ZANKLE SOFT is proud to present the first demo video of its latest game for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, currently under development.

Previously announced with the working title of "Calais", the definitive one is: LA PUCELLE. A game of strategy, management and tactical combat set in the dramatic scenery of the last stages of the Hundred Years' War, centered on the extraordinary figure of Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orléans.

The project is made with ZX Basic by Jose "Boriel" Rodriguez, plus several parts written in Z80 Assembly language. It takes inspiration from Chip Software's Joan Of Arc, released in 1989 for the Amiga, Atari ST and IBM-PC, but it is not a direct conversion. A number of changes have been made, for instance:

- new enemy characters have been added, Bertrand de Dinan and Philip III the Good;
- new troops have been introduced, the crossbowmen;
- the previously generic "troops" have been divided into pikemen and swordsmen;
- each character with an army leader ability of "good" and "strong" has been assigned a special bonus feature;
- it is now possible to improve the provinces under player control in order to receive some bonuses;
- more music instead of the general theme heard throughout the game in the original, which has been limited to game start.

In addition to that, some inaccurate historical references have been corrected, although it must be given credit to the original designers, apart from creating a great game, for the considerable amount of research they did back then, in an era when information was not at your fingertips and the only way to learn more about a topic such as the Hundred Years' War was to visit your local library and consult all the books you could find about it. Also, some names left in French in the English edition have been translated (e.g. "Bourgogne" is now "Burgundy").

The most radical change is yet to be seen, however. The peculiar blend of strategy and arcade could have been fine at the end of the Eighties, but now it looks rather incoherent, not to mention the fact that with some practice, the arcade subgames of Joan Of Arc can be mastered pretty soon and tend to be repetitive. Battles and sieges will be replaced by turn-based tactical combat screens. This is the part that will be dealt with in the next stage of development.

The video shows the full introductory sequence and almost all of the features that have been developed and tested at the time. Please keep in mind that this is a demonstration of a work-in-progress title, and the features shown may be different in the final product. Also, some partially developed parts have not been presented in this demonstration.

The minimum hardware requirements are a ZX Spectrum 48K with a DivIDE/DivMMC interface. A version for the 128 ZX Spectrum and later models is also planned, the only difference being the AY music score instead of the beeper one of the 48K.

La Pucelle is being developed simultaneously in English (shown in the video) and Italian, with planned versions in French and German, the other two languages of the inspiration source. Spanish and Portuguese versions are considered too, due to the large amount of Spectrum fans in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries. There are no specific dates set or foreseen for the release of the final game - for now, let's say it should appear somewhere in 2024...

Hoping to have made you interested in La Pucelle, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!