"Defender Clone" Doesn't Do it Justice
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Yes, the basics of the gameplay derive from Defender--it's a sidescrolling shmup in which you can 'flip' your ship to move and fire either right or left, and enemies approach from both sides of the screen. But Alien Abduction features trippy late-80s graphics, excellent sound and music, 30 levels, and 3 gameplay modes.

Baby Boom II takes us back to the strangest factory you'll ever see! Run the baby production line featuring overheated wacky machines, power-ups, bonus presents and of course, screaming babies! Are you fast enough to handle the Speed Rounds and clever enough for the Bonus Rounds?

Now Get Ad-Supported Version for Only $6.75!

In addition to the ads-free version, available via the "download demo" and "buy now" links to right, we now offer an ad-supported version of the game for a very nice price. You're served an ad at game start-up, between levels, and sent to an advertiser's page when you close the game, but it's not too intrusive, and hey, the price is good. To get this version, don't click the links in the left-hand column, and instead go here:

Download Ad-Supported Version
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Buy This Game and Get Plasmaworm as a Free Bonus

Yar, well... It's Tetris.

Well not quite; none of the Tetris shapes, instead a fall-from-the-sky, match-three-stacking game like, well, many others--except that there are five different game modes that introduce new features, like jokers, bombs, hidden blox, frogs, fireballs, slot machines, "wild" blox, and boulders.

Death and Beauty

It's a paradox that the shmup--that old-school genre of frenetic space shooting--can create visuals that come closer to the status of abstract art than any other digital form... If you could ever look up from the intensity of combat long enough to really notice them.

Bullet Candy is a case in point; frenetic space mayhem, and beautiful imagery.

Charlie Knight, its creator, is clearly a long-standing enthusiast of the genre; he's created a highly polished, well executed examplar of the form, complete with "Minter levels" as an homage to Jeff Minter's landmark games. Shmup fans will find a lot to like here; novices are advised to turn the difficulty down as low as it will go (which isn't much).

A Shmup for the Rest of Us?

Crusaders of Space 2 clearly has its genesis in Space Invaders, but there's more complexity here than you'd expect from a straightforward Space Invaders clone with more modern graphics. In addition to your normal gun, you have a limited number of missiles, mainly useful in taking out fixed gun emplacements or bosses at the end of an 'episode', and upgrades, which you receive over time, can give you such things as a gun that fires both straight ahead and simultaneous shouts at angles to left and right.

As in Space Invaders, you're fixed to a line at screen bottom, and can move only left and right, which you do mainly to dodge bullets fired by your opponents, or to follow an alien ship you're trying to destroy. The aliens aren't simply unrelenting masses moving slowly down-screen, though some behave that way; some swoop about in circles or curved lines across the screen, in the fashion of opponents in more modern shmups. Some are "mines" that don't shoot back until you destroy them, at which point they release a hail of bullets that can be hard to dodge. Intermittently, destroyed opponents drop powerups of various kinds, which drift down toward you; ideally, you intercept these for their benefits, but sometimes enemy fire is too close (or you're busy elsewhere), and you have to let them go.

Return of the Beloved Amiga Classic

Largely a remake of the much-loved Amiga game Defender of the Crown (later released for just about every platform available in the late 80s, including the NES), Heroes Live Forever updates the game with better graphics, fully digitized music, and a new gameplay element ("tactics" cards that give you special benefits during battles).

In Defender of the Crown, you play one of several great lords in England, attempting to unify the realm under your own rule. Conquering provinces produces tax revenues that you can use to increase the size of your army (but you have only one "army" which follows you, milord, about, and can purchase new units only at your castle, meaning you become vulnerable over time unless you return home frequently).

In Space No One Can Hear You Giggle

Derelict's backstory is straight out of Aliens: you encounter and board a derelict spaceship which proves to be teeming with nasty alien critters who try to eat you and whom you must mow relentlessly down with high-powered, futuristic weapons. But the Alien series is brooding, dark, and bloody, while Derelict is light hearted, well-lit, and rather charming; the aliens may want to eat you, but they're aliens out of Nick Jr. rather than Lovecraft.

Cheerful Arcade Fun
2006 Adultswim.com Award Winner

A 2006 IGF finalist and winner of the Adultswim award (sponsored by Cartoon Network), Dodge That Anvil! is a game in which you play a bucktoothed bunny trying to harvest carrots and other veggies as anvils drop from the sky. Why? Well, um.... Does it matter? This is cartoon logic here.

Each level, you must harvest a quota of carrots (extra points for more); radishes give you points you can spend on equipment, like hard-hats that save you from one anvil-strike, and veggie magnets that let you collect plucked vegetables by moving near them instead of through them. Just about every level adds some new type of obstacle, powerup, or other feature--in other words, enough variety to retain your interest as the game progresses.

2004 IGF Winner For Innovation in Audio and Innovation in Digital Art
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From Digital Eel (oft-time IGF nominees and creators of the excellent Strange Adventures in Infinite Space, among other games) comes this oddball circle-shooter. The basic gameplay here you've seen before: You are shooting from the edge of a circle at something in the middle, and you have to zip around the circle (using left and right arrow keys) and firing madly, trying to keep the thingie at the center from touching the edge.

But in Dr. Blob's organism, the circular thing you're firing around is a petri dish... some kind of nasty and potentially lethal organism is attempting to escape.