Litil Divil
CD32 cover art
Developer(s)Gremlin Graphics
Publisher(s)Gremlin Graphics
Philips Interactive Media (US)
Rushware (Germany)
M.C.M. Software (Spain)
MicroByte (Argentina)
Platform(s)CD32, MS-DOS, CD-i, Windows, OS X, Linux
Release1993: CD-i, MS-DOS
1994: CD32
2011: Windows, OS X
2014: Linux
Genre(s)Action
Mode(s)Single-player

Litil Divil is a video game released by Gremlin Graphics Software in 1993. The game stars Mutt, a dog-like devil in the Underworld whose goal is to obtain the "Mystical Pizza of Plenty" from the Labyrinth of Chaos. Litil Divil's release was delayed several times, and the game was initially advertised in magazines under the name Little Divil.[1][2]

Gameplay

The player takes control of a little red devil called Mutt who is trying to retrieve the "Mystical Pizza of Plenty" from the Labyrinth of Chaos.[3] The dungeon consists of a maze navigated from an over-the-shoulder perspective and rooms where Mutt is facing various riddles.[4]

Development

Litil Divil first began development in July 1990, with the Amiga CD32 version releasing after four years in development in August 1994; Litil Divil's release was delayed several times.[5][1] However, the original art design behind Litil Divil is stated to have happened five years before release. Litil Divil's demo was initially created by Emerald Software, and was being developed concurrently with Plan 9 From Outer Space in 1992 by Gremlin Sheffield, and was named "Little Divil" at the time.[2] Litil Divil was first released for PC on CD, and a later floppy release on PC required frames to be removed from animation and the quality of the music to be lowered due to compression. The One interviewed Tommy Rolfe, one of Litil Divil's programmers, for information regarding its development in a pre-release interview. Litil Divil was programmed by Gremlin Ireland, but work on the game was originally begun by Gremlin Sheffield, which Rolfe said it began five years ago, producing some artwork, sketches and things before it passed to them.[5] One of the original designers for Litil Divil was Heimdall 2 artist Jerr O'Carroll, prior to his departure from Gremlin and subsequent employment with Core Design in 1991. O'Carroll's artstyle is present in Mutt's design.[5][1]

Originally there were five different Mutts who were "competing with each other to get through five levels of Hell"; the development team decided that it would be better to concentrate on one character, and Hell was later changed to Underworld.[5] The plot device of The Mystic Pizza of Plenty was introduced late into development. Steve McKevitt from Litil Divil's publisher Gremlin Graphics named the game, Litil Divil was chosen as opposed to 'Little Devil' because McKevitt's wife has an Irish accent, and "she and her family always say "Ooh, you litil divil" to the kids, when they're naughty".[5]

Litil Divil was originally intended for release for the Super Famicom CD drive "in 1990 or 1991", but due to the CD drive's cancelled release, Rolfe states that "while we were waiting around, we thought it might be a good idea to start converting it to the PC CD-ROM. After a year or so we realized that we'd probably never see the Super Famicom CD, so we just went full steam ahead with the PC version".[5] The Amiga CD32 port was impeded by the Amiga's lower RAM; Rolfe states that "we developed Litil Divil originally for a PC with a minimum of 4Mb RAM. So you can see 2Mb isn't really that much when you're creating a graphics-intensive program like Litil Divil ... We recently converted Litil Divil for the [CD-i], which has 2.5Mb RAM, so we had already compacted the data down to that level - and for the CD32 we just had to go a little bit further".[5]

Release

A reworked Sega Mega Drive conversion was planned but never released.[6][7] Likewise, a port for the Atari Jaguar CD was in development by Gremlin Interactive and slated to be published around the second quarter of 1995, but was never released.[8][9][10][11]

Reception

Computer Gaming World in March 1994 called Litil Divil "a delightful graphic adventure", predicting that the game "should cause quite a stir ... stuffed full of game play and long term enjoyment". The magazine predicted that a sequel and imitations would appear.[15] The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly had a moderately positive reaction to the CD-i version, praising the multifaceted gameplay, the graphics, the sound, and the cute, humorous personality of the player character, but criticizing the lagging controls. They awarded it a score of 6.5 out of 10.[16]

Next Generation reviewed the CD-i version of the game and gave one star out of five, commenting that the various levels fail to offer anything more than a stimulus-response style of play that will have most players (even children) disinterested inside of a few minutes.[12]

The One gave the Amiga version of Litil Divil an overall score of 74%, criticizing the fact that the player cannot save the game at will, instead requiring finishing a level or discovering a save room, as well as the tunnel sections of the game, calling them "tedious", and furthermore a source of "over-riding boredom". The One praised the art style and comical sound effects, and enjoyed the puzzle-solving and arcade sections of the game, but found the lengthy tunnel sections to be filler, remarking that without them the game would be more fun, calling Litil Divil a "missed opportunity".[17]

Re-release

Funbox Media re-released the game in DotEmu (PC), Good Old Games (PC) and GamersGate (PC, Mac) on May 11, 2011,[18][19] June 21, 2011,[20] and March 19, 2014,[21] respectively. OS X and Linux versions were added in GOG.com by Blue Moon Red Owl, the current distributor of the game on GOG.com, on May 9, 2013 and July 24, 2014.[22][23][24] Kiss, Ltd. re-released the game on Steam on March 19, 2014 for PC only and Desura for PC, Mac and Linux.[25][26]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Litil Divil". The One. No. 54. emap Images. March 1993. p. 40.
  2. 1 2 "Little Divil". The One. No. 40. emap Images. January 1992. p. 32.
  3. ↑ Keen, Steve (September 1994). "Litil Divil". CDi Magazine. No. 1. Haymarket Magazines Ltd. pp. 16–17 – via Internet Archive.
  4. ↑ "Dicing with the Divil". Everything Amiga. dreamkatcha. Retrieved 12 January 2017.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Divil's Advocaat". The One. No. 71. emap Images. September 1994. pp. 36–37.
  6. ↑ "News: What the Divil..." Mean Machines Sega. No. 21. EMAP. August 1994. p. 10.
  7. ↑ "Sega Pro News Scoop - FronTLine: Divil Inside". Sega Pro. No. 30. Paragon Publishing. April 1994. p. 7.
  8. ↑ "News - Jaguar Plugs into the CD revolution - Jaguar CD games in development". Edge. No. 20. May 1995. pp. 14–15.
  9. ↑ "Feature - XT Generation Report - Atari Jaguar". MAN!AC (in German). No. 20. Cybermedia. June 1995. p. 40.
  10. ↑ "Breaking - Jaguar Plugs into the CD revolution - Jaguar CD games in development". Next Generation. No. 6. Imagine Media. June 1995. pp. 18–19.
  11. ↑ Nepožitek, Marek (July 1995). "Konzole - Jaguar+CD - CD a virtuální realita již tento rok?". LeveL (in Czech). No. 6. Naked Dog, s.r.o. p. 44. Archived from the original on 2018-09-20. Retrieved 2019-01-05.
  12. 1 2 "Finals". Next Generation. No. 1. Imagine Media. January 1995. p. 93.
  13. ↑ Firme, Matt (January 1995). "Litil Divil". PC Gamer US. Archived from the original on 2000-03-11. Retrieved 2019-01-05.
  14. ↑ Keen, Steve (August 1994). "Litil Divil". CD-i (7): 18–19. Retrieved April 3, 2022.
  15. ↑ Matthews, Robin (March 1994). "Rally Round The Wicket, Boys!". Over There. Computer Gaming World. pp. 98, 100. Archived from the original on 2017-11-10. Retrieved 2017-11-10.
  16. ↑ "Review Crew: Lil [sic] Divil". Electronic Gaming Monthly. No. 63. Ziff Davis. October 1994. p. 42.
  17. ↑ "Litil Divil Review". The One. No. 72. emap Images. October 1994. pp. 64–67.
  18. ↑ DotEmu (2011-05-11). "DotEmu post on Facebook about Litil Divil release". Facebook.
  19. ↑ DotEmu (2011-04-22). "Guilty Gear Isuka now on DotEmu.com!". Develop. Archived from the original on 2014-07-14. Retrieved 2014-06-08.
  20. ↑ GOG.com (2011-06-21). "New release: Litil Divil". CD Projekt. Archived from the original on 2014-07-14. Retrieved 2014-06-08.
  21. ↑ GamersGate (2014-03-19). "GamersGate post on Facebook about Litil Divil release". Facebook.
  22. ↑ GOG.com (2013-05-09). "Mac Game Update: 10 New Classic Additions". CD Projekt. Archived from the original on 2014-07-14. Retrieved 2014-06-08.
  23. ↑ GOG.com (2014-08-19). "GOG.com Now Supports Linux!". CD Projekt. Archived from the original on 2014-09-08. Retrieved 2014-09-29.
  24. ↑ Charlie Hall (2014-07-24). "Linux users: GoG.com lauches more than 50 games for you". Polygon. Archived from the original on 2014-07-30. Retrieved 2014-09-29.
  25. ↑ Valve (2014-05-19). "Now Available on Steam - Litil Divil". Steam. Archived from the original on 2014-07-14. Retrieved 2014-06-08.
  26. ↑ Kiss Newsdesk (2014-03-19). "'DESERT THUNDER' AND 'LITIL DIVIL' OUT TOMORROW". Kiss, Ltd. Archived from the original on 2014-06-09. Retrieved 2014-06-08.
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