A game with programmer's art is still could be very appealing to the eye, and GridWars, one of the most fun shooting games I've played, proves that! I mean, seriously, graphics are really simplistic, there are no fancy textures or complicated pixel shaders, yet the game manages to look very nice. Like they say: "Technical skill is mastery of complexity, while creativity is mastery of simplicity". I think this game contains both.
Now, I don't really wanna talk only about the cute graphics, since I'm not like those who judge entire game only on how it looks - that's stupid I tell ya. Aside from neat look this game has much more up its sleeve.
GridWars is a classic multi-directional shooter. Yet unlike other shooting games, this game is really interesting to play. The concept is simple - kill everything that moves, pick up power-ups, and avoid physical contact at all cost (one-hit death). This way you are able to gather the score, which is actually the topmost goal.
The game really deserves to being referred to as one of the most fun shooting games, and once you play it you will definitely see why. GridWars has an awesome soundtrack as well, but of course you can turn it off and listen to your favorite [your favorite band name here]!
GridWars actually is a remake of an Xbox game Geometry Wars, one of many, but it surpassed its predecessor and its colleagues almost in everything - from more polished and smooth graphics, to a much more deeper gameplay. In Geometry Wars you were only to kill enemies to score higher, but in GridWars have gone beyond that when introduced the concept of black holes.
Black holes are those space-warping round little things which, once activated, suck everything inside them. What is so special about them, is their ability to multiply the scores. All score points of enemies sucked into a black hole are combined and multiplied. Simply said - more enemies in black holes mean more score points you get after you blow up the black hole.
There is of course a little nuance - black holes, which are, in fact, your farms of score points, tend to grow and blow up by themselves when reached critical mass without giving you any score and emitting a horde of little blue buggers. So you have to keep an eye on your farms like a good farmer, and reduce their size by shooting at them. But don't get too excited and blow it up too soon, since you can get A LOT more score points out of it if you keep it a bit longer. And a bit longer. And a little bit longer.
Overgrown black holes also tend to increase their time-space continuum bending power with their growth. It means its hard to control your vessel properly while near them. Placing a fat one black hole on its place becomes much harder, since their great power deflects your bullets and pulling hordes of enemies towards it, making it even fatter. So watch them, fella' farmer.
If there is too much troubles to face, you can simply hit RMB (that is, Right Mouse Button) thus releasing super bomb which happily clears your screen of enemies and resets your multiplier to 1. Oh, I've forgot to tell ya about that one. In GridWars there is a score multiplier, which grows as you slay the legions of infidels, and grows even faster with large doses of multi kills. I've personally don't remember achieving more than x6 multiplier, but I heard of some who got to x7. The multiplier is also drops back to 1 when you die, obviously.
So, back to our lovely black holes. Not to be understood ambiguously.
Having too much black holes isn't a great idea, since it's so much harder to manage them as their numbers grow. But you don't want to kill too many of them either, since you could be left alone with those hordes of evil flashy little things, without a black hole or two to cover your behind, allowing you to focus your firepower on more important things.
The farming skill in GridWars could significantly boost your highscores once mastered. Remember, brute force has its limits; you will be able to manage hordes of evil only until a certain point anyway, so why not boost your scores with this nifty little technique until that certain point?
Anyway, I think that it's time to reveal the link to the latest GridWars version. Direct link.
Have fun playing! 8)
