Several months ago it was announced that Vortex Next Generation would be the sole Mac title to be presented at the Independent Games Festival. Developer Rocco Bowling is attending this subset of the Game Developers Conference -- going on this week in San Jose -- as one of the five programmers in the Student Showcase. IMG recently had the chance to play an early build of Vortex NG and write up some thoughts about the title, which is set for release next month. Here's a clip:

The graphics in Vortex are reminiscent of an 80's arcade game while at the same time incorporating many more modern 3D effects. A similar game could have been programmed in a 2D world, though the OpenGL shows off Apple's hardware nicely. The vortex is an impressive dark swirling cloud which serves as a constant background to your battle. The ships and aliens are geometrically simple, though well-designed. A particle system is in place for explosions and other effects. Resolutions up to 1024x768 are currently supported and the higher settings look very nice. A number of the feature can be toggled on or off for better performance. As it stands, Vortex NG should not be very demanding on your hardware, and the author notes it is playable on any iMac.

Vortex Next Generation Web Site

Preview of Vortex Next Generation

IMG News: Vortex NG Reaches Game Dev Finals

Search for other Mac games news stories or browse our Mac Games News Archive.