Archive for the ‘Freeware’ Category

Rocks – Can you smell what the rocks are cookin’?

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

June02 Obviously rocks can’t cook, I mean, they have absolutely no utensils.  You could cook some rocks though.  Well it wouldn’t make for a tasty meal, but you could toast them with laser fire!  You know.  Beep…… Boop…… Beep……. Boop……. Jing-jing-jing. Beep… Boop… Beep… Boop… Jing-jing. Do-de-do-de-do-de-do-de-do.  Beep. Boop. Beep. Boop. Jing-jing-jing. Pash!  Next ship.  Okay so the beeps and boops is the music or background ambient sound, the jing-jing is the sound of the laser fire, the do-de-do is that little flying saucer that comes out for extra bonus points, and the “Pash” is the sound of your ultimate demise.  Okay so it’s hard to faithfully reproduce the sounds of Asteroids in text, but I did the best I could, did I not?  Asteroids one of the founding fathers of games.  Well I guess it’s not a person, so it wouldn’t be a founding father exactly.  Part of the bedrock of games.  Or something.  Rocks by Ooeyug.  Is generally an Asteroids clone.  Of course shooting rocks isn’t the only thing you can do in it.

What I think of it:  It’s great, the graphics, and sounds (and the few musical snippets) are frosting.  It also has a few things inspired by games like Geometry Wars.  It’s fun, but with a warning.  It is EXTREMELY challenging.  My butt got handed to me quite early.

So read on, all you rock blasting fanatics!

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Evacuation by jsb

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

MiniReview7SS Well this was a no brainer.  The ADVANCING WALL OF DOOM in jsb’s Evacuation for the Ludum Dare 48 hour competition number 14 was just that.  It is a wall of doom that just keeps bouncing.  All the villagers are idiots, until you come show them the way.  Move your guy around with WASD keys, and round them up by going toward them.  A little exclamation mark appears above their heads and they follow you.  If they get too close to the wall a frowny happens, and when that happens you better round them up quick or they become pancakes.  Little tiny pancakes.  Once you get them near a bunker they turn to smiley faces (above their heads) and they automatically go into the bunker.  I only played the game briefly, and there were 300 people to rescue, but you could only let 10 die before the game was over.  So I don’t know if there was more than that one level, if you could call it a level.  Oh yeah if you get a powerup you can hit ‘E’ to use it.  Spacebar is supposed to show you where your little guy is.  This game is so simple even a 5-year-old could play it.  And yet not easy to master.  Got to hand it to the author for making it so simple to play.  A good pick-up and play game.  The graphics are neat.  It’s overhead view so there was no need to make everything so detailed.  It was almost impressionistic but still pleasant to look at.  There was only sound a crushing down of the wall coming down every so often, and a few beeps when, well i don’t know, not sure if it was guys going into bunkers or just being aware that I was there showing the way.  In any case, give it a shot.  Click the name after the actual umm name, of the game, to get it.

Name: Evacuation

Developer: jsb

Triumph of Time by Muku

Monday, May 25th, 2009

MiniReview6SS Here’s an interesting and original game.  It’s called the Triumph of Time by muku for the Ludum Dare 48 hour compo #14.  Place pylons around a sun to build up barriers against a purple anti-matter cloud.  The only thing that can stave off this onslaught of the ‘purple cloud’ are particles through each of the barriers using the pylons.  The only way to get the particles is by placing pylons around a sun.  Place pylons by left clicking.  Space to pause/un-pause.  You can also scroll and zoom.  The graphics are somewhat abstract but makes you think of older games that didn’t have the graphics power.  I could see this game run on old consoles and computers if the author chose to write it for them.  There’s some background music, but apparently not really any sound.  The version I played was the post-competition version, where the author added a tutorial mode and a level editor.  The thing is very very simple to play but is also very difficult to master.  I couldn’t even finish the first tutorial level.  Thankfully, the first actual level is a little more forgiving, probably because of the shape of the game board which can differ from level to level.  I still didn’t “win’” in the sense of actually accomplishing the goal of the level (save 60 quadrants) but I did manage to save something like 35 or 36.  If he could ramp the difficulty way down I think it would be a really fun game.

Name: Triumph of Time

Developer: muku