The last time this was given away it was under the name StarGunner. In case anyone is interested.


...................Moderator Comment...................

Thank you Alan. :) (loved the character of Elric in the Moorcock eternal champion series).

This is the quickest loading up and set up I have ever seen.
Xcellent graphics, gives the impression of 3D and the scenery have depth, after a while you actually feel you are there.
Full marks to all concerned, one of the best space games I have ever played.
Thanks to the programers and company for such an excellent game and for giving all of us the unique opertunity of having it for free through GGOTD.
Best regards

...................Moderator Comment...................

Thank you for the feedback Mike.

Thanks. Ok Win 7 Ultimate x64. Just not my game play since even Easy
seemed to send hard to hit waves. About 4th wave the aim became too hard to hard for hits & collecting bonuses. Old School look.
Will look at couple of mentioned games in forum.

......................Moderator comment...................

Bonuses are pretty easy to collect. They remain where they are till you move the gun turrets opposite the power up.

couln't get it to work,don't want to fiddle around,DELETE.

Works just fine on my win7x64 machine. I really like it to! Thanks to you and to the developers for giving it to us. Have only played it through the first 3 levels but its a keeper for me. No problems with it at all,downloaded and installed like a breeze.

Any chance you'll be getting any of the Kings Smith games again? Just got a new computer and really miss that one!

Anyway, Kudo's to you and the developers for this!

..................Moderator comment......................

It depends on the developers and districutors.

Doesnt work o my computer,,,Black screen only ..its a newer dell studio 64 bit..fully updated ..tried all the fixes...done wasting time on it...would have liked to have it but oh well..maybe next time...windows vista service pack 2...


....................Moderator comment...............

Have you tried the Gametop version?

IMO, this game is pretty lame. The main thing I don't like about it is how imprecise the shooting is. The enemies move horizontally, you move horizontally, but the bullet doesn't, and it's not fast enough to hit an enemy while the enemy is far away. There's also not too much space for dodging, and you'd get hit if you try to track an enemy on the rebound. As for technical content, this game is pretty old, and the mesh format doesn't have embedded texture information, making me guess which texture to feed to my converter.

I'm more excited for tomorrow's game. Hopefully it's not made with Game Maker again.


.......................Moderator Comment.....................

Thank you for your feed back GMMan. Like any game of this type, it's more a question of getting used to the mechanics of the game. I was able to quite accurately shoot the distance ships once I'd figured out the pattern. As fpr tomorrows game, I'd forgotten that you've sussed out how to see what the next game is. I won't say any more in case I let slip, suffice it to say it's different to anything we've had via the game giveaway before. :)

This game does not display properly. In the title screen the main title text has the top have cut off my the top of the window or screen. I tried to play with the resolution and other settings to no avail. If you can solve the display issues, I'd be happy to try it again.

....................Moderator comment.....................

I get that problem if I play it in windowed mode, otherwise it plays fine on three different computers with different Operating systems (XP, Vista and Win 7)

I downloaded this before but I believe that it was under a different name? It is a very good game. Is there any difference in this version compared to the last version? Anyway thanks GOTD and Whiterabbit

......................Moderator Comment..........................

Hi Elric, today's version is the same as the one we got back in March, tohugh the previous time before that was an earlier version.

VERY GOOD GAME.THANKS AGAIN

Works well with 3DVision!

Good evening all. This is a wonderful game, and the colours are quite stunning. I can't think of anything to add to your excellent review WhiterabbitUK.

What would be quite nice would be to allow unlimited reassignment of keys / mouse movements. This would allow one to customise actions to better suit themselfs if desired. This would also encompass MikeG's comment (#11).

Thanks WhiterabbitUK, GGOTD, posters to the forum and especially Stars Ashes for another excellent game! Cheers.


........................Moderator comment......................

Thanks for your feedback Mr Snoozles

Works fine on my semi-stock HP Pavilion dv5000 with AMD Turion-64, ATI Radion Xpress 200M and 2gb ram on board. I wish I knew how I missed this one earlier...

I just finished playing Last Galaxy Hero and wanted you to know this is not the first game I have downloaded, (I'm really not a video game enthusiast) but, it WILL be the first game I have download and keeping! If it's any game I like it is space invader type games and this one "fits the bill" as they say.

I installed it to my thumbdrive (since I'm addicted now to "portable apps", keeping my operating system "clean") and it played without any problems from the thumbdrive. I'm using Vista Basic 32 bit by the way.

One of the nice things I noticed about this game is it DOES allow you destroy the enemy ships pretty easy. I am no "pro" at video games and this game gave me a since of enjoyment that I was actually winning in the game. If it gets tougher as I go, thats fine, that's what I would expect. I liked the "computer talk" and flashes of light when enemy ship missles hits my ship, makes it more realistic. Reminded me of a video game a friend of mine had years ago that would make the video toggle controller vibrate when you were hit, I think that was a war game if I remember...I digress.

Anyway, thank you for bringing this game to my attention, I know it will get plenty of use on those days when I have nothing to do on the computer.

Matt


.......................Moderator comment....................

Thank you for your feed back Matt

Needs the option to invert the mouse movements. This is common in most if not all first person shooters.

not working on my console(win 7 32 bit).......black screen appears when i try run this game!i also downloaded many Stars Ashes games both from DEV site and GOTD......they seem to be not working here......DANG my bandwidth lost in that way(dial up speed & limited internet plan :-( ).....wl not going download anymore games from Stars Ashes.anyways anybody heard that a game called 'Around the World in 80 Days' match 3 may be......what's your take on this game??????:)

....................Moderator Comment.......................

You can read what was said by the community about around the world in 80 day (which you can get from a couple of the free sites such as gametop), just follow the link:

http://game.giveawayoftheday.com/around-the-world/


Did you read the help section in my review at comment #1, you may find a fix for the black screen problem.

thank you for all your great games. I lost this one to a 'puter freeze and am glad to be able to play it again. The fact that it's free all the time makes me feel kinda "out in the woods", but I am anyway, so what the heck. Thanks again.

Can I share it as a free giveaway to my website? Even, after the offer is ended? Of course, only one file for one winner. Let me know if I'm allowed.

....................Moderator comment.......................

The giveaway can only be downloaded between the 24 hour giveaway period so the answer is no.

This will probably be a amusing time killer for some Space Invader or FPS fans.

Not my cup of tea as I found the controls too jittery when using mouse and too slow when using arrows. But these things are to taste and should be judged individually.

The game is great! I'm not big fun of "space invaders" games, but this one is amazing! Small idea for developers: I enjoyed hilarious "briefing" texts, but I felt like there are too small of them. So, probably, it's possible to make more of them? Like, even without changing number of levels - make this texts more frequent?

Installed fine, fun play-but- when I switch to a,d & mouse control the vertical axis of mouse freezes so I can't aim weapon vertically. Any suggestions would be appreciated as my 'work/play' space is limited and using arrow keys & mouse is kind of awkward.lol

this is a great game. its just like space impact meteor shield on my phone!!!

It is the same version 1.3.0.1 as from 27-3-2011
See that date for remarks.

Ootje

I picked this up last time it was offered and can say it is an awesome game! I replayed it on every difficulty level and I still go back to play because it's just so much fun. Imagine basically a 3D Space Invaders with upgrades and powerups. Fantastic title that needs a sequel!

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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Introduction:

Last Galaxy Heroes was originally given away back in Dec 06 and then again twice in 2008 (version 1.2.02). It’s a space shooter reminiscent of a 3D space invaders clone , though in reality its nothing like space invaders. It received a positive 85% of 149 votes the first time it was given away shortly after the game giveaway project started. Then 51% of 330 votes in January 2008 then again in November 2008 it received a positive 41% of 548 votes. The last time it was given away it received only a 54% positive vote out of 295 with 32 comments. The latest version is V1.3.01, which is the same version as the one given away earlier this year. You can check out all the comments from the March 11, Nov 08, Jan 08 and Dec 06 giveaways

Get ready for the galaxy mission! Hard times fell upon the galaxy and you are the only one to save it. The problem is that you have only one space tank to destroy the attacks of space shooters. The planets wait for you to save them!

Reference: Accessed HERE 28th Nov 08

Installation:



The downloaded zip file is 12Mb in size (the previous giveaway was 11.7Mb, but as already said, the version we have been given is the same as the one given away in March of this year) and unpacks to a 'read me' document that give you the 'terms and conditions' and information about installation plus a dual activation and set up module. The installed game is 19.3Mb in size. If you are new to the game giveaway project all you ‘usually’ have to do is double click (unless you’ve set the clicks to single click) on the module and it’ll install and activate automatically. I’m not entirely sure where the default installation is because the game tries to install to different locations depending which computer I’m installing it to. On one it tries to install directly into the root directory (i.e. C: on another it tries to install to last week’s game giveaway and on yet another it installs to the path below.

The game installs to C:\Games\LastGalaxyHero

There is no shortcut installed; however, during the installation wizards progress you are given the opportunity to select your own installation path if you wish; (it's highly recommended, especially if you have a second HDD or a partitioned drive as it will help to keep your system running smoothly - the more you fill your root drive (usually the C: drive), the slower your computer will run – if you’ve got a decent sized hard drive of more than a few hundred Gigabytes it’s always a good idea to partition it into at least two drives so that you can keep the operating system and other essential applications separate from other programs and games.

There is no uninstaller included; so, if you decide the game isn't for you, remove the game by manually deleting the installed folder. It's self-contained which means there shouldn't be any entries in the registry and there are no files written to other areas of the computer. (I’ve checked the registry and found no registry entries related to the game) If you still wish to check the registry for yourself to see if there are any orphan entries you can use the registry editor by typing regedit in the run command (in XP) or typing in the search box (in Vista or Win 7) you will open up the registry editor. It's always a good idea to create a restore point before you make any changes to the registry just in case you mistakenly delete something you shouldn’t have. (I've been editing the registry for many years and to my knowledge have never caused a problem due to deleting registry keys). Once the registry editor is open, click on the computer icon that’s situated above the five registry hives ( HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, HKEY_CURRENT_USER ....... etc.; then click on Edit, (which is situated in the toolbar along the top of the editor); from the drop down menu select Find or Find next then type in the key word/s, in this case Last Galaxy Hero, then click on Find next. If any registry keys associated with Last Galaxy Hero are found (right click on the entry in the left hand pane of the editor and select delete, or in some cases in the left hand pane (if in doubt, leave the key - you can always post a request for help over in the forums).

I’ve tested the game in Win XP 32 bit, Vista Home Premium 64 bit, vista home Basic 32 bit, Win 7 Pro 64 bit and Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit and the game works well on all platforms with no installation issues (apart from the lack of a shortcut).




The Game:

Once installed you are presented with a hard to see main menu options and help menus, well that is if you are red – green colour blind. I can see it okay, but my son who inherited the condition from his maternal grandfather said he couldn’t see the menu very well. It doesn’t help that it’s superimposed over a screenshot of an in game image. That said the game is quite enjoyable; at least from my point of view; one of my favourite arcade genres is space shooters.

The main options menu allows you to change the screen resolution from 640 x 480, 800 x 600, 1024 x 768 and 1152 x 864 in 16 and 32 bit formats, as well as sliders for music and sound effects. The music is okay if turned low and the sound effects are what you would expect of such a game as this. (The music files are OGG; you can change them for music you like if you find the music annoying, but you must convert your preferred music to the OGG format as well using an audio converster (you can find a couple of decent ones in the giveaway freeware section). You can also select the difficulty from this window as well as choose to play the game in windowed mode. The second options menu is accessed while in game by using the Esc key, which brings up a menu that allows you to abort the mission and restart, exit the game or enter a second options menu that again allows you to change the music and sound effects volumes and also allows you to change the X and Y axis speeds of the mouse as well as select between two control modes. Both use a combination of Mouse and Keyboard, though with the standard control you can use both mouse and keyboard, though you have to use the arrow keys when using the keyboard. The second option called A D and Mouse utilizes the A and D keys as opposed to the arrow keys for left and right. Both modes have their advantages, which is probably personal to each of us.

The help menu is basic, but that’s all you need. It details the power ups you can collect and bonuses of which there is a limited number, these comprise of weapon upgrades (as you would expect from a space shooter) and armour improvements as well as bonus points of various sizes. Bonuses are gained when you destroy one of the 12 different enemies that you will find in this game. There’s a simple HUD (heads up display) that shows you your weapon and armour strength as well as the number of lives (repair droids) you have at the bottom of the screen (plus a few others detailed in the help menu) as well as the number of bonus points and your score, which are found at the top of the HUD. To progress to a new world you have to attain a specific number of bonus points; for example, to get to the second world you require 15000 bonus points and to get to the third world 20000 bonus points etc. (I’ll let you discover the rest); before you enter a new world though you have to fight one of the five bosses that you’ll meet on your journey to becoming the Last Galaxy Hero :lol: You must move your gun emplacement left or right to capture the bonuses and power ups, which remain where they are until you move directly beneath them. the danger here while you wait for the bonus to drop down to you is that you are vunerable to alien weaponry. The enemies shoot back at you and only need to hit you a few times to destroy your emplacement unless you’ve collected plenty of armour bonuses. These are easily missed though as they move towards you from the lowest axis of the guns vertical movement, which you are usually pointing at the sky, so watch out for those bonuses. You start with 3 lives on all difficulty settings, but there are power ups in the form of repair droids that you can collect, which give you extra lives. You lose a life when your shields are reduced to zero, see the in game help pages, (which are accessible from the main menu when you first start the game up), for details of each power up and bonus'. There are three difficulty settings Easy, Medium and Suicide. Aliens shoots back at you faster on the higher difficulty settings. :lol:

The game is quite easy for the first few levels, but gets harder as you progress through the levels; that is, unless you are a seasoned 'galaxy hero', :lol: especially when playing it on the suicide mode.

The game controls include mouse, keyboard and joystick. You can use a combination of each one or individually, which makes the controls very versatile. There is an option to change the control keys, but this is very basic I’ve detailed the differences in the second paragraph of the ‘intro and game section’ above. There are 5 different worlds to explore (see the Googled images below to get an idea), and at the end of each world you encounter a boss. I've taken about 15+ screen captures from the November 2008 review and added another 25 captures from the latest giveaway.


If you miss today’s game, lose it to a format or decide you want it after the giveaway has finished, the good news is that it’s available for free 365.25 days a year over at Gametop, though it’s had a name change to Star Gunner. You can download it via the link below. For those who are not familiar with Gametop games, your browser is always opened when you shut the game down, though there’s no malware installed. Gametop have recently been adding a toolbar and or asking if you want your home page changed to Gametop, so ensure the appropriate boxes (if presented) are unchecked. I recently checked to see if there were any toolbars etc. and the file appears clean of any extras:

Download link for Gametop version:

You can download a free version of the game 24/7 from Gametop HERE

Video & Images:

You can see what the game looks like by checking out THIS you tube video or looking at THIS and THIS slideshow of in game images or THESE Googled images


System Requirements:


• CPU………………………………..........Pentium III 700

• Operating System…………….……Win98/2000/XP/Vista (The game was released in 2005 and hasn't been updated since it was updated for Vista, but it works in win 7

• 3D emulation………………………....DirectX 8.0 or higher ….

• Computer memory…………………128 MB RAM

• Video Card memory………………..32 MB Video RAM

Conclusion:

This is a decent 3D space shooter on the lines of a three dimensional space invaders, where you have to destroy wave upon wave of oncoming space craft. Okay, it’s a little dated by todays standards so some may find it a little retro in its graphics and design when comparing it with many other games that have been released over the last few years, but the game play is solid.

I had loads of fun playing this the first time it was given away and was pleased to see it in the first re-run as I’d lost it to a format. It’s worth a good 6.5 out of 10 for its game play, which is very basic. Despite it being fun I did find it soon became a little stale if I tried to play it for longer periods due to the repetitive nature of the game. That said it's definitely good for some mindless fun when all you want to do is turn off for a while.


Other Similar Games:

There are loads of other space themed shooters that you can get for free from Game top, MyPlayCity and FreeGamePick, (there were 11 full version commercial games at Gametop the last time I looked) which are linked to via the free shoot ‘em ups thread posted over in the forums. Make sure you check out all the posts in the thread though because I’ve posted several in different posts, plus others have posted suitable games as well. I would beware of MyPlayCity because recently they have changed their policy with respect to including toolbars, even when you uncheck toolbar installation they still install them.

Most of the freebies from these free games sites are in my opinion more interesting to play than today’s giveaway, but if you like space invaders, it’s a great 3D version. One of my favourite free space games is Universal Combat, which was converted to freeware a few years ago by its developer. It’s a 3D space shooter/simulation of epic proportions which is well worth the download if you like space orientated games. You can find details and a link to the download page via the Space Shmup thread thread that I posted some years ago over in the forums:


I'd also check the Free Games Synopsis which has most of the games listed in the forums, though I've not updated it since before Christmas (week 100), so there are a lot of games not listed (we are on Week 162), but you can find these by sifting through the Game Discussion Forum and specifically looking for the free games project posts which always start with a Week number. There have been several excellent freeware space shooters posted recently since I last updated the synopsis. The list below isn't exhaustive. i've only selected those games that have been posted over the past several weeks. There are loads more hidden in the game discussion forums from week 100 to the present (week 162).

Mike Studyform from the last time this was given away suggested that the game was reminiscent of battlezone. You can download the full version of Battlezone for free HERE


Here’s a nice selection of shmups and other vertical and horizontal shooters with a few top down shooters, all of whch have been posted over the last several weeks in the game discussion forums and all are free:

Dreadlock
Strange Adventures in Infinite Space
Darius Gaiden
Vacant Ark
War Machine Overload
wAive
Sim War 5
Haritama
Lunaria
Pheon
Earth Jets
Space Corps 3 Armageddon
Die Slave
Alien Deathmatch 2
Kerbal Space Program
Solace