The following games are the remnants of the games I’ve posted from the PhysX competition from a few years ago. I’ve not posted all the games because there were a couple that didn’t quite come up to the exacting standards we have come to know from the free games team (lol). No really, I didn’t think they were up to much and neither did the judges, though you may find them entertaining. If you want to check them out, when you go to download any one of the games below there’s a link to scroll through the 15 games that were in the competition. If you download all of the ones I’ve posted including yesterdays and the ones I posted back in week 62 you should have thirteen of the games. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did checking them out.
Gerball (11.8Mb)
Overview: Take on the opposing gerbil and throw balls into the other half of the pitch. Different colours get different points, but the more you put behind the higher your score goes. Avoid the ones that send you spinning out, but try your best to ensure they hit the other to cause some good damage. I'm telling you, we couldn't make up this kind of game concept if we tried, it's superbly insane :)
Judges Verdict: This game reminded us a lot of the classic 16-bit title 'Grand Monster Slam'. Only this time around the characters are gerbils. There is a lovely home-brew charm to this title, from the amusing gerbil animations, to the fun 'Worms' like sound effects and taunts. The selection of game types is good (we thought that 'Low Scoreboard' was great!) and while it does seem a bit random sometimes with regards to the opponent's skill factor, it's still an entertaining game.
Download:
http://developer.thegamecreators.com/?f=physx_07
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Minishooters: (3Mb)
The aim is to knock down as many of the dominos as you can within the allotted time limit. Hold the space bar to charge the shooter and release it to fire. Use arrow keys to look around the scene.
Judges Verdict: We really liked the 'Micro Machines' style of scale to this game. You are teeny tiny (smaller than a domino) and get to blast balls at the dominos in order to knock them flying. The first level is a geeks desk, complete with some amusing titled books, a laptop running DBPro (what else?! :), a steaming mug of coffee and slice of pizza. All it was missing was a coke can! So the concept itself was good, and the game a nice challenge, but sadly very short lived (only 2 levels) and it didn't live up to the mass of cascading dominos potential that it could have had.
Download:
http://developer.thegamecreators.com/?f=physx_08
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Equili tower (8.7Mb)
This is a PhysX version of the classic block game Jenga. The objective unlike Jenga though is to remove a block from the stack (from the bottom) and place it onto the top. You repeat this process until the stack collapses. The left mouse button selects a block, while the keyboard allows you to rotate the stack, zoom in/out and move up/down.
Judges Verdict: The concept is great, and secretly we were hoping someone would enter a Jenga inspired game from the time we announced the competition. Sadly EquiliTower is let down slightly by the control system. The keys used to rotate, zoom and move the stack are not intuitive at all, or grouped together in a logical manner. But the bigger problem is the block selection with the mouse. You can carefully click on a block, start to carefully drag it and all of a sudden an entirely different block starts to move. While it doesn't happen all of the time, those moments when it does renders the game frustrating. On the plus side, when the stack collapses, it looks great :)
Download:
http://developer.thegamecreators.com/?f=physx_04
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PhysiX Brick Breakout
The aim of the game to destroy all the boxes in the arena, raking up points as you go. You have three lives and loose one every time the ball leaves the arena. Boxes can't leave the arena, because they are stopped by a force field (very-transparent object visible when it gets hit by boxes)
Judges Verdict: Unless you have the most ninja of PCs (WITH a PhysX card) then do not opt to turn on all of the options you are prompted for at the start of the game, or it will crawl along. The game is a cross between breakout and Shufflepuck Cafe. You view the 'puck' from behind and can push it into the screen in order to hit the ball. The various blocks you hit all have a cause and effect on the game area, inducing gravity effects, explosions and the like. Perhaps it is just the perspective, or the relative sizes of the bat and ball, but we found it quite tricky to work out where the ball was travelling to. The bat turns a helpful red colour when the ball is close enough to be hit, but even so it was hard to tell exactly where it'd end up, which made the later levels hard with the ball travelling at speed. It did feel like you just hit and hoped rather than having any actual control over where the ball would end up. Even so, and the massive sequence of options at the start aside, this wasn't a bad little game. It looked very 'developer' styled with particle counts, FPS ratings and the like, which the casual gamer doesn't need to see, but otherwise was well presented.
Download
http://developer.thegamecreators.com/?f=physx_02
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Atomic bowling: (8Mb)
A game that has taken wide popularity in the future and has evolved from bowling. Games take place on a platform high above our atmosphere. Each game last 5 rounds, where each player has 2 halves in each round to score. Player 1 will be a human and Player 2 will be a computer controlled entity. To score, players must either knock the blocks off the platform or onto the platform using a bowling ball. Note, the base blocks that are already touching the platform must be knocked off in order to score points from them. Each block scores 10 points.
Judges Verdict: Sadly no matter what we tried we just couldn't get the bowling ball to move fast enough! You are supposed to hold down the left mouse button while pushing up, using the scroll wheel to slice left or right. But we tried everything and never got more than a few pixels away from our starting place - pushing slow, pushing fast, trying in reverse, trying difference mice and three different PCs! When we watched the computer player at work it looked great, with blocks flying all over the place. So check the game out, it might well work for you - and we suspect if it does it could be highly entertaining.
Download:
http://developer.thegamecreators.com/?f=physx_01
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aftershock: (45Mb)
At a secret military station a power source was compromised. Domestic terrorists, taking advantage of other stolen technologies, have siezed the base and are preparing to transport the power source elsewhere. You must secure the base and stop the terrorists.
Judges Verdict: As soon as you get into the military base the terrorists start attacking and you have to think and move fast if you're going to stay alive. There's cars driving around, explosions being set off and plenty of terrorists who want to terminate you.
Everything is very well presented and there's a great deal going on in this game. I'd like to tell you more but I struggled to get past the first few terrorists. You can get into vehicles and it looks like there's much more to see but unfortunately I haven't got that far yet. It certainly makes good use of the physics and it looks very promising.
Download:
http://developer.thegamecreators.com/?f=physx_14
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paradox (21Mb)
Your country has been at war for decades, and is nearing defeat, the enemy claims the war was started by an unprovoked attack against there bases and cities, however a recent development in time travel technology has made it possible to even the odds against the enemy attack, it's your job to go back in time and cripple vital enemy positions so that you will succeed in this war.
Judges Verdict: The team behind Paradox have done an exceptional job with their game. Right from the start it has a very good feel about it. The menu system looks very slick and once in the game the action is non stop. You pilot a helicopter and have to navigate over an area that is packed full of tanks and other enemy machinery that are hell bent on causing your destruction. You have to react quickly and move around fast to avoid getting hit while at the same time trying to take down the enemy.
There's a lot of detail in this game from the impressive looking water which splashes when fired at, all the objects on the bridge below you such as barrels which you can use to your advantage as they can be blown up and much more. All of this contributes to a fun, addictive game and so far it's been the best use of Dark Physics that we've seen.
Download:
