Orm and Cheep: The Birthday Party

Orm and Cheep: The Birthday Party is a game based on the British children's puppet TV show from the 80s on CITV, where the two main characters are friends, Orm (Worm) and Cheep (Bird). It is Orm's birthday and with the help of Cheep, Orm is trying to organise his party in three parts. Before the start of the game, a reaction test is played to determine the difficulty and this has the words Orm and Cheep at the top of the screen. Each words moves downwards and the word is stopped as close to a line. The keyboard is used and just one key press is needed to play each part of the game and they consist off:

Part One: Orm wants to make a birthday cake but all the ingredients are in jars on a high shelf so Orm gets Cheep to get the ingredients for him. This part is single-screen and viewed from the side with Orm on the bottom of the screen and the jars and Cheep at the top. Orm first shows what is in each jar before holding one of the ingredients and the jars have no indication of their contents. Cheep moves along the jars and when the player thinks he over the correct jar then a key press has Cheep looking inside. The game continues once all ingredients have been found correctly.

Part Two: While Orm is making his cake, he has sent Cheep out into the countryside to find his friends, Snail, Mouse, Hedgehog and Mole. This part is a flick-screen maze game viewed from above at an elevated angle. On each screen is a signpost and this shows the way Cheep can go by highlighting each part of the signpost and a press of a key moves Cheep in that direction. As well as finding the four friends for the party, they are also needed to scare off Rat, Crow and Cat with each nasty animal needing a certain two friends to scare them off. An extra part to this part of the game has you in a network of tunnels belonging to Mole where you must move through openings to find Mole and bring him to the surface. If you have Mole with you and you attempt to go down a tunnel with a nasty animal then mole runs away and has to be found again. Once all four friends have been found and the three nasty animals have been scared off then you can go back home.

Part Three: It is time for the party and on the table are the placings for the party but everyone is sat in the wrong place and need to be sat in the correct place for the party to start. This part is a single-screen and is viewed from above at an elevated angle. On the table are six coloured hats corresponding to the colour of the friends and each friend has to sit at the right coloured hat. Orm sits at the bottom left of the screen so there is a space at the table and here you can move the friends into the correct position. Each friend is highlighted one at a time for a few seconds and when the friend you want to move is highlighted then a press of a key moves him there. Once all the friends are in the correct position then it is time to put the cake on the table but Crow has made an appearance and the friends once again have moved places so you must repeat to finally finish the game.