Hi Guys, Please excuse my lack of communications over the past several weeks. I really needed a break from posting reviews and moderating.

I've been posting regularly since the project started back in December 2006 with very few breaks apart from our yearly vacations; (though even those have been put on hold since 2018 due to the lack of any rabbit and cat sitters. Our daughters friends used to help but they are now all working or away from home, so it's not been possible to go away.

I will be returning to my usual reviews and moderating, but at the moment I'm enjoying the break, so will be extending it for at least a couple more weeks over the Easter break as we want to do some family outings and generally do stuff together before everyone goes back to work etc.

I haven't tried it but here's a video for anyone interested.

https://youtu.be/WaHS8T_5PHo

Cranks Rescue A Planet is a puzzle game released originally in 2013 as one of those Gamiron games that were entered into a game making competition, and has never been given away before on GOTD. Some excellent games have been created this way as real money is offered to the winners, but in general from my own experiences, some others are short and/or often unfinished simply because they are given specific rules such as the type of game and the length of time you have to create that game, and then later may not come back to finish or improve it... So what do we have here? Well, this is the first game development contest that developer had entered... yet it won second place! Congrats 10 years later :)

In the gameplay, you have to get all three characters to the same colored flasks (called cones) as the character that contain the antidote to the infection you are trying to cure. All characters move together at once making things challenging with the many different obstacles in the game such as a block hindering other characters movement that only purple can remove with spacebar, or a cactus that will destroy a character when hit unless its the green one. In addition to the unique abilities of each character to help solve these puzzles, you can put one of the characters only to sleep so they dont move by clicking on it. Completing the level can earn one, two or three stars which depends on the number of the three characters who survived to the end of the level. In the final 20th level at the time of my review, you will have to take on the boss himself - Gnumanikus. In the upper right corner, three buttons are displayed: Restart level, volume control and exit menu thoughtfully as well.

The main thing I would add so far is just a save so you can return to the level you were at later (since these arent breezy easy) on as exiting the game appeared to restart from the beginning and remappable keys in game so gamers can use arrow keys for example. Additional levels could be added if the developer is still active as the game is now being sold on itch but already contains some nice logic puzzles that will challenge you.

Rating: B-

A video of gameplay can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaHS8T_5PHo