Exile

When a terraforming team on an unexplored planet sends some disturbing messages back to Earth and then stops responding altogether, a space-adventurer is sent to find out what happened.

The gameplay is a side-on 8-dimensionally scrolling action-adventure set on a planet. The player must find a way to the lower depths of the planet to rescue the terraforming team and defeat the evil Triax!

Exile's game physics engine qualifies it to be the first game to have a complete Newtonian motion model. At the time of its release it was considered to push the boundaries of what was possible on home computers, particularly on the 8-bit platforms. It remains probably the most complex game available for the BBC Micro. The game was designed and programmed by Peter Irvin (author of Starship Command, a space shoot-em-up with an innovative control system) and Jeremy Smith (author of Thrust, a game based on cave exploration with a simpler physics model). Note: The standard 32 kB BBC Model B version uses a specially defined screen resolution, smaller than full screen MODE 2. This is to free up video memory for game data - a common technique employed in complex BBC games.