Giveaway of the Day - Bio Guardian

Bio-Guardian:

Summary:
This is a retro shmup (arena space shooter) with colourful graphics set against a dark space. There are three control options the first uses full mouse control for both movement and fire control, the other two options use either the WASD or Cursor Keys for movement with fire control initiated by the mouse buttons (LMB and RMB) RMB fires the special weapon. While in game you destroy enemy organisms/ships. Some of these leave power ups or energy pods that you have to move over to pick up. These are time limited so watch out for them. The energy pods are used for the special weapons. The special weapon power indicator can be seen across the top of the arena. It will recharge slowly automatically, using a power pod charges it to full power immediately.

You initially have three choices of ship to use, each with a different configuration. As you progress there will be another 15 to unlock. The configurations include Fire Power, Propulsion and Fire Speed. Firing at enemy organisms appears to be automatic.

Installation:

Today’s giveaway is a 7.21MB download that unpacks to a readme file and a dual activation and setup file. The game installs to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Bio-Guardian\Bio-Guardian.exe (64bit operating systems)
or
C:\Program Files\Bio-Guardian\Bio-Guardian.exe (32bit orerating Systems)

Shortcuts are installed to the desktop and the Start Menu\Program Files.

The game plays on my 32bit XP Pro , 64bit Vista home Premium , 64bit Win 7 ultimate and 64 bit Win 7 Pro.

(Image copied from Indie Games)

Introduction:

BIO GUARDIAN: Freyja cultivation vessel starts a long travel towards Nimbos, a young planet in terraforming process. When the mission is affected by an strange biological anomaly, the fate of the settlers from Nimbos rests in a single crew member.
Will you be able to save the fate of Nimbos and discover the truth about Freyja’s secret?

Take the control of S-NMA [Scalpel Nano Machine Unit] and begins a fantastic journey through a microscopic world.

Discover the root of the evil that threatens to end the life of Nimbos inhabitants while you try to discover your own secrets.

Reference http://www.oniric-factor.com/bio-guardian.html accessed 30th April 2011

The Game:

This is a retro shmup (arena space shooter) with colourful graphics set against a dark space. The game starts with a general introduction (see first two images below), that introduces the story line behind the game and sets the scene for some medium to difficult shoot ‘em up gaming. You can avoid watching the intro if you want to get right to the action by clicking on the Esc key once. to escape the game fully click on the Esc. you can’t avoid the option menu or the set-up screens. I’ve described these below. Once in game you can pause the game by pressing the Esc key once. This then allows you to either return to the game or escape to the desktop. On first starting the game, once the intro story has finished (remember, you can skip this using the Esc key) you will get the profile page where you have to enter a name before you can proceed.

There are three control options, Standard, Alpha and Beta. The keyboard options also have two more control options which can be accessed via the options menu and include lateral crossing (where you cross the arena in a lateral motion and secondly an inertial challenge. You can find out more about these two options via the Help button that’s located in the main menu. The keyboard options add more difficulty to the playing experience, but when achieved successfully will give the player a greater sense of achievement. (Well , it should do, )
Standard – Mouse for movement, LMB fire weapon, RMB fire special weapon
Alpha – Keyboard WASD keys for movement, weapons same as Standard
Beta – Keyboard Cursor Keys for movement, weapons same as Standard.

In the options menu you’ll find a couple of graphic options. A retro filter that can be used on those computers with slow C.P.U. speeds (these speeds haven’t been quoted by the developer). If you have problems running the game I suggest turning the filter to ‘ON’. There’s also a glow colour that enables you to make several choices that change the colour scheme of the game and include Oil, Light, fire, red, ice, blue, venom, green and yellow.

The game speed (difficulty) can be changed from Normal (default) to Quick or Turbo and you can switch from ‘Full screen’ to ‘Windowed’. There’s space for three profiles, which is adequate for a small family.

The first control option uses full mouse control for both movement and fire control, and the other two options use either the WASD or Cursor Keys for movement with fire control initiated by the mouse buttons (LMB and RMB). RMB fires the special weapon. While in game you have to destroy enemy ships/organisms. Some of these leave power ups or energy pods that you have to move over to pick up. These are time limited so watch out for them. The energy pods are used for the special weapons. The special weapon power indicator can be seen across the top of the arena. It will recharge slowly automatically, and using a power pod charges it to full power immediately. There are different colored energy pods. The most effective energy pods are those that are the same colour as your ship. These will recharge the energy bar.

Initially you only have three ships chassis to choose from, but once all chassis are unlocked there will be a total of eighteen chassis types. The three that are unlocked at the start of the game are called Mercury 1, 2 and 3. Each ship chassis has different characteristics that includes firepower, propulsion and firing speed as well as appearance. The graphics make it hard to distinguish between the various ship appearances, but there are differences that can be seen when you look at the Equipment Selection screen. In some cases the only difference is in the colour of the ship, but you may also see very minor differences in the ship markings. The Mercury I chassis has class 2 firepower (which does more damage per hit), a class one propulsion unit and a class one fire speed control, whereas Mercury 2 has a class 2 propulsion unit and Mercury 3 has a class 2 fire speed control. Each of the three ships also has a different colored chassis, Mercury 1 = Yellow, Mercury 2 = Blue and Mercury 3 = Green. You will also see some very minor differences between the shapes of each chassis., but these are not obvious at first glance.

Power=-up’s:

Energy pods enable the use of your special weapon that is activated using the RMB. The power ups that you can collect from destroyed ships include a Stop power-up, that stops all enemy movement for a short while, making it easier to collect bonuses without enemies attacking you , clear arena that destroys all enemy ships in the arena at the time you collect the bonus, a weapons bonus that doubles the fire power of your weapons; (you will see two energy bolts as opposed to one) and a bonus that upgrades your weapons.. Firing your weapons depletes your energy reserves so try not to fire unnecessarily. The ship you control will automatically point towards the nearest enemy ship making it easier to shoot enemies and also making it ideal for novices to the shmup genre (Shmup =Space sHoot ‘eM UP). You still need to move you ship to pick up the bonuses. Bonuses only remain on the arena for a limited time, which is where faster ships come in very useful.

Energy:

More energy means more fire power. When your energy is low attacks become weaker. To improve your attack strength pick up the energy modules left by destroyed ships these are smaller in size to the other bonuses and will have mod in small letters above the module.. As you progress through the levels better chassis will become available that give you better attribute such as being able to store more energy or fire your weapons faster.

Images:
You can see a slideshow of around 30 images (introduction, options menus, help pages and in game images showing various energy pods and power-ups via the following link:

http://s571.photobucket.com/albums/ss160/Whiterabbit04/Bio-Guardian/?albumview=slideshow

In-game image showing Clear Arena power-up

Conclusion:

This is a decent space Shoot’Em Up (Shmup) IMO; it’s got all of the elements of an arena shooter apart from a shop, but you earn upgrades simply by progressing through the levels. It’s not a particularly easy shooter, even on the easiest settings. I’ve been playing games like this since space invaders and still found it difficult to pass the first level. You must avoid being touched by the organic ships. This does serious damage to your ship unless you’ve picked up a temporary shield and you’ll soon find yourself restarting the level. You don’t have any second lives’ it’s all or nothing. Once you’ve passed a level you can return to it at any time, or start where you left off.

I like the automatic lock on to enemy ships. It saves a lot of hassle manouvering your ship. It doesn’t make the game to easy as you’d expect.

Shmups are one of my favourite arcade and indie games so I’m a little biased with regards to scoring this game. Judging by the number of these gams being released by the big arcade developers they are not very popular. People seem to prefer Hidden Object, Time Management and Match three’s to something a little more challenging (IMO); bearing that in mind I’m going to give this game two scores, one from a biased position and one from (hopefully) an unbiased one. With all the elements you get with this game I’d happily purchase it and think it’s worth a good 8 out of 10 that comprises of 8 for graphics, 8 for game play and 8 for sounds/music. I actually really like the sounds and music. The omission of a sound controller by the developer is rather unfortunate as I think the music will get very annoying for some. I would suggest (amongst other suggestions detailed below) that the developer updates the game to include the ability to turn down or at least toggle off the sounds and music. I’d also add a shop to buy upgrades rather than give them automatically. It adds another dimension to the game IMO. All the best Shmups have shops to buy upgrades. I’d also consider adding some mini games that could include moon landers and traditional space invaders.

From an unbiased point of view I’d score this game a 5.67 due to the limited audience that will enjoy this genre. None of the previous shooters have ever done really well apart from one. That includes 5 for music, 6 for graphics and 6 for game play.

I’d definitely give this game a trial. Give yourself plenty of practice before you scrap the game out of hand, because I think you’ll find the game well worth keeping once you’ve mastered the controls. It’s definitely a keeper for me. Thank you to the developer and the game giveaway team for getting this developer onboard.

Other Info:

I posted loads of Shmups in a thread called ‘Space Shoot ‘Em ups or Shmup’s: A longish list of FREE games’, which you can find via the following link:
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/2724#post-18808

or via the free games synopsis:
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/4534

You can also get several commercial versions via Gametop for free:

http://www.gametop.com/category/action.html

or from MyPlayCity (almost 40):
http://www.myplaycity.com/free_space_games/

Seems buggy to me… I had difficulty clicking on the “Exit” button to exit the “Tutorial” as the game would not allow my mouse to move down to the bottom of the screen to reach it. I finally had to use Windows Task Manager to forcibly close it… Also during gameplay I experienced the same bug as I could not move my ship to the far right side of the screen. Maybe it’s just my system? Don’t think so but I’ve seen stranger things when it comes to computers… My 2 cents.

………………….Moderator Comment……………………

Thanks for the feedback. Have you tried changing your screen resolution. That may fix the probleem. When I have tme I’ll run through all my screen resolutions to see if I get the same effect. At the moment the game plays perfectly for me.

To the community:

I’m a little pushed for time today as we have guests for dinner. I will continue to modederate, but it will be in a reduced capacity until this evening (around 8 – 9pm GMT when we expect our guests to leave).