Our next banner entrant is Bantam City Games with Invadazoid. It’s like Space Invaders meets Arkanoid. Actually it’s more like Space Invaders and Arkanoid. Well it’s mostly Space Invaders with one mode that allows you to use the ship as a paddle with ball, and another mode that’s all Space Invaders. Okay I give this two thumbs up (I guess I just started to do the thumbs thing lately, I figure it’s easier for you to figure out how I feel about a certain game, thumbs up is good, thumbs down is bad, and one thumb up and one thumb down is like in the middle). The game makes the progression interesting enough you want to keep playing, however focus is always on keeping your ball in play or not getting hit by rockets, so the high-scores don’t really figure into it. Anyways want to know more about why I like it, continue reading after the break.
I love simple, you love simple, we all screen for ice cream! This is no exception. Just play this like you would any other. Move the paddle with the mouse, fire weapon or shoot ball with a mouse button. That’s it. Your mission, Jim, should you choose to accept it, is to knock out all the aliens before they knock you out. I’m gonna knock you out, Invadazoid knock you out… I’m… umm nevermind. Anyways. Be careful, some of them fire rockets at you, but you can either hit them with the ball or shoot them too. Every so often is the proverbial cup of sugar, I mean flying saucer overhead for bonus points.
Invasion mode, where a flying saucer goes to major cities of the world and attacks them! Survival mode, just see how many invadazoids you can hit before they get you! Boss mode, which I don’t know what it is since it’s locked in the trial version, but I’m assuming you fight boss invadazoids in that mode. Finally there’s Classic mode which is just space invaders. You get to shoot, and only have one shot on screen at once. You simply clear the screen of invaders until you get to the next wave. All right, I found this highly addicting because you feel it’s really easy but you play and die and want to keep playing because you think you can do better. This is a good thing.
If I have to fault the game other than the fairly typical gameplay is the graphics. Now the invaders are cute, and have nice colors and what not. But the backgrounds and such feel like they’re 256 color and dithered. It doesn’t exactly date it, but it sort of does. Back when “super vga” resolution was actually getting some play, there were usually 256 colors but they had to dither it because higher res pictures meant they could put in more detail. So there was this transition period just before we got into 3d and out of 2d, and that’s what the graphics sort of look like. Like I said good, but dated. I suppose this means it runs well on older/slower machines which is probably a good thing. In any case dithering looks worse on my lcd monitor than it does on a regular crt one, especially at the resolution (looks to be about 640×480). Other than that I can’t really fault it. The sound and music is appropriate if not a little annoying but that’s ok it makes the experience much more urgent.
So if you want some retro-styled gaming action, then this game is for you. If you want yet-another-space-invaders-game, then this game is also for you. If you want massively-multiplayer online persistent worlds, then this game is not for you (shame on you for reading this, actually thanks for reading but still :-) )!
Name: Invadazoid
Developer: Bantam City Games
Platform: Windows
Price: $12 USD
Where you can get it: Download the demo Here!
Tags: Arkanoid, Bantam City Games, Indie Flux, Invadazoid, retro styled, Shooter, Space Invaders, Uhfgood
[…] Invadazoid – Part Space Invaders, Part Arkanoid, all game! […]