Plasmaworm

The first game from Digital Eel, the multi-IGF Award-winning developer of the excellent Strange Adventures in Infinite Space among others, Plasmaworm is best described as "Snake on acid."

The Digital Eel guys recently decided to release it as freeware, so cool, check it out.

You remember Snake, right? If you're as old as I (half a sec, need to find the bedpan), you probably remember it as a little game that's been implemented for everything from the TRS-80 on up... and if you're not quite as antiquated, you played it, and maybe still do, on your Nokia mobile phone. Little worm crawls around a screen, you hit the arrow keys or directional keypad to change the direction in which it moves, it gets longer over time, and if you run into yourself or a wall, game over.

Pretty simple gameplay, but surprisingly compelling, given that simplicity.

Now imagine that same basic gameplay, with a whole series of power-ups and randomly appearing obstacles you need to eat to get bigger and get to the next level, with trippy psychedelic graphics and a techno score that would probably be danceable except that you have to keep your fingers on the keyboard to play, which doesn't give you a lot of freedom of motion for dancing.

This either is your kind of game or it isn't... But if it sounds like it might be, it's only 2 megs, so it's a quick download.