Giveaway of the Day - Alien Stars

Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game please take some time once you’ve played it a while to leave some constructive feedback either positive or negative. The more constructive feedback we get, the more likely developers are going to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with the search engines. Developers want their products out there on the WWW, this site has the potential to do that. The game giveaway project gives away on average between 9 to 17 thousand downloads for each game depending upon what genre and how obscure the game is. That’s a lot of homes these games are being downloaded into and a lot of ‘potential’ cash that’s being lost by the developers. If we get better games because of better feedback, the community are likely to continue to benefit from the generosity of the developers. Satisfied community members are then more likely to visit the home sites of those developers and purchase games that they may not have bothered with before they discovered the developer via the game giveaway site, thus giving the developers more incentives to give away even more decent games.

Please leave some feedback once you’ve checked the game out. It can be positive or negative, but please explain what your reasons were for the feedback you post. You could also leave suggestions for improving the game, for example, this game could do with more block types for the levels editor, add more power-ups, describing the ones you think would be suitable, add some mini games (which seem all the rage in some arcade games now) or enable the user to be able to change the in game music easily.

Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment.

Regards

Whiterabbit aka Stephen

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Problems installing, activating and running today’s game:

If you have difficulty downloading or activating the game you can try again later or do one of the following – for example once downloaded when you click on the dual activation and set up file you may get the message “Failed to connect. Please try again later” Check to see if your internet explorer isn’t offline (thanks to MrSnoozles/Mike and GMMan for that fix). If the previous suggestion doesn’t work go check out previous comments from the last several weeks and look for comments from GMMan and Mike. They have also posted their possible fixes for this problem.

Mike suggests that you check to see if Internet Explorer is offline (even if you use firefox). If it is make sure that it’s online thn try again. I’ve always tried re-booting my modem and/or router with some success, though Mike has said that doing that does nothing. Still, it’s worth a try if all else fails.

If you are getting the black screen problem right click on the games executable and select properties then click on the compatibility mode and select the disable visual themes. This should fix the problem, if not try disabling the display scaling on higher dpi settings and disabling the desktop composition.

Other fixes include changing your screen resolution, installing the latest direct X (remember that XP uses DX 9 or earlier only, Vista uses DX 10 or before and Win 7 DX11 or before). Also try updating your graphics drivers. The main two chip manufacturers are NVIDIA and ATI both of which offer driver downloads for free. Just go to the respective manufactures home page and you’ll find a link to the driver download page. To find out which graphic card or graphics chip your computer uses type in Dxdiag in the search field (Vista or Win 7) or the run command (XP); this opens up the DirectX diagnostics panel. click on the display tab and look to the left panel. You should easily see what graphics card or chip you are using. (This is required information when selecting the correct download from the developers site).

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This would have been a great game to review but it’s my daughter’s birthday today and I’m in the middle of building a new computer for her, (I’d wanted to get it completed with OS installed by this morning but had some setbacks last night), so have not had time to write a review today.

The following is just a collection of information about the game. I purchased it from Big Fish some time ago. I wasn’t impressed, but that said it’s your typical vertical space shooter, nothing special and I’ve seen much better, but it’s not bad. If you like shmup’s this will be well worth downloading.

Installation

The game downloads to a 15.2Mb zip file that unpacks to a set up module plus a read me document with the registration code included. On installing you will get an initial game window that has three buttons, click on the green ‘register button’, (the third button for color blind users). This brings up a smaller window that enables you to paste the registration code.

Shortcuts are installed to the desktop and the start menu program list. You’ll also find an uninstaller together with other shortcuts. The game was created back in 2005 but does play on Win 7 and Vista (as well as XP).

Video

You can see a video of game play via the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOl_DqrOcNc

Alien Stars™ Description:

Welcome to the fantastic world of Alien Stars – a fantastic Vertical Scrolling Space Shooter game! Leave your fears far behind. Set your mind free. Believe in the endless universe and it will blast in front of your eyes with millions of alien galaxies.

“…Year 2741. Transgalaxy Department of Defence, being a representative of the law in all the populated sectors of the Galaxy, lost its control and was unable to function in unity any more. The Peace Treaty, which had been enforced for the last 500 years was infringed. Hordes of Biodos subdued the constellations of Chrono and Recart. The colonies of Earth were next to become conquered and enslaved. The most destructive war of the third millennium turned out to be inevitable…”

Alien Stars combines all the best features of simple arcade and space shooter. Meet lots of different enemies, destroying armor and as much action as you can only imagine! When running your fantastic space ship you’ll have a chance to enjoy beautiful space landscape and listen to the original soundtracks. Alien Stars can absolutely be called a blistering game with a blistering gameplay!

Reference http://www.awem.com/alien-stars.html accessed 22nd Oct 2011

The following is a review from Awem Studios site:

A vertical space shooter puts you in control of a space interceptor to ward off a relentless invasion of alien spacecraft’s in 12 wonderfully-crafted missions.

If you think you were born to become a commander of a space interceptor, not to rub your pants through in the office, then Alien Stars is a good pick to play. Combining the best features of arcades and space shooters, this twitch game takes you to Year 2741. After the breakdown of a peace treaty, hordes of Biodos subdued the constellations of Chrono and Recart and their next target is the planet Earth. A massive contingent of alien spaceships is circling in orbit, ready to attack major points around the globe in less than half an hour! This is where you step in. Now the world’s only hope lies with you. Your mission is to go into space to thwart the evil plan.

Alien Stars lets you operate a space interceptor and blast away at alien invaders coming your way, while avoiding their fire. You can go full speed to the top of the play field, move left or right to get out of sticky situations like a collision with a meteorite, or an alien spacecraft, or an intensive cross-fire area. Advancing through the mission, you will face a wide array of alien spacecrafts, which adds variety to the gameplay. A larger and tougher boss appears at the end of each mission. To increase your survival chances, you must collect power-ups such as life, armor upgrades, shield, and weapon upgrades that increase you firepower. The game’s arsenal is big and includes missiles, mines, lasers, nukes and other thingies to give the invaders hell!

As you progress through 12 missions, the complexity of the game gradually increases and so does the adrenaline and obviously excitement. Your arcade reflexes had better be ultra-sharp to make it through to the end of the mission. As soon as you have completed the mission, you can share the excitement from your victory with other players by posting your scores to the Worldwide Hall of Fame on the internet. Addictive gameplay in Alien Stars is perfectly complemented by wonderfully drawn environments and spectacular effects, which have been recreated with accurate physics and much care to details. On top of all this is electrifying music and sound effects, which go well with a space fantasy storyline. So, are you ready for all this?

Stop the alien invasion, RIGHT NOW, before it’s the end if mankind! Good luck, commander!

Reference http://www.awem.com/reviews/alien-stars.-go-to-space-and-give-the-enslaving-invaders-hell!.html accessed 22nd October 2011

Features:

• Tons of enemies, weapons and bonuses

• 11 large missions with a huge Boss at the end of each

• Unique and truly addictive gameplay

Additional Information:

You’ll find loads of Space orientated games over in the game discussion forums. Chazzo posted a couple of brilliant side scrolling shmup’s called Vacant Ark and Darius Gaiden, there’s also a shmup’s thread with all manner of space orientated games which you can find via the following thread:

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/2724#post-18808

MyPlayCity also have a large selection of excellent shmup’s to choose from:

http://www.myplaycity.com/free_space_games/

If you’re not averse to paying for some games Steam posted three excellent Japanese shmups called Gundemonium Recollection, Hitogata Happa and GundeadiGne. all three have a pseudo anime style with large models and very colorful graphicd. The Jpanese are masters of this type of game and these three titles are well worth checking out. Each only costs £3.99 . you can check them out (and download demo’s) via the following links:

Gundemonium Recollection:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/92200/?snr=1_4_4__103_5

Hitogata Happa:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/92210/

GundeadiGne:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/92220/?snr=1_4_4__103_5

Don’t forget Sandlot games are still giving a free game a week away, though this weeks is probably the penultimate freebie because they have been bought out by Digital Chocolate. This weeks freebie is Westward. Realore don’t appear to have a freebie this week.

Check out the following thread over in the game discussion thread. There’s one of those pay what you want deals and you get five really excellent games which I’ve listed below:

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/10598

• 18 Wheels of Steel Extreme Trucker

• Bicycle Texas Hold ’Em Poker

• Hoyle Crosswords & Sudoku

• Hunting Unlimited 2011

• Line Rider 2 – Unbound

I’ve got four of the above already though the poker game is a slightly different version that has various game characters as the playing characters . If you like driving games 18 Wheels of Steel Extreme Trucker is an excellent game with decent graphics and hundreds of miles of roads that have been modelled off real road systems, with loads of missions to complete or just play it as a sandbox game. Hunting Unlimited 2011 is also a Sandbox game with several different maps to explore and hunt 9I love this game even though I’m a vegetarian, lol) The graphics are excellent and you can choose from a selection of hunting rifles. Bullet physics are good. Line Rider 2 – Unbound is an excellent indie game that I originally paid nearly £18 for when it was first released onto DVD. (I later got it via Steam for a couple of pounds, lol ). Crosswords and Sudoku speak for themselves. You can pay as little as you wish or as much as you wish. Proceeds go towards a shipping charity for forces overseas.

Window XP SP3 Download and install fine, registration, no problem, but my mouse cursor keeps drifting left. I have to time my ‘clicks’ to catch menu items as ‘I’ drift by. Really weird!
Looked interesting but if I can’t the mouse to work… ???

……………………Moderator Comment………………….

Are your graphics drivers up to date? also install the latest version of direct X. you could also try playing the game in windowed mode or changing your screen resolution.