IMG is making a concerted effort to broaden our horizons beyond commercial releases, and include much more coverage of shareware titles (especially those which originate on the Mac OS). Thus we bring you our latest preview, which focuses on AirBurst. This brilliant homage to an arcade classic features the top-notch visuals and sounds we've come to expect from Strange Flavour, along with addictive gameplay. Here's an excerpt from the preview:

Warlords was a simple game with a simple concept -- you used your paddle to guard your castle (and the knight within) from a ball of fire which took a chunk out of anything it hit. Even with the blocky, nearly monochrome graphics and limited sound abilities of the Atari console, Warlords was a compelling game for a group of kids with a Saturday afternoon to kill. As the ball bounced around and was deflected, your wall slowly came down brick by brick until only one knight survived.

AirBurst pays homage to this classic and attempts to take this style of play to a new level of visual splendor and challenging tactics. This time the castle wall is an island of fragile balloons floating high above Earth, and the ball of fire is now spiked, ready to puncture your shield. Further complicating matters is the fact that your island of balloons has its own physics, and starts to drift around as you come into contact with the razor-tipped ball and the other players. Add to this a mix of power-ups and twelve (currently -- more variants may be added) styles of play and you have a classic reborn as a truly 21st-century game.

Preview: AirBurst

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