Astro Flyer is the first game (I think) from Game Reclaim and quite a good one it is too. It’s a fairly simple game where you have a spaceship and have to weave in 3d through various levels collecting as many stars as you can. Think “Star Fox” on the N64 but not as detailed and without foxes. You use the mouse to weave the ship from side to side and can boost with the mouse button, which is a nice idea.

The graphics are what set this game apart, the  3d effect is really quite slick, although its just scaling a series of movie clips with 3d projection it does really have a good 3d feel, its very similar to missile 3d from DX interactive which came out a while back. The graphics all have a cell shaded appearance which really hangs together nicely, in fact the overall presentation levels are excellent.

The only problem with Astro Flyer as a game as it is a little bit frustrating at times. It’s quite difficult to judge where your ship is in the 3d world. So I often find I’ve moved left and have hit an obstacle which I thought I’d flown past. Game Reclaim has a version on his own site which you can play in full screen, which I found made this less of a problem. I think this is a general problem though with these scaled 3d games, my own game cubex suffers from the same problem.

Anyway overall its a nice bit of technology turned into a slick looking game, which is generally quite fun to play.

Go play Astro Flyer.

Spell Blazer is a new game sponsored by Addictinggames, it’s a kind of fantasy adventure turn based fighting game.

The first thing you notice when loading up is how amazing it looks, the graphics style reminds me very much of all the old lucasfilm point and click adventure games, Monkey Island etc. Its been produced by a professional company www.game-factory.eu so it should be, all their stuff looks utterly amazing. The level of artwork is some of the best I’ve ever seen for a flash game.

So whats the game like, we’ll after you get past the artwork and the intro the game is basically a turn based fighting game rpg. You have to send you character round the board and battle with creatures along the way, its a pretty well done genre but the turn based figting here is really good. Usually on those sort of games I’ left thinking “I just don’t understand how this is a challenge”, as you take a hit, they take a hit etc.  The fighting is all conducted round one of those block based puzzle games, you pick which spells you want to fight with and then you haveto find rows of 3 of more of that spell to cast it. If you find 3 blocks of an opponents spell you can block that spell. You can also set up multiple attacks by careful selection.

Its a game which has been done several time before  and quite well, however having the whole fighting element really adds something,  I’m not generally a fan of their block puzzle games of rpg’s however I played this one on several occasions and for quite a lot time. What really helps is the ai on the puzzle games is spot on, it starts off easy and gradually gets better with better creatures to fight.

I’d say its definitely one of the best games of 2008 so far, combining 2 genres brilliantly and there’s pretty much nothing you can fault about it.

Go play Spellblazer.

Pandemonium is the latest game published by Bubblebox, the plot seems good, you have to regain all the parts to the golden muffin. The game starts with one of the best and slickest intro’s around, a real cinematic masterpiece. Your main character’s a sort of snot coloured gi joe who gets the golden muffin which is then broken into several pieces, your job is to get all the pieces back together.

All sounds great so far and then you get to the actual game, your character is a tiny dot running around a static arena and all you have to do is pick up muffins while avoiding a few other object and falling cubes. Its all a bit of an anti climax after the awesome intro. The other problem is the main character has just a bit too much inertia, and with him being so small it’s very easy to hit the things you are meant to avoid. I found it pretty frustrating to be honest, when you have 2 items only pixels apart with a tiny character you end up just running into all the bad stuff. The levels are all pretty much of a muchness, the backgrounds change but its basically the same game just with different stuff to pick up avoid

Having said that about the game it is beautifully presented, nice instructions and brilliant cut scenes, I just felt the actual game play was a bit repetitive and also rather dull.

Go and play Pandemonium.

Ghost tank is the first game from developer Roland Machaalani of id8games.com. The basic premise is that you have failed your mission and come back as a ghost tank to complete your mission, well its never going to win an award for best plot but then the same could be said for most games.

So what do you do ? Well deep down its just an 8 way shooter, you control a tank and have a variety of enemies to shoot up from turrets to helicopters or stealth fighters which mainly fire missiles at you. When you first start you have 3 mission types training, normal, or insane. The big thing which sets ghost tank apart from similar games is the control system. Most games the missiles fire at where you click,ghost tank employs a click and drag system where the longer you drag the bigger the missiles you fire. At first I thought this was a good thing and it is for the training missions. However on the levels with lots of enemies I generally found it slightly frustrating, especially as once you’d clicked you can’t change the angle of fire. I’d suggest a click and hold for power, rather than drag would work sightly better. In the heat of the battle I found I was killed far too easily. I also found it frustrating that bullets collide with each other, it’s one of the only games I know where that happens and it’s annoying as when you and the enemy fire a lot of the time it ends in stalemate as the bullets just blow each other up. You do have a number of power ups such as 360 fire and “ghost mode”, which are written in small type on the main menu. It was quite a few goes before I realised these were there, it would be better if these were introduced throughout the tutorial.

Graphically Ghost tank is pretty good, there’s a nice menu and all the typography is well thought out, the tanks and enemies are nicely drawn if a little bland. The worst part graphically is the battlefield which is a little dull, and the explosion effects could have been a bit better.

The game has obviously had a lot of effort put into it and has been really well put together, nicely coded and is generally fun to play if a little “hard core” in places. Its comes in slightly below Tank 2008 by Freeworld Group, but is a good game in the genre. Amazing job for a first game and has an original control system, even if I found it slightly awkward to use.

Go and Play Ghost Tank.

Gride is the latest game from OOPixel, who combines object oriented with pixels apparently. Why you want to know that its object oriented I have no idea but it is, some programmers just love you to know.

The game features a pink car and the idea is to get to the end of the course, the car automatically accelerates and you have a choice of 4 “upgrades” to apply which will temporarily either jump, add grip, add power or remove the upgrade applied. Its an incredibly simple idea and pretty original, I was expecting it to be the usual physics based car game with jumps etc just like Super Bike x, it was a pleasant surprise having this upgrade system works really well. Each level is pretty well thought out but pretty difficult, it’ll take several attempts to reach the end, its one of them games which is frustrating, but frustrating in a good way, it just keeps you coming back for another go.

The game was original done for the Jayisgames competition and the game deservedly came third and was the winner of the viral prize.

Go and Play Gride.

Firstly I apologise if the site has been a bit up and down over the past week, I have had some terminal server problems and had to move to a new host. Well enough of that on with the review

This little gem of a game from abduction studios popped into the mochiads feed about 2 weeks ago and I must have played it everyday since then. The basic premise is that you start with a hundred bullets and have to hit a number of shapes. Abduction Sums it up himself as…

“BoomsticK pits you and your trusty shotgun against a relentless onslaught of insane shapes. 21 Tiers of shape shooting, particle blastin, power-up grabbin madness! Compare your sick score to the entire world and flaunt your BoomsticK skills.

The story is incredibly deep, you are, well… I what I mean to say is that… hmmm… wait, I was all worried like I forgot some incredible story! But there is no story! Whew, that was easy enough.”

Its slightly more complicated than that as you only get back bullets which hit objects, so the idea is to line up shots which will take out multiple targets. It sounds complicated but it isn’t and its incredibly satisfying pulling off a quad kill. One tactic I have found is that if you shoot as horizontally as you can from the sides you get a much better spread, that is my tip of the day, oh as well as mustard goes well with apple slices.

Its so good a game I invented the robotJAM “awesome game of the month*” and BoomsticK is the awesome game for March.

Anyway I don’t think I can waffle on any more about such a simple game.. go and stick some BoomsticKs.

(* if you read this abduction I will send you a free robotJAM T-shirt)

Boxheads zombie wars is the long awaited game from Sean T Cooper. A follow up to the successful box head series of games, its a kind of arena based shooter along the lines of smash TV, you have 8 directional fire and have to blow up wave after wave of enemies, who this time are “zombies” but look suspiciously like box men again.

So why is it any good, well back in the past a flash game would have maybe 5 -10 bad guys on screen, and those badguys would generally be a bit laggy if too much was happening, boxheads is like flash on steriods, the sheer amount of characters on screen is simply staggering. At some times it must be over a hundred + effects, which looks pretty impressive. The game also has a large variety of 8 different terrains to choose from (although they generally look like grass/trees and forests with a few rocks thrown in).

So what does it play like ? Well its a bit like Independence Day, after you get over all the whiz bang special effects the game is actually a bit repetitive, its just shoot zombie boxes, shoot more zombie boxes, shoot even more zombie boxes. I also think the difficultly curve is very harsh, the initial zombies are really easily disposed of ( and look like elvis, which is always a good thing) and then these fireball breathers turn up and kill you with one hit, game over, its a bit frustrating. Boxheads Zombie Wars also features a defense style game where you sit behind some cannons, its a bit of an odd game as you can just sit there for 7 levels and do nothing as your towers destroy everything in their path.

Overall techincally its probably the best game ever made in flash, its a pity the difficultly curve isn’t a bit less severe and there isn’t a bit more variety. Go and play BoxHead Zombie Wars.

Aniball is a comedy football game from modul-games. It kind of reminds me of playing match day on the zX spectrum, execpt the footballers are now octopus rather than big curly haired 80’s idiots.

You have a team of 4 crazy characters and there are 4 teams to choose from, I don’t think it actually makes any difference though they all seem to play the same, it would have been nice if each character had one special move. The obviously aim of the game is to score more goals than your opponents, by kicking the ball around and eventually scoring past the keeper.If you win a match you unlock the next pitch and slightly harder opponents.

What sets this out from the crowd is the artwork, everything from the loader to the menus are finely sculpted , the characters have bags of charm and are beautifully animated, even down to the butt cheeks wobbling on the hamster character as he walks around.

Overall its a really enjoyable version of football and in some respects is more enjoyable to play than the actual game, requires far less effort, no running around and your knees won’t blow up if some one does a sliding tackle on you.

Have a look at AniBall.

Subluceo is a game by Ben Weitzman sponsored by Smiley Gamer. It’s another top down shooter in the asteroids style, except without asteroids, you know the sort of thing rotate round and blows lots of little crafts to smithereens. Fisrt impressions are that is all looks very retro, mainly geometric shapes and glows but it does look pretty slick. The background has a nice wobbly grid hich kind of reacts to where you are like its a sheet of water.

It reminds me very much of Luminara by jmtb02 in a fight between the 2 games it would be similar to a fight between Rocky and Rocky 2, they both have pretty much the same attributes except the first one was just slightly better. I’m not sure why, they are both pretty much the same game, a lot of the time its just how the game feels. Luminara is just a bit faster and feels a bit more manic, I also think the music in luminara is more to my taste. I also found that Subulceo is a little over the top in places with explosions and it does become difficult to work out what’s going on.

The last thing which Luminara wins on is the controls, mouse controls and firing really add to the sluggish feel of the controls. It works much better having keyboard controls as you can move and fire in different directions.

Having said that it is very slickly put together and is an enjoyable couple of minutes entertainment.

Go and Play subluceo.

Shift is a new game from Armor Games, at first you think its just quite a plain looking black and white platform game and for the first couple of levels it is just that. The usual platforms, get the keys, goto the door end of level and then it introduces the shift key.

Using Shift inverts the screen so the platforms become space and the space becomes platforms. Its a very clever game mechanic similar to the game Yin Yang by Nitrome. Shift works a lot better than Yin Yang though, the puzzles although taking a bit of time to get your head round aren’t that hard and its a really interesting concept very slicky put together. The excellent tutorial really eases you into the game and shows one gameplay concept at a time so by the time you do get the shift you know what you are doing, with Yin Yang even the first level was a bit confusing and took several attempts to work out what was actually going on.

Go and Play Shift from Armor Games.