Red offers up a brand new take on a classic gameplay mechanic in this simple and new, stylish arcade shooter that plays a little like Missile Command.
You have this turret, see, and there are lots of red orbs (of all sizes) that are storming the planet. Lucky for you, the turret has little pink nerf balls (lots of them, and in 2 sizes) that you can fire rapidly at the incoming mass of masses. You won't be able to destroy the orbs, but you can divert their course long enough to reload.
Problem is, you can only reload so fast and so you will have to use your ammunition wisely. Aim with the mouse and fire by clicking. To launch a large nerf ball, press the [space] bar; however, those will use up more ammo.
Power-ups such as shield, additional turret, and large gun add a little spice to the mix, while bosses and stronger wind serve to increase the difficulty a bit.
Analysis: Simple, straightforward, and stylish with a jazzy trip-hop soundtrack that seems to be synched with the action at first. I really enjoy games like this. Some of the most enjoyable games with addictive gameplay are based on very simple ideas, and Red is no different in this regard. But it is not without a few problems.
First off, with additional turrets the game slows to a crawl. Moreover, the extra turrets are supposed to help, but I found they generally contribute to my getting hit more often when I have one around. So my best advice: avoid turret power-ups.
Second problem is the game score is based on elapsed time thereby turning seconds into points. So, although it seems counter intuitive, you can actually score additional points by effectively delaying the game. Valarauka mentioned in our IRC chatroom that he was able to score huge points by 'balancing' a boss mass. This is probably not what the author intended, which is why I would suggest changing the scoring structure, or create an incentive to get rid of the boss mass quickly.
The last problem I noticed is a bug that I discovered after many consecutive plays: shots fired in each new game bounced off the orbs as before but would not alter their course. Reloading the page fixes this one.
The author, Case, promises this to be the first in a series of color-themed games. Not a bad start.
Cheers to Alex for the word on this one. =)
This is rather good. Nice and fluid, uncluttered display (I especially like the fleeing letters in the pause screen), good difficulty curve and nice dynamic. For some reason it reminds me of playing pool with deflecting angles etc. I think this'll be good for a five minute blast every now and again in the future. And those are the games that matter most.
Nice game! On my first attempt I managed to get up to 565 seconds, now time to try and beat that score.
I agree that extra turrets do not help much, they shoot quite randomly and sometimes push enemy on completely wrong direction. And also the lag with many bullets was annoying.
But still, it has nice and clean look and it is quite fun. I like how bullets push enemies, but I wish the enemies would collide between themselves too.
First try, I made it up to 665 seconds. Great game; one of my favorites, in fact.
Wow, that is quite good. And wonderful music!
music is great and i like the nice feel of the game, smooth! nice find jay!
I agree a bit with Tonypa, sometimes I kept wishing the enemies would rebound off ofeach other, although maybe that turned out to be too chaotic.
Some ideas about fixing the big ball cheat could be:
It explodes into meteors after x seconds
or even cooler, it reverses time for as long as it's on screen :D
Awesome game !
I really love the graphics style, and the music is just beautiful.
The gameplay is also a great piece of fun, the physics are simple but very fun.
I don't see real flaws in this game, except the scoring system that can be cheated by "balancing" the big mass as mentionned above.
A fun game with a strong artistic feeling, congratulations to the author.
Great soundtrack. It sounded like something from an old Quwntin Tarentino film until the singing started
701 first time.
One thing that I did find useful was to collect a shield powerup, and then let a boss run straight into me. Although I only did that the once, it did mean that I had a lot of ammo left over...
The turrets were actually helppful, although they didn't usually last very long..
That was a really cool game. Good gameplay, but I would have liked more incentive to continue playing. More events such as 'The wind is picking up' maybe. (Although that didn't seem to cause any noticeable difference). It was also pretty easy. Looking to the guy's other games in the series.
I really really enjoyed this game. I found the turrets to actually help quite a bit, especially when I wound up with like 3 of them at one time (it's almost a self-sustaining system, I noticed a definitely reduction in the amount i had to fire for a few seconds before one turret was taking out).
More events like the wind picking up would be a lot of fun (maybe rain, lightning, earthquakes) and would add depth to the game.
I found myself wanting the balls to damage the planet instead of falling behind it. It really doesn't make much sense that the balls would fall behind the planet if they are threatening hit you.
Anyway, looking forward to the next game in the series!
448 seconds. Excellent game. I really didn't mind the extra turrets too much. I did find myself lagging quite frequently, even without extra turrets. Just out of curosity, does anyone know if the objects are destroyed as soon as they leave the screen? If they aren't, it causes memory management problems.
That was fantabulous.
I can't get to the provided link, could someone please find an alternate location because i really want to play this
You might try this one instead.
Enemies rebounding off of each other would make the game a whole lot easier, I think. The hardest part right now is handling two or more overlapping spheres, since you can't hit one of them until the other's out of the way...
For the balancing problem, the simplest fix I can think of is to just let everything else start coming again after, say, 10 seconds. That way if it's not out of there yet, you're toast.
Harukio's 'time counting backwards' idea would be a very nifty, creative way of dealing with it.
Great game. Simple to learn, stylish, creative... :)
The wind was a bit annoying though, although considering it's purpose that's acceptable. I'm not sure whether the meteorites were also affected by the wind, but that may have been because of their weight.
Me too would've liked to see some more events and generally a better feeling of progress, but even without that it's a nice game, good to spend a loose few minutes on. Keep it up, Case! :)
1071 seconds.
Interestingly, I found that the 'bosses' seemed to get heavier as time progressed - eventually, the rate of fire wasn't enough to even try to balance it.
Maybe a 'fix' isn't necessary after all?
Depends on whether the weight is fixed for each boss, or dynamic - if fixed, you could just keep the first boss around forever; if it's dynamic, even that one will get too heavy to keep around after a while. I'll try to test it out sometime.
THIS IS ******* AWESOME!!!!
I found this game fascinating. what i liked most about is that you can conserve a lot of ammo by rebounding shots off of other boulders. i really liked that aspect. and it was fun when i accidentally shot one big shot and it hit all of the other ones that were coming towards me.
and a good strategy i found was to not shoot directly at the boulders, but to either shoot on teh very sides of them, altering theit projection just enough for them to miss me.
You know what would really happify me?
Make a status bar so we can see if you're online or not.
I always wanna know if you'll post my comment or not and I HAVE NO IDEA HOW LONG TO WAIT!!!
Even considering would make me happy.
Not really, I'm just saying that.
Tell me what you think.
I only put this in s spoiler so it wouldn't take up as much space.
-MANAX
Manax - if you want to see if I'm online, just click the "Chat" button in the menu above. I'm usually idling in the site's IRC channel if I'm online.
As for comments, I generally try to keep the discussions on-topic, and some of yours go way off topic. If you want to chat about something other than the latest game or review, either send me an email, or pop into the #casualgameplay irc channel. =)
Off topic, pffft... But I saw this walrus the other day at Sea World and it was HUGE!!!...
Thanks for the infose -MANAX
I didn't figure out that you could hold down the mouse button until after I had died five or six times!!
Anyway, a good time-killer; I agree with those that said the balls ought to damage the ground, but I also agree with everything positive that's been said so far -- very stylish.
One thing that I would like to see is a bit of gravity pulling the spheres towards you -- I think that would add greatly to the challenge.
Tried it on Newgrounds. Lasted 444 seconds. MUAHAHAHA.
Anyway, it WAS like a game of pool, except that you are trying not to be crushed by the balls of doom. I found that the tiny balls were useless for the most part, as a well aimed shot could ward off a crowd pretty well. Plus, large nerf ball craters rock.
The giant ball should come with a giant countdown timer which would trigger a cluster of, say, 20 average sized balls showering the ground. That should stop cheaters.
anyone know the name of the artist and song in the game?
and music like it?
Don't know the name of the song but it definitely sounds like Bjork. Anyone know for sure?
Song title and artist: 'Absolute Space(Jazzanova Remix)' by Koop
It would seem that newgrounds updated their system to not allow direct links. While the initial link in the article still works, the infamous "click" link and the picture link lead to an error page.
"Infamous" you say? Hmm, that's not good.
Anyway, I've switched the links to the Armor Games site. If Newgrounds doesn't want the traffic, we won't send it to them.
This game was so cool it kept me entertained until dinner
Me gusta Red... I like this game. I like the fact that the balls don't bounce of each other. I like the turrets, and the shield, and the super ammo powerup which doesn't last long enough. The music and simple color actually makes it kinda relaxing... which is strange with a shooter game that involves you dodging balls of death.
Do we know when the next game in the series is coming out? Do we at least know what it will be about... or be called?
(Green, Yellow, Purple, Orange, etc.)
whoa i was playing and just after the wind picked up, i shot some small balls to the left for fun and they cam back shortly after and saved me try it(not its chance the wind sometime ghoes the other way
482 seconds!!!!!
This was an interesting gaming experience. I rarely get this feeling from games, but this just seems mysterious or something. The music was great. The game was enough fun to keep me going for... 785 seconds.
arrrgh 687 seconds bechaus my own turrets somehow forced a boulder down and onto me
still great game
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