Gum Drop

Gum Drop is a terrible name for this game -- makes me think of some pastel-scale 'casual' game, probably of the noxiously cute variety. What it really is, is a space shmup, only you don't actually shoot anything, which is unusual. Instead, you use a tractor beam to attach to what the game calls a "S.M.A.S.H.", which you then swing around yourself, using it to smash into enemy ships. Or you can kill the tractor and fling it along its current trajectory to hit an enemy, then recall it. Or grab a powerup, which does something else (like lay mines) and move around with that.

So the basic gameplay is WASD to move, but to swing your hammer, you physically move, too. E.g., left and right in the correct rhythm to build up speed, while simultaneously maneuvering to position the hammer to hit a target. It's tricky, but fun, and an interestingly novel fine-motor challenge.

The "gum drops" in question are what you get when you smash up asteroids; feeding them to your base produces powerups. A bunch of different levels offer different challenges, and there are the usual range of increasingly difficult enemy ships with different capabilities but universally dumb AI.

On the whole, an interestingly different take on a longstanding genre.