “something less complex” that would not take up to three years of work. And with his son being a fan of board games, Shining decided to go down the pentomino route. To help out with the game, HAL6128 was brought onboard to produce the graphics, and the music was composed by MmcM.

Pentomino can be downloaded for free from Shining’s website. The game runs on all Amstrad computers (CPC, Plus, and GX4000) and the zip archive contains the game manual and three game image files: CDT (cassette tape), DSK (floppy disk), and CPR (cartridge).

Source: The Amstrad CPC news portal

Neil Reive

An avid retrogamer who has worked on various projects, magazines, and fanzines. He started his videogaming journey with the Amstrad CPC464 computer before moving onto a Commodore 64, then the Sega Mega Drive, followed by a multitude of PCs.