Polar Bear in Space prototypes

2023 Silvan Reinhold / Psytronik Software

Platform: Commodore 64

If you haven’t seen Polar Bear in Space already, then you are missing out on a wonderful shooter/platformer which has elements of Wizball, Retrograde and even Dropzone with the explosion of the main protagonist.

At the time of writing, a new Black Edition of the game is immiment, which features new music by Jon Wells and a specially produced loading screen by Robin Levy. Silvan has also written a brilliant book that details how the game was all put together, which we recommend you keeping an eye out for.

I had the privilege to meet Silvan at the recent Zzap!Live event in August, and whilst talking – Silvan mentioned he had done a number of prototypes whilst developing Polar Bear in Space. So we asked if there might be a possibility of adding some early protos to the GTW site. Silvan was very happy to oblige, so here we are.

Silvan has provided GTW with two very early character test demos, showing how the main character would interact with the background graphics. There are also some screenshots showing early test graphics and variations, and then finally some video clips showing elements not used in the final game.

It is with huge thanks to Silvan for passing on some early glimpses of the game before it was finished. Be sure to check out Silvan’s book about the development of the game (see below for book links), which is one of the most detailed development accounts i’ve seen and was a brilliant read – plus of course also the finished game itself.

Book links

Silvan has said that the book has just passed Amazon’s review process, so it may take a few days to show as available in all countries and to have the “Look inside” feature. But here are the links for the UK Amazon for now: