The Icon Bar: News and features: Other PD Games
Posted by Tim Fountain on 00:00, 5/6/2001
| Games, RISC OS, Reviews
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| The basic idea of the game Swarm is to fly a little jetpacker around the screen and collect all of the crystals to complete the level. Also, to make the game a little harder there are of course some bad guys and mines dotted around the playing area.
The baddies come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, some just follow you around the screen, others fire at you but luckily you do have a gun to get rid of them. This game is about the only one out of those reviewed in this mag which I have completed, well, I say completed, but then again it just crashed and returned me to the desktop after about level 46 so I presume this was because it had ran out of levels. This really annoyed me because I had spent a whole afternoon trying to complete it, hoping for a nice congratulations screen!
Overall, I think this is a great game and it is far better than some commercial games that I have seen. Swarm was on an Acorn User cover disc and also is on Acorn User CD-ROM 3.
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| 46% |
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 | | Name: | RHFT | | Author: | Mike Goatly | | Status: | Freeware | | Players: | 1 |
| RHFT is an acronym for Rock Hard Fluffy Thing and this game is based around a central, rather fluffy charachter. The plot is that the fluffy things have had their diamonds stolen and so you must help them to recover them. The game is puzzle based and each level contains diamonds which must be collected before the level can be completed. There is also a time limit on each level to make it that bit trickier. The game is very addictive and has good sound effects and medium graphics.
The Author has, in my opinion, got the progressive difficulty of the levels just right to provide a serious challenge to better players once they have overcome the first few levels. Worth getting hold of.
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| 42% |
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| | Name: | Digger | | Author: | ? | | WWW: | ? | | Status: | Freeware | | Players: | 2 |
| Digger is a conversion of an almost prehistoric PC game of the same name. The basic idea is to collect a load of crystals in a digging machine (shaped like a four wheel drive crocodile!) before you are eaten by mutant space aliens of one form or another. The nostalgia factor is the only positive aspect to this game, and the coder has got the colour, sound effects and even annoying soundtrack dead on. Unfortunatly, the game is very boring, repetetive and downright frustrating for the most part. Basically, you only want this game if you've got a lot of time on your hands, nothing at all to do and a strange craving for those old (not so) classics.
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| 35% |
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| Goop is a platform game where you are represented by a little purple blobby thingy which is, in appearance, a bit like the character in Pushy. The aim of the game is to guide this little blobby thing around the levels and collect stars and bonuses as you go. This may seem very simple at first but to make the game more exciting the authors have included some bad guys. These come in the form of scorpions which roam back and forth and if you happen to bump into one you die! This game is quite addictive but is also quite difficult, it only has 15 levels but I still haven't been able to complete it.
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| 32% |
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| | Name: | Infestation | | Author: | David Stubbs | | Status: | Freeware | | Players: | 4 |
| Infestation is a game which is fairly similar to MarsQuake in a way, with the objective being to destroy all the enemy units. The concept is fairly sound, and the game exploits a large array of weapons to use, from making your own units to homing missiles. However, the gameplay is fairly boring and repetetive, and once you've played past about level 3 you've seen all that there is to the game. The graphics are awful and despite having a fairly nice multiplayer option, the game interface is terrible. One to miss I'm afraid.
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| 29% |
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| This game is very much like Cataclysm, a commercial game from about 1992. Although the basic gameplay is the same, Flood has far poorer graphics. However, the level designer does add a bit more playability to the game as you can design your own nearly impossible levels and challenge your friends to complete them.
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| 28% |
The Icon Bar: News and features: Other PD Games |
