Space Invaders

Planet of the Jellies

Match Three Aliens, and Fetch Me a Very Dry Martini, Babe

Type:
Free Download
System Requirements:
Windows/ DirectX9.0c+/ .NET Framework
Developer:
Petri Purho

Petri Purho is the master of the fast-developed little indie game with just a little bit new to say, and Planet of the Jellies is a good example. The gameplay is basically a cross between a "falling blocks" game (of which Tetris is the canonical but by no means the only example) and the "match three" game.

Little aliens dance back and forth across the screen top, Space Invaders style (but in a Dean Martin-cool sort of way, with brightly colored two-stage animations and a lounge music score), but they don't drop bombs. Instead, you can click on one to have it drop to the ground, Tetris style, and if you get three adjoining, they disappear and score you points. It's non-trivial to plan your drops, what with the shifting alien ranks, and the game is lost when an alien reaches the ground--or more likely, intersects with the top of one of the piles you've built on the ground and haven't managed to get rid of yet.


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Crusaders of Space 2

A Shmup for the Rest Of Us?

Type:
Shareware
System Requirements:
Win 2000/XP/Vista/ 600MHz CPU/ 64MB RAM/ 16MB VRAM/ DirectX 9+
Developer:
Adept Studios

Perhaps the fact that I like this game as much as I do says more about my lameness than anything else. See, shameful as it is to admit, I suck at most shmups. I mean, I like the genre conceptually, and I like the fact that some create beautiful, almost abstract visuals during gameplay, and I appreciate the intensity of attention they demand to play well, but the sad fact is that I'm a 40-something gamer who cut his teeth on Panzerblitz and not Zaxxon, let alone Space Giraffe. I just don't have the reflexes nor the long-honed l33t sk1llz to do more than flail about and die ignominously in most shmups. But I can actually play Crusaders of Space 2, and enjoy it.


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