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Mini-shump mini-review madness - part 2! Mini-review madness rears its ugly head again as I introduce five new mini shmups. Again, all are free (although one requires some work). Some have really creative approaches to the genre that should entertain even the most jaded veteran, while others just bring some decent quality control to the table (and even their own voice actresses and animated intros!). Two of the games are downright experimental, but even if they don't satisfy much as whole games, I encourage you to try them just to see the brilliant ideas to the table. You may recognize some of the developers here from the previous mini-review madness, so be sure to check out their other work as well. Dan! Da! Dan! - OMEGA Dan! Da! Dan! takes the shmup in a new direction with its block-based puzzles. Instead of typical swarms of enemies, the game has you navigating your fighter through a field of blocks that you must destroy in order to clear a path forward as the screen scrolls down. The trick is that the blocks may contain blasts (which are at least very clearly labeled), so hitting too many at once, or accidentally causing a chain reaction with one of the exploding blocks can be devastating. Some of the blocks also sport cannons, and if you aren't careful, you can get yourself hedged into a narrow corridor, especially as more indestructible blocks begin appearing on the later levels. To help clear some room, you have a short range ring shot that can be charged up and is wide enough to hit blocks on either side of you. It even moves through those pesky indestructible walls to help you clear out obstacles and cannons on the later levels. And to further assist you, every minute or so your super shot charges up, allowing you to spray the whole room with devastating amounts of fire. The graphics in Dan! Da! Dan! have a charming pastel cartooney look to them, and give the game a very lighthearted feel, and the cartooney music keeps pace. Much of the game matches this with a relaxed pace, but it will speed up dramatically when you blow up enough blocks to start advancing in the level. And advance you must, because aside from being crushed by a wall of blocks scrolling you off the screen, the saddest way to die in this game is to run out of time. Besides, you wouldn't want to miss out the deadly block-monstrosities that cap off each level, would you?
Shooter's Solitude - Hikoza'n-CHI X This is one of Hikoza'n-CHI X's older projects, but you may know them from the classic Warning Forever (which is reviewed in our first mini-review madness). Shooter's Solitude is a little on the low-resolution side, and it's only one level long, but that level ends on one of the most monstrously difficult bosses of all time. In addition it sports some decent gameplay design that really makes you lament the fact that the authors never made a full game out of it. In the game you fly over the cityscape of level 1 (the only level) and shoot up some basic badguys. The trick is that they are color-coded. You have four types of weapons, and hitting two or more badguys of the same color in a row powers up the equivalent weapon. It's a neat concept, but I found just shooting down everyone in the level powers up your most important weapons to full or just thereabouts anyways. Generally you only use your yellow automatic spread weapon (the default) through the level, and when you need the green seeker lasers and red power beam at the boss, you will have maxxed them out. The level is pretty fun, but you'll have it down after a few tries. It's when you get to the end that things change. The last boss pops up on you (killing you if you forget to read your warnings) and then opens with a horrendous power beam attack. I mean, there's no question that his first attack is cheap, but it doesn't even bother me because it looks so sweet. After this you go through a grueling toe-to-toe battle with the boss, during which he unleashes every possible weapon in the book. This is where you can bust out the traditional shmup bombs, but the trick is that each bomb depletes your currently-selected weapon, so be ready to switch to a backup. You'll need more than a bit of luck and skill to beat this guy, but even with the low-res graphics, the pretty and intense fight and the meaty explosions are worth the price of admission.
Chromium B.S.U. - the Reptile Labour Project Chromium B.S.U. is an admirable project: an open source desktop diversion. Because of this, it can be compiled and run on almost any OS, provided you have the correct libraries. Unlike most of the games here, it primarily uses the mouse, which makes gameplay pretty different with fast and easy control. It boasts some pretty sharp (and high resolution) graphics and the ability to play audio off a CD (or even play off a playlist in Linux, if you know what you ar doing). Now unfortunately, despite its cross-platform claims, this game is pretty buggy under Windows, but that is not the least of its worries. The wonderful lighting effects and graphics can't hide that Chromium is just not a very good game. It is extremely repetitive, with the enemy consisting of swarms or slow-moving and nearly identical ships, which have no "AI" to speak of, only broken by an occasional cheap sub-boss ship or boss. The powerups have nice effects, but they are equally bland, consisting of increases to your forwards shot or more shields. It doesn't help that the game is almost relentlessly cheap, either. The weapon powerups you get in the game gradually get used up over time, so after you've shot enough, your shot will lose that powerup until you find another one. The main problem is that the game gives you powerups on a fairly infrequent basis, and you are often left with your basic shot or the upgrade of that, and most enemy ships can absorb an enormous amount of shots with those. To make it worse, you lose a life anytime an enemy ship makes it past the end of the screen, so you are often forced to just ram ships at a loss to your shields just because you can't shoot them all fast enough. Dodging shots is actually quite easy and you have a huge life bar, but since you cannot let a single ship slip past, you often have to force yourself into the line of fire to remove a column of enemies. Starting in level 2, they add very cheap swarms of homing dots that pretty much cost you a life every time you meet them. Hopefully the creator of this game can someday make some improvements or take his graphical skills to a product with better gameplay. Until then I'd give Chromium B.S.U. a pass.
Transcend - by Jason Rohrer First of all, let me point out that Transcend is based around a totally different mentality than many games these days. Mr. Rohrer is making something that is as much multimedia art as it is a game. You won't find any sort of lives or dying here, so it's not "hard" in the traditional sense. What is happening here is that the game is supposed to be about the play experience, and it pulls most of this off very well. You propel your "glyph" (your ship) around a grid filled with anti-glyphs, which you are out to destroy. The graphics is the game are simple and beautiful. Bosses, resources, grunts, and even your ship are lovingly crafted of subtly shaded polygons, which gives a stunning floral effect you may not see elsewhere. The palettes very by level, but range from subtle shades of pastel to dark, muted tones The powerup system itself is the core of the game's artistic design, with resource items littering the gridlike playfield, which you must pick up and bring to the center of the board. Once there, they open up into pulsating floral patterns, and begin producing some brilliant trancey electronic music. Before this point, your shots can't even hurt the little enemies that spawn on the grid, much less the boss, but as you collect more resources, your shots expand into increasingly nifty floral patterns, allowing you to smush the little enemies before they can move your resources too far from the center of the screen. Of course, once you have all the items in the middle of the screen, you can beat the boss into submission with a floral ass-whupping. Transcend is designed as a very playable work of art, and it does the art part well, but the failings of this game are on the playability side. With no real loss of life, and very little variation in gameplay, a session can get old really quickly. There are also only 3 levels, and while the artistic experience is unique, it only keeps you in the game so long. It won't take long for you to burn out on the game. That being said, it's a very neat experiment, and everyone should try the experience at least once. It won't cost you anything, and with any luck we will be seeing more fascinating art pieces from Mr. Rohrer in the future.
Very Serious Robodoom - Sean Barrett For those of you with a little bit of technical know-how and a taste for experiment, I move on to an even more experimental game. To call it a game is maybe an overstatement, since it is really more like a working prototype of a game. The control isn't that great, there's no sound, and the graphics are terrible by any modern standard. But the core of this little game is so brilliant that it still makes an excellent time-waster, and we can only hope that some day someone makes this into a mod for a fancier engine. Very Serious Robodoom is the result of the First Indie Game Jam (number 0, of course), in which game developers work on new ideas that might be ignored by mainstream gaming. The emphasis in Robodoom is to show you just how hopeless your position is. As the game progresses, your screen will gradually pull back more and more, revealing the thousands of baddies roaming the landscape. Even with the dated graphics, the effect is awe-inspiring! Although you may realize that the graphics are poor and there's no sound, this game can be pretty addicting. The sheer near-impossibility of it calls to you. However, due to some restrictions on redistributing the sprites you will need a Doom 2 wad and some elbow grease to get the sprites in the game working. Not for completely non-techie folks or those who demand cutting edge production values!
But don't take our word for it! Go on and grab the games here:
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