Drelbs1983

Drelbs is a maze game written by Kelly Jones for the Atari 8-bit family and published by Synapse Software in 1983.

The playfield is a maze of gates, similar to the Lady Bug arcade game, which can be rotated 90 degrees by pushing into them. The player controls a walking eyeball called a drelb, with the goal of flipping the gates so they create closed boxes.

Pursuing the drelb are square trollaboars who can also use the gates, but can’t seal them into boxes. There is an empty border on the outside the maze patrolled by screwhead tanks which shoot at the drelb.

Occasionally one of the boxes becomes what the manual calls a “drelbish window to the dark corridor.” This leads to a separate screen where the goal is to free—by touching—as many drelbs as possible while avoiding gorgolytes.

Completing the dark corridor, or kissing a randomly appearing “mystery lady”, awards a bonus based on the number of completed boxes.