Barricade
Mathieu Rossignol has a game called Barricade that he’d like us to know about — so we gave it a whirl.
Gameplay has you trying to move one of a set of marbles — space by space — up through a board to the top, with each move determined by the roll of a dice. You can choose which marble to move, and you can move in a number of directions — so be prepared to do some strategizing.
If you’re lucky, you’ll have the option of landing on one of several black marbles interspersed on the board and use it to block the path of your opponent — hence the name Barricade. You can also send your opponent home if you land on one of their marbles.
Overall, it’s a great game, but there are some caveats. First, it was created with Java, which feels a little weird on the Mac. Second, the interface is very much Windows-esque, which can be a turnoff. But if you’re willing to overlook these points, and just get into the game, Barricade can be a lot of fun.
Posted Wednesday, May 6, 2009 in Playtime
Mind Wall is mind boggling
Big Download reviews a free game called Mind Wall, which came out of a recent competition. (And by the way, these competitions have been the source of a lot of cool new games.) It’s one of those puzzle games that are simple to grasp but difficult to master. You’re basically just trying to pass block shapes through walls without breaking them — but even that concept has so far eluded us at thriftmac headquarters. If you’re interested in trying the game, it’s a good a idea to read the review first so you can get the gist of how it’s played. Then download it.
Posted Saturday, May 2, 2009 in Playtime
uDevGames announces winners
uDevGames has an annual contest that encourages Mac developers to come up with hot new games. They’ve announced this year’s winners — all of which you can download and play for free. The overall winner is Laserface Jones vs Doomsday Odious, a game that promises plenty of action and a wide variety of weapons. Action games dominate among the entries, but you can also find strategy, puzzle, arcade and role-playing games.
Posted Monday, March 16, 2009 in Playtime
Two free games from Muryan
Muryan has released a couple of freeware games that will appeal to those who love the classics.
In Coblyn, you race against time and avoid obstacles to collect enough diamonds to unlock the exit to the next level. If this sounds at all familiar, the game harkens back to the 1980s and even includes 200 levels from that era. It’s a lot of fun, and involves a fair bit of strategy.
Reversi is a 3D version of the popular game where opponents take turns trying to surround each other’s tokens. Whoever has the most tokens flipped to his or her colour is the winner. The implementation is simple enough, but the computer opponent is fairly intelligent even at the easy level.
In case you’re interested, the developer has other freeware available for Palm and Windows.
Posted Wednesday, December 31, 2009 in Playtime
Savage 2 now freeware
Savage 2: A Tortured Soul combines first-person shooter, real-time strategy and role-playing game elements into one epic game — and now it’s freeware with a Mac version available. If nothing else, check out the screenshots — the graphics (while a bit bloody) are gorgeous.
Posted Thursday, December 11, 2008 in Playtime
Battle of the open source mascots
From the games-that-only-a-geek-could-love department comes Wormux, a game that pits open source characters against each other in cartoon-style battle. You choose the arena, then have team Tux, for example, go up against team Firefox. Fighting takes place by moving the characters around and letting loose explosive devices. The game is nonsensical, to be sure, but it does require some skill.
Posted Tuesday, December 9, 2008 in Playtime
Take a swipe at FluidTunes
Look, Mom, no hands — at least not on the keyboard or the mouse. Instead, I’m waving them around in the air. Welcome to FluidTunes, a fun little app that lets you use hand gestures via iSight to leaf through the songs (in coverflow mode) in iTunes and play them.
It’s a bit hit and miss, of course. Getting to the right song can be a challenge. And if someone walks into the room, their very presence can make FluidTunes do something unexpected. If nothing else, it’s a lot of fun — amaze your friends and family with the magic . . .
Posted Sunday, December 7, 2008 in Playtime
Sudoku is back
While doing some maintenance, I realized that we’ve been falling down on the job when it comes to a good freeware version of sudoku. We had two links, but one of them was dead. The other worked, but the game it led to was impossible to figure out.
So we apologize to sudoku fans and hope to make it up to you by introducing you to the recently released SudokuAdept from HexCat. It’s pleasing to the eye, and offers intuitive gameplay. There are plenty of preferences to tweak things the way you like them — and the developer promises more features are coming.
Posted Friday, November 21, 2008 in Playtime
The crisis continues
While looking around for cool, new Mac freeware, I came across a game under development called Amoebax. I downloaded it, just to see how it was coming along. As soon as I started playing it, I was reminded of . . . what?
It took awhile, but I finally figured it out. This one is a lot like a shareware favourite from years ago called Candy Crisis — a cute twist on Tetris where dropping candies glom together if they are the same colour, and explode if they gather in a group of four.
Candy Crisis was originally named Skittles and seemed to enjoy a lot of popularity until the makers of the candy likely stepped in and demanded that the developer stop appropriating their name. As Candy Crisis, the game gradually faded from view.
It turns out, though, that it lives on as an open source project. You can download and use it freely — with the only catch being that you must insert a supplied registration code. Amazingly, it still works, even on Intel Macs. In some cases, the graphics are a bit rough around the edges, but otherwise it looks and plays as great as ever.
Amoebax, on the other hand, is only at version 0.2, so it has a long way to before any fair comparisons can be made. The developer seems to be trying some innovations. For example, there is a tournament mode. The graphics, while cute, could do with some improvement, and the game play is way to easy at this point. With any luck, though, Amoebax will take this game concept to the next level.
It should be noted that both games have their origin with a Japanese game called Puyo Puyo that dates back to 1991. It in turn was apparently inspired by elements of Tetris. So there you go — everything old is new again.
Posted Monday, November 10, 2008 in Playtime
Unity game development demo
Unity is a game engine for developers that is by no means free, but they’ve put together a short (and free) game to demonstrate its abilities. The game, avert fate, is a first-person shooter that puts you in an alien landscape with hostile androids and spaceships. It ends when you confront a gigantic robot that tries to zap you with electricity. I played in Easy mode just so I could have a quick look around. To make it more fun — and last more than a few minutes — you’ll want to crank of the difficulty setting.
Overall, I found the textures and shading to be gorgeous. It would have been nice, though, if the game would show damage to the enemies as you fire at them. After pouring endless rounds of ammo into the robot, it finally exploded — but in the meantime it happily blasted away as if hadn’t even been touched.
Posted Thursday, October 16, 2008 in Playtime
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