Introducing Spherica

And welcome to Alexandra Interactive!

This game is based on one I played at primary school on the BBC Micro Model B.

Weirdly, I can’t find any screenshots of the original game — which I think was called Multiplicadians, named after the classic Arcadians. I can’t find a single mention of it online, which is odd considering there are some pretty good libraries of BBC Micro software.

I have a vivid memory of the 5.25” floppy disk the game was on, with a handwritten label that just said Multi.

Anyway, in this educational version, each alien was embodied with an arithmetic question and would slowly descend towards you. You could enter an answer and fire a rocket, but the alien would only be destroyed if the answer was correct.

I found this game particularly fun after having times tables (thankfully) drummed into me as a kid, and I often finished in the top one or two in the class.

Rebuilding it in Unreal Engine 5

Ever since I discovered game engines, I’ve had an idea to recreate this game, and I’ve decided to do that with Unreal Engine 5.

One thing I knew I wanted to do was move to a 3D version of the concept, where a 3D turret rotates and fires missiles at slowly descending aliens. Each alien still poses a simple multiplication question, and the player must enter the answer before firing the missile.

Not sure exactly how educationally appropriate this is, considering the scale of the munitions and subsequent explosions involved — but as an Unreal Engine learning exercise it covers quite a lot, so I’m going for it.

So follow me on this journey as I learn this vast engine and recreate a favourite from nearly 40 years ago! 🙏