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If there was one thing the Slacker learned from a childhood spent watching “The Wonder Years” and playing with those old-school sticky spiders that came in cereal boxes (and would go down about three walls before becoming too encrusted with small bits of dirt to function properly), it’s this: sometimes a really good thing slips by. In the midst of the Halo hubbub, Myth 3 mania and Oni ogling, some terrific games have gone unnoticed. This happens to the best of us and is neither the fault of the programmer or the intended customer. The simple truth of the matter is that these games are shareware, registering only as tiny blips on the radar of the Macintosh gaming industry. Sometimes a great game will emerge and become so wildly hyped that its presence becomes unavoidable, the lack of marketing dollars providing no hindrance whatsoever. Other times a significant company like Ambrosia or Freeverse will push a good game to greatness, its time, effort and marketing dollars ensuring that the game winds up on as many Macs as possible while taking a share of the profits in return. In the end, only a few shareware game titles truly shine above the rest and become part of the Mac gaming community’s collective consciousness. Once absorbed, these games provide a great value for a low price despite the thousands of play hours lost, millions of consumed caffeine beverages and the wail of the neglected significant others they leave in their wake. In the interest of fair play regarding every potential game on the Macintosh platform (as well as Tuncer’s habit of chasing the dragon in the heart of Canada’s vilest opium dens prior to choosing his features pieces and the writers behind them), the Slacker’s Guide to Shareware Gaming has been brought to Inside Mac Games. The Slacker himself, now older, wiser and a full time grad student, will attempt to find the best and the brightest shareware titles, play them, discuss them and provide happening download links on a biweekly basis. The swimsuit issue comes later. So, armed with the best intentions and not a few bids from independent contractors to pave the road to hell for a minimal cost, it begins: AirBurst
A little more than a year ago: the Slacker fell in love. Not with the girl of his dreams, mind you, or even Ms. Right Now, but a shareware game that defied everything shareware was stereotypically supposed to be. Strange Flavour Software’s Bushfire had just come out for the Mac and had purred all friendly-like in the Slacker’s general direction. Beautiful graphics, addictive game play and a wonderfully simple premise (rescue the stranded smoke jumpers, drop water on the trees engulfed in flames and watch as the game become progressively stranger) showed just how good Mac shareware could be.A year later, Strange Flavour is back with AirBurst, a title that proves that the Fothergill brothers should be making their living making great games for the Mac and that crack is now transmittable through the optic nerve. Simple, colorful, easy to learn and imbued with a weird sense of humor all its own, AirBurst has become a must-have time waster for whenever the Slacker has 10 free minutes. The objective is simple: protect your character and its floating cushion of bubbles with your rotating bubble bat against the other three opponents, deflecting a stray ball at any angle possible to protect your bubble cushion while tearing down others’. When the bubble cushion has been destroyed, its rider falls to his or her death. The game pace picks up as the bubble cushions begin to randomly move about the screen, completely changing the perspective and the angle the ball needs to be deflected. Power-ups affect the entire game, and what was once an orderly game with a slow-moving ball being bounced between four players has now spawned into several rapidly moving balls tearing chaotically across the screen while everyone else but you seems to have evolved a metal shield on their bubble cushion, your bubble bat (the only means of defense or offense) having disintegrated to almost nothing. It gets more interesting from there. The Fothergills have left plenty of room for customization with mappable keyboard controls, a “Kids” mode, the ability to choose starting levels, ample graphics/sound options and faint rumors of network support in the future. For a price of $5 and a generous, quickly downloaded demo to boot, the brothers deserve every cent the Mac gaming community can offer as a means of encouragement to keep writing more amazing games like this.
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