Oxyd

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Oxyd is a computer puzzle game released for the Amiga, Atari, Macintosh, PC, and the NeXT platform by Dongleware Verlags GmbH in 1992.

It is a game of puzzles and tests that challenge you to restart all the oxygen generators (called Oxyds) on your home planet.

The player controls a small black marble that rolls around and picks things up, touches things to activate them, and bashes things to move them. The game's playfield is called a landscape. To get to the next landscape, the player must open all the Oxyds on the current landscape, which is done by touching them, but they will only stay open if you touch Oxyds of the same color in sequence.

There are clues on many landscapes: some are helpful, but others are confusing or not so helpful. To help the player there are bombs, dynamite, lasers, mirrors, hidden passages, and other useful items. To retard the player there are bottomless pits, crumbling floors, slides, pools of water to drown in, quicksand, and assorted traps.

At the time of its release, Oxyd gained enough popularity to spawn a number of sequels: Oxyd Magnum, Oxyd Extra, and per.Oxyd (also known as Oxyd 2). Additionally, Oxyd itself was a sequel to a lesser-known game, called Esprit.

The Oxyd series is no longer maintained by Dongleware.

Mad Data, with the permission of Dongleware, is reviving the series.

OZONE is a 3D-implementation of OXYD.

[edit] Marketing method

The marketing method of the Oxyd series was quite unique: you could obtain the complete games for free from shareware-CDs, for example. Then, you could play through the first ten levels without any restrictions. From the eleventh Level onwards, however, so-called "Magic Stones" were blocking crucial parts and passageways of the landscapes, mostly rendering progress impossible. To remove these Stones, you needed to buy the "Oxyd Book" which contained ca. 150 pages of tables, containing codes which you could look up with the information given on the Magic Stone. This book would cost about as much as a copy of a video game.