Created by Denton Designs and published by Ocean Software in 1987, Double Take is a weird fantasy shooter/puzzle game, and is one of those games where – even if you read the manual – you’re still unlikely to know about what the f**k is going on! I spent a few hours recently trying to work this game out, and came away just as confused as when I started…

You play a young particle physicist whose experiment has brought an opposite, mirrored universe into collision with our own. This results in objects being swapped between universes and instability between them. Your task is to therefore stabilise both by returning all objects to the correct universe. And when that’s done, you must then face off against Sumink, a malevolent being from the opposite universe.

The most important thing to understand about Double Take are the three small, round lights (set vertically on the left-hand screen) on the information panel at the bottom. After picking up an object in a room (which you do by placing yourself over it and pressing down and fire), the three lights will indicate its status. If the object is in the correct universe, the top light will be green (if it’s red, it’s not). If the object is in the correct room, the middle light will be green (if it’s not, the light will be red). And if the object is in the right state (ie. positive in the positive universe), then the light will be green (and if the light’s red, then its state will have to be flipped). So the basic aim is to get all three lights to show as green, before dropping the item (by pressing Space), and then moving onto the next object.

There are sixteen rooms in each universe and therefore 32 items in total to stabilise. Travel between rooms is via the twisters at the extreme right and left sides of the screen. You float towards and position yourself above one, then press down and fire to use it.

Double Take does have a shooting element to it too. As you float around, “aliens” will spawn and move around, and contact with these will deplete your energy (shown as a horizontal bar at the top of the bottom panel). This energy can only drop, and cannot be replenished, so must be protected at all costs. So you need to shoot aliens to stop them from sapping your energy.

Underneath the energy bar is the Universe Time Indicator, and when this drops to zero the universe changes automatically – flipping between both sides every few minutes.

You might also be wondering how to change the state of an object, and – to be honest – that is something I couldn’t fully figure out. The manual says that you have to walk through the “sparkling rain cloud” with the object in your possession, but all that seemed to do was change universes… Maybe I was getting the rain cloud mixed-up with something else? I don’t know. And will probably never know.

Double Take is intriguing initially, and does look good. The music is also excellent, but the gameplay itself is a too much of a head f**k to be properly enjoyable. Even when you think you know what you’re doing, actually getting objects to the correct place, and negotiating the different rooms is still extremely confusing. The objects I managed to ‘stabilise’ in Double Take seemed to be mostly by accident.

Unless you manage to figure out Double Take properly, then you’ll no doubt have the same feeling that I did – one of utter confusion.

More: Double Take on CSDb
More: Double Take (Manual) on archive.org