GALAXY MONSTER

In Brief

GALAXY MONSTER is an isometric hand drawn arena shooter with end of level boss battles. I enjoyed playing this game; some thing different from the usual fare we get here; scoring a decent 7.5 out of 10 for game play and graphics

Introduction:

The action takes place in an alternate reality, where gladiatorial arena contests between heroes and monsters rages on eternally among far away stars.

Each arena consists of 20 waves of monsters; as you progress, these arena fights become more difficult to conquer; and, if you survive these minion monsters you'll ultimately face a unique boss that is far more difficult to beat without guile and tactics.

Using your ammunition judiciously (i.e. making every shot count) is a must in this game as ammunition is sparse. There are full resupplies every second wave, and you can pick up ammunition caches during each wave dropped by dead monsters. .

I used the Steam game description as a template for the above introduction to GALAXY MONSTER, reference accessed HERE. 11th April 2019

Installation:

GALAXY MONSTER downloads to a 139 MB zip file that unzips to two files, (a set-up executable and a read me). The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed if you wish. The installed game is approximately 137 MB in size.

C:\Program Files (x86)\GALAXY MONSTER

Five shortcuts are installed to the desktop, four of which can be safely deleted (i.e. Falco Space - Online Game!, FalconLine Online Games Website, FalcoGo WebGL Games! and Free Games Downloads!). If you don't want to install the games shortcut to the desktop during installation, just make sure the install desktop shortcut is unchecked when the 'additional task's window appears; you will still get two of the other Falcoware shortcuts installed (i.e. FalconLine Online Games Website & FalcoGo WebGL Games shortcuts). Also, if you don't like icons installed to the quick launch task bar, make sure you also uncheck the appropriate checkbox when the 'additional task's window appears (after the Select Start Menu Folder window).

The Game:

GALAXY MONSTER is a hand drawn arena shooter where you have to attempt to survive waves of monsters, with end level bosses. Each level has a specific number of monsters to kill. You have three weapons which can be accessed using the number keys 1,2 & 3. You start off with limited ammunition, but you'll find caches of ammo left by monsters you've killed scattered around the arena. Movement is using the WASD keys. To pick up small caches of ammunition just walk over them, to resupply with larger amounts you'll find the occasional ammunition box appear every second wave, this also sometimes includes a 100% health pack. To open these boxes use the action key E to pick up the contents.

Each wave of monsters appears after a short countdown period. The number of monsters in each wave is indicated (in blue) in the top right of the arena. Cycling through your weapons, you can see the amount of ammunition left in each weapon next to the guns symbol, located in the top left hand corner of the arena. You should use this time to search the arena for those caches of ammunition. To keep yourself from losing all your health, you should keep moving at all times, especially in the later waves as there are increasing numbers of monsters. To run, use the Alt key in conjunction with your movement keys.

There are five different arenas to explore, all of which are unlocked from the start, so you can play any level. These are, Wasteland, Quarry, Temple, Fields and Pandemic, each includes a leader board, which records the world scores and your friends scores, however, I think the leader boards are deactivated in this free standing version. The leader boards were probably designed to work with Steams community, so only works with the Steam version of this game.

Whiterabbit-uk 11th April 2019

Conclusion:

If you enjoy playing arena shooters this should appeal. I found the hand drawn graphics added to the games attractiveness, despite the overall grayness to the game. The splashes of color contrasted starkly with the grey theme, but I thought it worked well. Definitely one I'll be keeping. It's not as easy as you think to get to the end of 20 waves. Watch out for those round monsters; when you hit them they break up into smaller monsters that repeats a few times, so you end up with at least 8 or more mini monsters.

Video of GALAXY MONSTER:

You can see a video of GALAXY MONSTER via the Steam store page HERE.

Suggestions:

After you've had an opportunity to play today's giveaway please take a few moments to give some positive or negative feedback; for example, what you liked or disliked about the game, or how it could be improved. If you don't like the genre at all, please explain why and if any, what improvements would change your mind? If you don't have time to post a comment today, please do so at your convenience, thank you. If you wish to post a review or comment about the game later, you can access the comments section by going to the game giveaways home page, then scroll to the bottom of the page where it says Archives and select the date the giveaway was live (giveaway days are in bold type). This will open the appropriate page for you to post your comment or review. Alternatively, you can google the name of the game and include Gamegiveawayoftheday in the search. This should give you a list of links to whenever this game was given away.

If you miss today's game giveaway you can always get the game via Steam HERE.

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting GALAXY MONSTER to work please visit the FAQ's Thread HERE and read through the communities comments because sometimes fixes have already been posted, for example, a common issue seen since the Themida wrapper was introduced three years ago is that some community members installation of the game are blocked by their security because Themida code has been known to hide malware, (usually an error message is flagged for example 'The executable is corrupted' even though in reality it is not); so as a precaution some anti malware programs will block and even delete the suspect installation files even though the files (i.e. the setup, read me and setup.gcd files are actually totally free from malware. This issue can be solved either by rebooting your computer in safe mode with networking or a quicker method is to temporarily turn off your security software to allow the installation. You could also try white-listing the setup.gcd file. In the almost 12 years this game giveaway site has been operating there has 'never' been a game given away that was infected with malware.

If for any reason you want to contact the giveaway team, for example, you have a game to offer the community, or are unable to download the latest game or other issues that the FAQ's thread or these comments don't cover or solve you can do so HERE

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the developer small Games and the distributor Falcoware Games for giving away GALAXY MONSTER and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

If GALAXY MONSTER doesn't doesn't interest you, but you still hanker for something new to play, you'll find details of some game deals whether they be sale items, heavily discounted (up to 95%) indie bundles or games being given away for free HERE (I've not updated the thread in a while, but most of the links still take you to the latest deals).

The rest of the information that used to be posted in the game review can be found in the forums HERE. Finally, check out Delenns threads for details of other free games and offers; she often updates with the latest deals from Indie Gala, the Humble Store and others HERE; plus other community members sometimes post details of free games elsewhere in the game discussion forums HERE, (current deals are usually on the first page of the game discussion forums).

The free game over at Epic Games is now The Witness; a single-player game in an open world with dozens of locations to explore and over 500 puzzles; (sells for £29.99/$39.99/€36.99/₽699). From the 18th of April Transistor (sells for £15.46/$19.99/€16.79/₽435) is available free HERE; a sci-fi-themed action RPG where you discover the world of transistors; from the creators of Bastion. Indie Gala have removed some of the games that were available last week and added new ones to their free games list, (at least 20 free games are available via their recently added showcase section) that includes adventure, RPG, Simulation, strategy and casual games (most recent first) i.e. Survivalist (a huge open-world Role Playing Game), Galactic Missile Defense - ( an endless/leaderboard-based shooter and tower defense game, where you must protect Earth from the invading Martians), Super Destronaut - (A retro space invaders clone), Siluman Project - (An RPG Maker game where the purpose of the game is to defeat monster girls bosses and reach the ending based on what action do you do), Five Nations - (A futuristic real-time strategy game that follows the events of a mind-bending opera of space about the survival of humanity), False ReBirth - (Another RPG Maker game - A psychological, story-focused game about the last remaining human), GOR - Gorilla Office Rampage - (Top down action game - play as a monkey and you smash stuff), Home is where Chip is - (Casual simulation), Age of Fear: The Free World - (introduction to the series' tried-and-true gameplay, focusing on non-linear exploration and combat in an Open World style), Die Legende von Saya: Befehl aus der Dunkelheit - (aka The Legend of Saya: Command from the Dark) - (Action adventure RPG), What Never Was, The Last Humans: Awakening, Childhood, Dunwell, Safe Not Safe, Hi Hotel, Bugs Must Die, Cuadradito y Circulito, Hellino, Hovership Havoc and Wake Up , or you can find them all HERE. Finally, there are some excellent bargains on sale via Steam HERE; for example, if you previously purchased the game Sniper Elite 2 on Steam, there is a decent discount on the new remastered version of the game HERE. The developer is re-releasing the award winning game with a total re-skin and additional content plus all the original dlc is included with the game as well. It's released on Steam mid May. Owners of the original game will get over 75% off the usual price. i.e. £6.99 instead of £29.99. (If you don't own the original, it's no longer available via Steam, but you may find cheap steam keys on various stores that deal in Steam keys. Pre ordering the remastered version will give you 10% off the usual price i.e. £26.99 instead of £29.99 After watching videos of the remastered version and comparing it to the original, it looks amazing.