Speedball online, basically. The Amiga futur-o-sport classic hasn’t materialized as an emulated browser game in its own right — but Crunchball 3000 from Ben Olding Games will do very nicely in the meantime. For those new to the idea: run, throw ball, tackle, and don’t bother appealing to the ref — there isn’t one. Even if there was, he’d probably just get face-pummelled to the floor like everyone else. Crunchball is more Speedball 1 than …
Monthly Archives: May 2009
Party Boat
Messhof (aka Mark Essen) has just released this dodge-the-missiles game. It is fun. But it’s only fun when you’ve worked through the three ‘stages of comprehension’, which are: 1. realising that you’re rotating and thrusting, and — oh! — you can suddenly control the blasted helicopter 2. remembering that the title screen told you that you can ‘FLIP FOR MULTIPLIERS!!’ 3. stopping trying to flee from the missiles, and starting to weave elegant looping 360-degree-flipping …
Fathom
You must play this. The first few seconds of Fathom’s shooty platforming are pleasant enough: chunky pixels, slick control, synthy sounds. But are you thinking the opening boss battle seems suspiciously hard? You’d be right. Suddenly, Fathom turns into something very beautiful indeed. We won’t spoil the surprise. Except to say that the title will, eventually, make a whole lot of sense. Play Fathom (Flash)
Squid Yes, Not So Octopus: Squid Harder (beta)
Yes, somewhere in the midst of that image above is your ship. Squid Harder is the sequel to the original SYNSO, and things have got about 10,000 times more Geometry Wars in the interim. This shooter is insane. The easiest level asks you to survive for just 60 minutes in a kaleidoscope of throbbing explosions and fizzing death, and we only managed it on our third go. SYNSO2’s ship controls are a bit slippy-slidey, yep, …
Blasterman vs Yellowskull
This little platform-shooter gets it right in all the right places. It’s about shooting roving droids and solving the odd door puzzle — but the slickness, the sounds, the little ‘boomph’ as you stomp on a switch and bounce perfectly off — it’s several notches above the average. Link to download (Windows, 9.2Mb)
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