Microdeal‘s isometric adventure/puzzle game Airball originated on the Dragon 32 in 1987. This is the original version.

It doesn’t look like much, with its (sub Knight Lore) monochrome graphics, but it plays okay. It’s frustrating to play in general. Mostly because of the premise, which is: you are a delicate bubble, exploring a large, trap-ridden castle for hidden treasures (for measly points too – it’s hardly worth it). Touch anything even remotely spikey and you go “pop!”. You also have a slow leak so must find pump stations to keep the air topped-up. As if the game wasn’t difficult enough…

I had multiple goes over the space of a couple of hours and the most I ever scored was 15 points. I think you get one point for each item of treasure… The measly bloody programmer! 🙂

Thankfully, Airball was converted to other systems and proved a bit more interesting than this Dragon 32 version. The Atari ST version of Airball is much better.

More: Airball on Wikipedia