Short game review: Bubble Tanks 2 is a simple arcade shooter in which you control a small group of clumping bubbles with a gun made of bubbles mounted on top. Strangely enough, you shoot bubbles at enemies made of bubbles, hiding away in a grid of arenas, each of which is actually a large bubble. If it wasn’t for the different colours, it’d be right confusing.

Each enemy destroyed releases pale, little, food bubbles that you absorb, causing your tank to grow and, over time, accumulate upgrades. There’s a tree of upgrades; probably about 20 in all, some of which only appear if you play the game on Armor Games (which the link above points to).

It’s a nice, easy game to get into, and, despite a few small niggles, is good fun. Onto those, then (because complaining is more fun that promoting):

• The arenas are laid out in a grid that you can freely move about. There’s a map so you can see where you’ve been, but it’s off on a separate screen, which makes navigating a little harder. It’s not a complex map, and it could easily have been accommodated in a corner of the screen.
• Given the screen space available to your average flash game (which has to accomodate a range of screen sizes), the graphics are rather large. Since combat in Bubble Tanks 2 is a matter of shooting at enemies while avoiding their return fire, it would be nice if they were smaller so you could maintain greater distance. As it is, you either don’t know where you should be shooting, or you’re right on top of them, sucking down the bullets.
• The game requires a lot of clicking so you can fire your gun. This isn’t a problem, except that all the sites I’ve seen it on thus far have it surrounded by a ring of advertisement links. So, if, while frantically killing dudes, I move the mouse off the edge, I end up being shunted to another website. Not desirable. In the end, I got around this by downloading the flash file and playing it locally.

With all the bubbles, my mind is inevitably drawn to Yog Sothoth, and so I was a little disappointed that most of the bubbles were blue and a little flat looking. I’d have been much more impressed with iridescent clumps of bubbly death. Oh well. You can’t have it all.

Three and a half shimmering orbs out of five. From one to four hours distraction.

Thought I might give a quick little plug for Ainevoltas 2, a quick little platform RPG..

Basically, you’re a guy with a sword, and there’s a castle full of monsters. Slay them, gain experience points, go up levels, and gain stats. Collect gems and other items to gain special abilities. Nothing special so far – what makes this game interesting is its flat genre mocking sense of humour, and all the little secrets that it’s full of. It’s not difficult or drawn out, just distracting and funny.

A few quick reviews I wrote back in January..

• Aquaria – probably the best indie game I saw in ‘07; it’s an arcade adventure game with a lot of depth, as well as a lot of breadth. That is, its game play elements provide for diverse and interesting experiences, and there’s a lot of them. You play a Naija, a water nymph lost in an underwater cave system, full of placid scenic schools of fish, great crabs, forgotten temples full of strange magic, monsters in the hidden depths, and back again. It’s very well constructed – the music, graphics, and game play fit together seamlessly to create moods ranging from calm relaxation to rampant fear, all strung together into a non-linear game of exploration. An absolute delight – I thoroughly recommend it. Windows only, unfortunately.
• Battle for Wesnoth – fantasy turn based strategy game with a whole pile of user-created campaigns, some brilliant, others not. Feels a lot like Fantasy General (1996). Units gain experience and skills as they go. Nice, deep, interaction between different types of weapon, terrain, armour and unit. Pretty well-balanced, and fairly addictive. Worth a look, even if you’re not into strategy games, simply as it’s provides an example of a user-expandable game design done well. Available on most desktop platforms
• Chromadrome 2 – simple, mouse based game of skill. You control a marble, racing along a track covered in traps and obstacles with variable speed, attempting to finish in the shortest time possible. Slick, flashy visual design. Surprisingly deep play, despite its simplicity. Highly addictive. There’s a lot of game play packed into the demo, so it’s well worth a download.
• Chocolatier 2 – a thoroughly addictive blend of management, recipe construction, and light weight adventuring. You start as a young entrepreneur hoping to challenge the great Baumeister chocolate empire in San Francisco of 1925 or so. After learning to manage the supply of ingredients and completed chocolates, you slowly move into wider markets, with new ingredients ranging from six types of varietal cacao, exotic spices and so forth. Essentially a classic production management games, but with sufficient diversity of factors and supply chains to manage that it becomes challenging without declining into furious mouse clicking. Simple, well implemented, distraction. Addictive, but not too long – the core game has about 15 hours of gameplay – long enough to suck me in, but not long enough to drive me mad with boredom.
• Darwinia – not a new game, but one I’ve only recently gotten into, Darwinia is from Introspective, a three man game development studio in London, also famous for Uplink (a surprisingly realistic hacking game), and Defcon (a game of Mutually Assured Destruction). To some extent it’s a real time strategy game, in others it’s more a tactical shooter with a top down camera view. You are a programmer who has intruded into Darwinia – a simulated world in which a researcher, Dr Sepulveda, has been experimenting with artificial life. However, many of his creations, the Darwinians, have been corrupted by some sort of viral infection that turns them violent and unpredictable, destroying most of his research, as well as the simple, placid life of the uninfected ‘green’ Darwinians. Game play consists of creating and controlling squad processes with which you eliminate viral infections, engineer processes which harvest the souls (resource allocation units) of lost Darwinians, and various other units that allow you to affect the otherwise independent Darwinians such that you can lead them to freedom. Though there’s only about 8 game levels and the basic premise of play is laid out clearly in the first, there’s quite a lot of depth and diversity. In many cases, your enemies can only be defeated by carefully prising open their defenses with skillful use of your squads, then pressing your advantage with legions of Darwinians. Unfortunately, the Darwinians have minds of their own, and often require substantial cajoling before they’ll willingly enter battle on your behalf. Lots of fun; the real time strategy formula is present but subverted by indirect control
  and a focus on tactics rather than economics.