I Love Mac Apps » Game

Neon Tango – Destroy The Enemy

admin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:01:34 +0000

Every one likes a good, simple game that they can get there teeth sunk into. Todays game, Neon Tango, is based on the popular Xbox Arcade game Geometry Wars. Its great fun to play and master. In essence the game is you, in your little space ship, fighting off the horde of enemy space craft. Its a top down shooter with very simple graphics. However the game quickly becomes hard, and you have to quickly master and manage you power ups and weapons before the enemy over run the board and you sink to a terrible defeat.

To Battle Stations

Once as you launch the game and have a quick run through the settings you are placed right into the action. Using your left and right keys you can navigate your space ship. You fire with space and the laser beams travel straight out of your ship at your intended target. It takes a couple of minutes to master the controls. Many times I have ran straight into the wall. The enemy spaceship, at this point, will spawn at different rates with different levels of strength and attack.

The aim of the game is really simple. Destroy all of the enemy units on the board and then proceed to destroy the boss. The boss, as you would expect is a lot tougher and takes quite a while to beat. You can use a variety of different attacks including, primary fire, rapid fire, optional fire (which is a big power up fireball) then a lot of optional extras including a mega bomb and extra ships to name a few. You have to carefully manage each powerful as they a limited, you do however have unlimited primary and optional fire. Once as you complete the level, you enter the warp hole to move to the next challenge.

As you can see in the image above, the game is pretty hectic. You do get to grips with what is going on pretty quickly. There is extras which to appear every so often which include bonus points and shield powerup to help you on your way. In each game you have three ships, each with a limited shield life span. If you destroy every ship your yours, its game over.

I really like this game, it is simple fun to use and has over 50 levels to keep you entertained. The game does start off simple so you can get to grips with how everything works, by the time you are on level 50 it is a real challenge. There is a free demo, so if you want to waste some time I recommend you give it a download.

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Neon Tango – Destroy The Enemy

MyMahj – Mahjong For The Mac

admin — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:43:54 +0000

I like playing computer games, a good way to relax and let the time pass. One of my favourite games is Mahjong, although I don’t play the actual Chinese version against many people, I do like to play the variant where you have to remove the tiles. MyMahj is a similar version which you can play on your Mac at your leisure. This game isn’t brilliant, but it is free and its a good way to waste some time.

Lets Play Mahjong

This app is similar to any other MahJong app. The main focus of the game is dedicated to clearing out tiles, you have to match the same suit and number. When you match two tiles they are cleared from the board. You then proceed to move on to the next tiles to clear. There are various rules for which tiles you are allowed to clear, I wont bore you with the intricate details.

The interface doesn’t really conform with similar interface designs found on your Mac, however it does have plenty of features to keep you entertained. For example there is lots of different starting patterns to get your teeth into, as well as different tile designs. You can spend ages hunting and searching for tiles so you can complete the game. As well as different starting designs, there is also a score board.

If you are bored of the plain 2D version, you can update the graphics and run the 3D version. This uses an openGL render so you can view the board in 3D. This gives some nice effects as you navigate around the board. It also allows you to more easily view tiles which can be slightly hidden. Its a good feature 3D view, however I find it slightly annoying to use after a while.

Overall this application is good. It doesn’t sport an interface, design and setup that you would normally find on a Mac app. However the application is supported with a large set of features and is generally a good game. I mentioned in my introduction that this game is free, so it doesn’t cost you anything to run and use. Try it out, and waste a couple of hours.

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MyMahj – Mahjong For The Mac

Play DOS Games On Your Mac – Boxer

admin — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:01:38 +0000

Nostalgia is a thing of the past. Whats better than to play all of your favourite DOS games on your Mac. You can with a beautiful new program called Boxer. In a nutshell it is a DOS emulator (written in Apple Script by all means) that can emulate DOS and let your play your favourite DOS games. By the looks and feel of things it can also run other DOS programs. Pretty neat. Best of all this program is free. This short review will look into how the program works and how you can use it.

Don Your Gloves

Boxer app is an emulator. But there is a lot more to this program than an emulator. I can’t warm enough to how good this program is. What need need when you run this program is the program itself and a game. There are a couple included, although a quick Google search will bring up hundreds of results where you can download nearly every game imaginable.

There is 3 apps to this program, if that makes sense. There is Boxer which is the emulator, this is the program that is used to run the DOS programs. There is the DOS prompt, which is similar to an actual DOS prompt although it has been slightly tweaked to run on a Mac, as well as this I am sure it accepts some Unix prompts. Finally there is the package builder which takes your .exe and builds it into a package. There is also a couple of other programs on the Boxer website which can be used to extend the program.

Once you drag and drop the program into your Applications folder, the app will generate a special folder in your home directory, this is where you place you DOS applications and is the home of a couple of extra files and folders. When you are ready to play you simple double click on the game and boxer will launch. You then be thrown into application. There isn’t an actual interface for the program, you have to run a game or DOS program.

The program runs very fast. It uses about 50% CPU usage although it will vary depending on the DOS application used. You can then use the program as if it was a normal DOS prompt, you can click, move the mouse and do all of the normal things. One funny “feature” of using such a powerful computer to a simple application such as Pac Man made for computers years old, is that they run very fast. Characters can whizz around the board simply because the computer runs so fast.

Conclusion

This program is really well written. Although it is built on Apple Script (which slows it down a little) it seems to perform flawlessly. This program could easily be buggy and slowly, thankfully Boxer isn’t. As well as this there is also a good website to back this program up. It gives quite a few details on how to use the program as well as some of the extra features. I could easily see this program become a paid application in the future.

There are a couple of draw backs to this game. For example you have to find your own DOS games, which is a slight annoyance but one you expect. There are some sample games to keep you going. As well as this it does tend to put quite a few files on your system which can become a bit cluttered after a while.

Definitely check it out, even if it is just for a couple of minutes.

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Play DOS Games On Your Mac – Boxer

Balance – Play Games With The Motion Sensor

admin — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 17:28:53 +0000

All Mac laptops from the last couple of generations have had a motion sensor fitted to the hard drive to stop hard drive crashes when the laptop is moved. People have quickly taken the API for this sensor and made games available for you Mac. One such game is Balance, where you have to move your laptop round by moving and tilting your laptop in certain directions.

Just A Little Bit More

This game is very simple and you have probably played a variant of it at sometime in your life. The idea behind this game is to tilt your laptop left, right, up and down. As you laptop is tilted the game board moves and the ball moves around on the surface, you then have to get the ball to roll into the hole to move onto the next level.

The levels are fun. They slowly become more and more complex, the one shown in the screenshot above is rather early in the game and a bit simple, but they do become quite challenging. The graphics are good and are quite detailed. It is a mixture of high level graphics and using up loads of CPU power to control everything.

If you don’t have a laptop you can still play this game but it isn’t as fun. You can’t beat waving your laptop around in a public place while the ball whizzes around the board. Before you play just make sure you have set the options to motion sensor or mouse. I missed that option when I started and I wondered why it didn’t work.

Conclusion

I really like this application, it does have quite a few levels, although I would have liked a lot more with varing complexity. I do feel like this game has a novelty factor that will ware off pretty quickly, but it does have a low price which isn’t too bad.

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Balance – Play Games With The Motion Sensor

Pluzzle – A Fun Free Puzzle Game

admin — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:25:12 +0000

Sometimes you really can’t be bothered to do anything and all you want to do is play a quick game. There are hundreds of them out there. I would like to point out a simple little free game called Pluzzle (its not a type). Its a simple tile game. But it is fun, has a couple of features which enables you to customize the game to make it a little bit more fun.

How-To Play

Like most tile games the idea is to rearrange the tiles from their mixed up form. In Pluzzle all you have to do is click on the tiles and they will move into the available space (making a cool scratching noise). When you open the game or start a new game it will randomly organise the tiles so it is a new challenge each time. To start you just click on game to begin. The longer you leave the game to set up the more complicated the start.

Hopefully you can guess the image scrambled above (its iLoveMacApps logo). For a quick two minutes it is quite fun to play. You can change the image, number of rows and columns, as well as the tile size. The numbers are on the tiles so you can line up tiles which are just one single colour. This is so you can complete the game correctly.

Conclusion

This is a good fun game. Its not your World of Warcraft in terms of game play, it is a quick to minutes break while you print job comes out, or you really can’t be bothered to do some work. It is free, so it doesn’t make a dint in the wallet. If you have a long time to burn, set the rows and columns to 7 each (49 tiles in all). You will be there a while.

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Pluzzle – A Fun Free Puzzle Game