Giveaway of the Day - ArcaMania

ArcaMania

Today’s giveaway is the first in the ArcaMania series. There are two games, the second in the series, (ArcaMania 2 has been given away twice previously, but not today). It’s similar to ArcaMania which we are getting for the first time today, but has more unusual power ups, better art, more unusual sound effects and is much much harder to win than today’s giveaway, which is really just a basic arkanoid with a few unusual bonuses and an update which added ten more levels which the developer gave a horror theme. There is also free version of ArcaMania 2 called ArcaMania 2: Retro. I’ve posted a link below in the ‘Similar Games for Free‘ section.

Today’s game is an 11.6Mb download and when installed is initially slightly less at 11Mb, but once you’ve played the game Dat files are created that boost the games size up to 11.8Mb (not very significant when you consider some of the latest games take up over 16Gb of space on a computer. the default install path is C:\Program files\Arcamania. There is a desktop shortcut but no start menu program shortcut. You’ll find an uninstaller within the installed folder. You can create a start menu program folder and place a game and uninstaller short cut into it by following the instructions that I posted in the forums HERE

Introduction:

ArcaMania is a brick-busting classic arKanoid clone with hi-color graphics, effects, sounds and monsters. You must destroy all bricks while keeping the ball on the screen. Some bricks will give you over 20 special bonuses such as long pad, short pad, terminator ball, fast ball, triple ball etc.

This update includes 10 new horror levels with new graphics, monsters and sounds. You can now play the ArcaMania with mouse etc.

Reference accessed HERE on the 13th Nov 09

The Game:

The game is quite basic with few bells and whistles, but offers some reasonabe game play in the traditional 2D format. You get around 50 levels to work through plus an additional 10 levels in the horror mode, which is accessible by clicking the H key while in the main menu. I’ll deal with the cons before I carry on writing generally about the game;

Cons:

• No mouse control when navigating the game menu’s

• No options to turn off sound effects and or music (apart from the volume control)

• Each level is password protected, so you need to keep a record of your level codes otherwise you’ll have to restart from level 1

• In horror mode there’s a scream that is repeated constantly, which can become very very very annoying after playing for a while.

• There is no multiplayer option (you can play up to four players with ArcaMania 2)

If you’ve read my review of Arcamania 2, you’ll find today’s game similar, though being the first in the series several of the features you find in ArcaMania 2 are missing. The original game lacks the difficulty modes and the graphics are ‘a lot more retro’.

You’ll find a page of useful information via the help buttom which can be found in the main menu, that explains the game controls pictorially (you can also see the help page by following the link to the images I’ve uploaded). To play the game you can use the mouse or the arrow keys. Left and right moves the bat left and right (as you would expect) and the up and down arrow keys or the left and right mouse buttons change the shape of the bat to either a convex or concave shape which can affect the angle of direction of the ball, and allows you to change the direction the ball will travel to. A convex shape, which uses the up arrow or left mouse button creates a larger angle of attack to the concave bat shape ((em>down arrow or right mouse button). The help page also details all the score bonuses and power ups that the game uses. There aren’t quite as many as you get with ArcaMania 2, but there’s still a decent number that includes the usual breakout bonuses such as speed up ball (though the speed up you get with this game has a sting in it’s tail which I’ll let you discover for yourselves), free life, and increase bat size, though when the bat size increases you lose the ability to change the angle of attack because the bat remains straight until the bonus wears off. There are also some unusual ones such as the bat reverser that really confuses me when I play the game, another one that forces, and then locks the bat to the edge of the playing arena for a few seconds and another that causes all the bricks on the playing arena to revert to a white basic brick. There are around 30 different brick types some requiring only one hit to destroy and others needing multiple hits. Different bricks can score different points depending upon how many hits it takes to destroy them. Some levels have indestructible bricks, but when collecting the base power up these are also converted to the basic white bricks which can then be destroyed; though doing this can compromise your score as all the brick values are reduced to 10 points each. There’s a high score table that will record the top ten scores; unfortunately these can’t be reset via the hi-score panel. And a cursory look in the games folder (I have a purchased version from several years ago) doesn’t reveal any configuration file that would allow any tweaking.

Most levels also have ball deflectors of various shapes and sizes (depending upon whether you’re playing the standard game or the later addition called The horror mode). Each deflector deflects the ball in a slightly different way; combinations of different deflectors makes for quite a challenging level for players.

To the right of the playing arena are three boxes that show you which bonuses, if any, are active. When you first pick up a bonus it is brightly lit. As the time runs out the light gradually fades till it’s extinguished. The average time a power-up/bonus lasts is from 10 to 15 seconds. You’ll see what I mean when you first pick up a bonus in game. If you lose a life the bonuses that were active at the time of death remain active, so beware when you start a new life. For example, if one of the bonuses is a small bat and another the fast ball, you could easily lose another life very quickly. You can only have three bonuses active at any one time. If you pick up any more while three are active they are lost; however this isn’t too common.

An unusual addition to this game is an indicator along the top of the playing arena. This shows your accumulated score plus the value of any bonuses you may catch as well as the name of the bonus.

I’ve taken screen captures of several of the level codes for both the horror mode and the main game mode, so, if you don’t want to see these, don’t check out the screen captures, or at least skim over the ones with the codes. I’ve also posted a link to a page that lists all the passwords for all the levels for the main game and the horror levels.

Game features:

• 50 original levels

• over 20 bonuses

• advanced aiming with your pad

• about 30 kinds of bricks

• monsters and deflectors

• Additional 10 horror levels added with the v1.2 update

Images:

You can see all the images, including images of several of the password codes that I’ve uploaded on one page HERE, and as a slideshow HERE. You can see the levels much better watching the slideshow as the resolution is higher (800 x 600). Though you can also increase the size of the thumbnail images you get via the first link by using the slider which is to the top right of the screen.

Minimum requirements:

• PC Windows

• 128MB RAM

• OpenGL

.

Conclusion:

The game is fairly basic, but there’s enough decent bonuses plus a few unusual ones, as well as progressively harder levels to make this game a worthwhile download, especially if you like arkanoids. It’s not the best arkanoid I’ve come across, but it’s still worth a 6.5 out of 10 for some quirky game play (though ArcaMania 2 is a lot quirkier) I’ve posted links to several decent and free arkanoids from Gametop (eleven games in total), plus several freeware versions which can be found via the Arkanoid thread and free games synopsis. If you want all of the ArcaMania level codes you can find them HERE

If you have any problems running this game it may be that you don’t have a OpenGL compliant video card, though it’s more likely you don’t have OpenGL installed. You can download OpenGL HERE.

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Similar Games for Free:

You can get a free version of ArcaMania 2 called ArcaMania 2 Retro. It was created by Mart Williams and Tom Roberts, who were keen ArcaMania 2 fans and was inspired by the old ZX Spectrum computer and some of its games, such as Knight Lore, Pyjamarama, Abu Simbel, Dizzy, plus others. You can download it from 300 AD’s site HERE

There’s also at least 10 commercial quality arkanoids available from Gametop and include A-Ball (better known as Nuclear Ball from Urse games), Sawnoid, Egyptoball, Geometry Ball (aka Twinxoid), Scaraball (aka Gem Ball), Star Ball, Brixout XP, Egyptian Ball, Cosmoball and Aztec Bricks. You can download them all HERE

Please be aware that Gametop are increasingly adding the option to install tool bars and change your home page by default, so you need to watch every step of the installation process to make sure all tick boxes are unchecked. This will ensure a clean install. When closing Gametop games down your browser is opened to Gametops home page, but this is innocuous and nothing to worry about.

You’ll find a thread HERE in the game discussion forums dedicated to arkanoids. There’s quite a few excellent freeware alternatives that are as good or nearly as good as all of the commercial titles being given away by Gametop, and some are actually better (IMO). The following titles are definitely worth a look, Wreckerball Dreams, Poing, Hoowaball, DXBall, Beatball, UltraFlexball 2000, Mystery Land and Deep Ball Defender. There are others, but I didn’t want to swamp you with freebies, lol.

I’d also search the free games synopsis for more arkanoids that have been posted in separate threads such as in the free games project. I’ve been rather remise at updating the arkanoids thread over the last several months. You can find the free games synopsis HERE

Finally there’s a free online version of Ricochet: Lost Worlds which is amongst one of the best 2D arkanoids around. It is a browser version, but from what i’ve seen of it it has all the functions of the full version game which you can play HERE. you do need flash player to be able to play this game though.

A very big thank you to the game giveaway team for continuing to find developers willing to give their games away and to 300AD for participating in the project. It’s very much appreciated by the majority of community members.

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Here’s an addendum to my comment: maybe you should get a licensed, updated version of Multimedia Fusion, and not just try selling off the breakout clone that plays on startup.