LittleBear
says: The second mouse gets the cheese.
30.09.06
September Notables
The best of the month: Gradle Unison, Xadlak PLUS, Demolition Gunner, and XenoBlast.
29.09.06
Nanozoa
Nanozoa was reviewed a few days ago at Independent Gaming. It’s a pretty vanilla arena shooter, nothing too innovative but still fun to play. I do like the graphics, though. They’re 3D objects rendered in mostly black and white. There are some pictures of the process up at the game’s website. Nice stuff.
28.09.06
XenoBlast
XenoBlast is another vertical shooter from Parallax Factory. Similar to XNeo in gameplay, I feel XenoBlast is a stronger effort.
The graphics are one of the strongest points of the game. In the demo you get to fly in 2 levels, over Earth and then Mars. Not surprisingly there’s lots of parallax scrolling, on multiple levels, as well as cloud/fog and various other effects. The ships themselves are very nice sprites, with some very good and interesting designs. Unfortunately the graphics are also a little too intense for my machine, as the slowdown is very bad at times… the games seems to go into a Matrix-like bullet-time every 30 or so seconds.
As with XNeo, there’s a free demo and the full version is very reasonably priced. Try it, and if you like it, buy it, so we can see more work from Parallax Factory.
XNeo
XNeo is a pleasant surprise, it’s a pretty good vertical shmup with one annoying exception. It suffers from some distracting pauses, with the game stuttering from time to time. I suspect this has something to do with the graphics engine, but I’m not sure.
The philosophy of Parallax Factory, the game’s developers, is simple: Old school is good school. It shows in the game. The graphics are great, full of modern effects, evenly matched by the sound. I really like the background used. Sometimes games with this much detail seem slow paced to me, but XNeo is quick and responsive. The first level did seem to drag on too long though, and then crashed as I was about to meet the first boss.
Gameplay is simple, shoot everything that comes your way (it likely wouldn’t be written about here if that wasn’t the case). Collect powerups to eventually turn your single-shot into 4 in the front with sideways and rear shooting as well. You can regain your health, and there appears a third powerup, perhaps a speed boost.
Despite some small problems, the game’s worth trying out. There’s a free demo to download and the full version is available at a good price.
27.09.06
Riders on the Storm: Eye Candy
Latest Demo of Riders on the Storm via Java Webstart. This version should support Windows, MacOSX (PPC), and Linux. A stand-alone download is also available for Windows:
Riders on the Storm – Fluid Demo
This program shows off the fluid dynamics and offers a bit of eye candy. I haven’t had the opportunity to test it on many systems, but it should work as long as your OpenGL drivers are up-to-date. Even if they’re not it should work, as the rendering doesn’t use anything fancy.
The small black dot is your mouse cursor, the left button adds density to the system. Drag the cursor while pressing the right button to add velocity. I’d like to add an interface to play around with the viscosity, as well as the diffusion and dissipation rates.
