BTW In case it matters SP is supposed to be installed on my system.

It appeared to download and install correctly. (despite the Vista 'may not have installed correctly' notice) The game play is okay. Considering the genre, I'd rate it about an 8 out of 10. However, no comparison to 'Mad Cars' or 'Alien Shooter'. From my play and comparing to such, I'd rate it about 6 of 10. Vista HP.

This game was not bad if you like scrolling shooters, which I love. However, this game was really short, with only 12 levels. The gameplay was pretty easy, even for beginners. Perhaps this game was originally meant to be a demo of a more complete game that got abandoned? Either way, it was fun, but once again, I beat it in about 25 minutes total, so if you looking for longer gameplay, look elsewhere.

Thanks TNT, I never got around to figuring out the order of power ups nor the pillow one. :lol:

Just wanted to add that there are three types of power ups. If you start collecting one, stay with it, or else you have to start at level one on the new one you picked up. I recommend the green power up because it has the widest spread. The purple one only shoots sideways at the highest level. The yellow one that you start with doesn't shout sideways at all. There are 3 types of missiles. Red, blue and Orange. The orange ones are heat seeking. Go with that if available. It doesn't seem like you can upgrade your missiles. There is also a "pillow" which restores your shields, a shield which protects you for a bit, and a ship which gives you another life.

Actually relaxing and very enjoyable for me. Only problem is that it is TOO SHORT! Only 12 stages. Whoever heard of a shooter with just 12 stages? I'd pay money for more stages.

I wish to express kudos for the quality of reviews.

Sound during gameplay is not working. I have had no other sound problems with GAOD games before.
Otherwise a basic yet enjoybale game.

Works fine on Windows7 32 bit. Nice little game very basic and only 12mb. And for #13 why would something over 1gb be better would that make for better game play? hmmmmmmm i don't thinkso

Took a few tries to Install and run , but OK now XPSP3 AMD-64*2. Hard enough for me , won't see the end, really messed up my desktop, but at least it doesn't cause a reboot like Ghost in the Sheet did, Really like that one..

I will pass on this game. My first tip was the luke warm reviews and the screen shots. The graphics look like a game that was made 20 years ago. Even more troubling to me is trying to search the publisher's web site. Clicking the links above only brings about the GGAOTD page. Other search engines did not return any results either. If this publisher has a site why does it not want us to know about it? It makes me think this is not a real game. Maybe GGAOTD wanted to give us a game but had none to offer. They searched and found a free ware game and offered it here. I don't know about you but I can find my own free ware games. I come here to get quality games, not 20 year looking games. And certainly not free ware. Looking at this I can understand why the games were cut back to weekends only. I just hope tomorrows game will be better.

This is the same game as StarFighter by "Some Company" given away on 5/4/08. The graphics have been cleaned up a little but it is 98% their game.

I played the game but after losing the first mission or completing it my screen goes white and then I get a message saying that the game has encountered a technical problem and has to shut down. I deleted the game and reinstalled it and it still did the same thing after mission one. Is there a fix to this?

Correction to my earlier post - The boss ship I referred to is in Level 4 not 3 and I have defeated it. Also, you can continue where you left off so you don't have to restart the game if you get killed off.

Installs, activates, and plays fine for me. It's not as sophisticated as some games currently on the market, but it reminds me of Galaxian or some of those other early games from ye olde days. Especially in the way that I was lousy at THOSE games too. LOL. Based on some of the descriptions, I was expecting REALLY cheesy graphics, but the graphics on this really aren't too bad. My main grievance is that it doesn't seem to want to let me fire as frequently as it should. I hit the fire button and nothing happens. I figured it was one of those games where you can't fire a second time until your first fire is off the screen, but my first fire was LONG off the screen and it STILL wasn't allowing me to fire. Didn't seem to happen ALL the time though. All in all, not a bad game.

No problems downloading or installing on XP sp2. The game played well with no hangs or shutdowns.

I played into the 3rd level where I fought the boss ship for a couple of minutes before getting killed (can that ship be defeated?).

This is a 2d shooter with old school graphics so if you are looking for a big exciting game, this is not it. :( It is similar to the shooters I would play at the game arcade 20+ years ago. It is simple and boring but if you just want something to kill 10 minutes with out straining the brain, this may do it.

Install ok Vista HP beta. Weak wireframish game. Hard to tell
powerups from damaging elements. Didn't seem any autofire.
Dull graphics. Didn't find any uninstall function. Kill folder
and do registry search for Colony and purge entries. Poor D-.
Hope next games better & Hand Made games on Don't Bother list.

Sorry, have no idea why you guys are having trouble. Work fine for me in Vista Ultimate 64-bit. I assume everyone is smart enough to run installers as administrator, right?

As for the gameplay criticisms...this is just a modernization of 1942. It is a very accurate translation and plays very close to the original.

Normally I am very excited to come here and see what little gem is being offered for our enjoyment, however for the past several weeks I have been pretty disappointed in the games being offered and have not partaken of any of them in close to 4 weeks. Issues ranging from it doesnt work on Vista (which I run) to pretty much a review from whiterabbit saying it really isnt worth the download to it isnt a genre I enjoy playing.

That being said, I still come back every weekend, and plan to continue to come back every weekend, as I know that there will be a day when something will be offered again that will cause my eyes to light up like a childs on Christmas morning. I appreciate the efforts of all the GOTD staff and understand they will be unable to please all of the people all of the time and despite the numerous comments they get from people whinging about the game(s) being offered they continue to try to bring us things they think/hope we will enjoy. I also want to thank Whiterabbit for his comprehensive reviews on games that are offered.. Your review is the first thing I look for and part of my decision to download or not comes from your review.

Can we all stop complaining so much about what is being offered and not being offered and just thank the GOTD staff for the work they do in finding and putting this all together for us to enjoy FREE of charge? Rather than a "This game sucks" kind of review why not a "Not my style but thank you for the work you all do" and then go off to one of the many other places available to play games or to the forums to see what has been made available by Whiterabbit?
Well I have said my piece now I am off to get ready to go to the Mardi Gras parade, LASSIE LA BON TEMPS ROULE!!!!!

Sound does not work. :(

THANK YOU WHITERABBIT FOR ALL YOUR GAME INFORMATION AND DESCRIPTIONS.
YOU HAVE PROVIDED ME WITH MUCH INFORMATION ON GAMES THAT I CANNOT DOWNLOAD FROM GAAME GIVEAWAY SINCE I ONLY HAVE DIAL UP AVAILABLE TO ME. I HOPE SOMEDAY I WILL BE ABLE TO GET DSL FOR SPEEDIER SERVICE.

Installed fine on my HP 32bit vista Home Premium, and like comment #5, I got the install message error from vista, I just clicked cancel. Played the game, and had no problems. Works fine for me Thanks GGAOD.

no thanks

System: AMD Athlon64 2 4000+~4Gig RAM~Seagate 1TB Hdd~NVidia 7650GS 256MB~Windows XP SP3: Oh man does this game SUCK. I love this gendre and from a 12MB download I expected a lot more. The weapons and scenes are BLAND, thumbs DOWN, this is not a keeper Sorry guys you do not get the BCH stamp of aproval

Anything thats only 12mb belongs somewhere back in the 1980's. C'mon give us a real game, something bigger than 1gb would be nice.

How do you uninstall this please?

This game works fine on WinXP/Sp3 box with an Nvidia card and an AMD64 chip. No install issues, no run issues, no problems of any kind.
It went to my D:\ partition, ran from there and quit when I was finished testing it.
The only thing I can't test is the hi-score set routine. I'll never get good enough to appear on the list.
It looks like a fairly good game. Very "Invasion Of The Mutant Space Bats Of Doom"-like, with a touch of BSGalactica. I think she'll love it.
H.

On Vista 32bit and it works absolutely fine.
Baffled at the complaints and whingeing.
Nice little game - thanks GAOTD !

Sorry Suki, I got side tracked and initially forgot to finish off the control description.

after installing on my (internal drive) d:\games\lost colony location, and creating a shortcut to the desktop, trying to start this crap gave me nothing but a black screen. NOTHING! Even the 3-fingered salute (ctl-alt-del) does nothing! Had to pull the plug on the whole damned computer so I could reboot back into windows xp. Did that twice -same results. Obviously, explorer.exe, (a process REQUIRED for you to even SEE your desktop) was unable to deal with this crap. Why?

Well, repeated downloads (of the same offered file) still report that that the md5 hash value is 53FE6EA12C689CBEA7E4B71DCFD1A2E8 for Lost_Colony.zip --so my downloads are good. Interesting how the event viewer, (control panel -administrative tools -event viewer) shows that I have downloaded lostcolony.exe version 0.0.0.0. REALLY!!!!! Version 0? Are you kidding me????? So you got NOTHING!?? Call me when you get to version 1.0. or maybe even 0.0.01------oh never mind.


In my opinion, the the actual programmers of this game somehow played a BS marketing thing on HandMadeGames, who, in kind, doesn't either care or understand that we're trying to install this stuff (expletive deleted) on computers running Os's like, oh, xp, win98 etc. What does it take to make people understand that even Win98 users might just love their games enuff to buy them, ssshhhheeeesshhh- kinda like watching a company self-destruct. HEY=we see enough of that these days-- go annihilate yourself without us playing a part!

I have many of the games offered by this site, & have bought 6 or 7 in the past. But how this one ever got to see the light of day.... I should have researched the 35% for vs. the 65% against results.

Whabbit

Did you mean this game is keyboard controlled?

Because my copy uses the mouse, except for putting your initials into the high scores list!

Suki

Not a bad little shooter...that's if you don't die on level 3, lol!

Not sure if I will keep it, but then it doesn't take up much space...looks like there is only about 12 levels to the game...

Suki

Osman #3, just be aware that the "not installed properly" message is common on Vista (I get it all the time!) but doesn't necessarily mean that is hasn't installed correctly. :)

Instals on usb stick ok. Plays well.

your games hardly ever work on my vista home premuim laptop.

It says that it hasn't installed properly ?

Just remind me of the 16 bit video games I used to play.s just 12 MB game. Lets see how it is?

Introduction:

Today’s game is a 12Mb download that unpacks to a dual activation and setup file plus a read me file that tells you that the game is installed to:

C:\Games\LostColony_build (by default)

The final installation is 25.5Mb in size. As usual there’s no shortcut installed to the desktop or start menu. If you’re not sure how to create a shortcut, especially the latter, there’s a short tutorial on how to do so in the forums:

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/2594

Don’t confuse this game with the first person space colony MMO that goes by the same name; but due to the current economic climate the beta has been extended and a commercial release will not be forthcoming in the near future.




The Game:

This is a poor to average quality vertical space orientated shooter. Much like previous hand made game giveaways. If you’re into space shooters you’ll probably like this, that said; I usually love this genre but can’t say I’ll be keeping this one. I’ve posted several screenshots over in my photobucket account so that you can see for yourself what the game is like; (though to really get a feel for a game you should always try it for yourself.

To be honest you can get several quality space shooters of this genre from Gametop and Freegamespick (see links below).

The movement controls are either keyboard controlled (either WASD or the cursor keys) and primary and secondary weapons can be fired using the Ctrl and Alt keys respectively or the x and y axis of the mouse plus the LMB for firing guns and rockets.

There doesn't appear to be any logic with respect to upgrading weapons. Missiles, once collected, fire at the same time as the guns. If you pick up further gun power-ups; once you've got what appear to be the heaviest weapons, you may find your weapons actually downgrade if you pick up certain power ups, so you need to be aware of where you are with respect to weapon strength. (A bit of a mouthful, lol). Other power-ups include extra lives and shields. There’s a box like power-up also, but I couldn’t figure out what it did.

When you start a new level you start with no weapon upgrades, but you will find power-ups available as soon as you start the level. These seem to be directly related to the power-ups you had in the previous level. Every five or so levels you will get a boss appearing at the end of a level, (though these aren't as impressive as bosses I've seen in other games of this genre). If you don't have a full complement of weapon upgrades get ready for a long battle. With only a single gun it will take you several minutes of avoiding the bosses rockets and guns and shooting to kill the boss. There's no indication of how damaged the enemy boss is until it starts to break up. I almost gave up trying because of the time element and it was ‘too’ easy to hit the boss without being hit yourself.




Images:

All on one page



As a slideshow





Conclusion:

I’m afraid I can’t say I like this game. It’s got nothing that inspires me to play it. The graphics are poor compared to most games of this genre I’ve seen over the last five or so years. There’s no color to the game apart from the satic background and each space ship is colored. Explosions are virtually monochrome and gun effects are white lines. I’d expect to see a psychedelic cacophony of colorful explosions in a newly made arcade space shooter as well as lots of gimmicks to keep the player glued to their computer screen. Instead you get a bland rendition of a tired genre. Some of the weapon upgrades don't appear to do anything, and I didn't notice any perceptible difference in the power of any individual shot. I recommend you check out the links I’ve posted below (if you haven’t already). Most are links to Gametop or Freegamespick, but I've also linked to the space shoot em ups thread and the synopsis of games because you'll find many freeware, abandoneware and browser based space shooters there. As for scoring, If I was to compare it to any one of the free downloads below it would come out on the bottom rung.

I feel aweful slating the game as I’ve always believed any game has its merits, but I also believe in giving an honest review of a game. I would strongly suggest to the developer that he/she add some decent {and colorful} effects to the game and create some mini games or at least add some decent power ups. The ones you get in game were very uninspiring. The only positive thing I would say about the game is that initially it was quite challenging due to the ‘wandering’ enemy spaceships.



Music:

If you like the music you’ll find 8 MP3 files in the following path, assuming you allowed the game to be installed to the default location:

C:\games\LostColony_build\Data\Music

If you don't like the in game music you can easily replace the files by renaming your own MP3 files to the ones found in the music folder

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The following games can be found in the alphabetical synopsis of games (linked to above). All are space shooters, either scrolling or 3D, plus a few others. Babylon Project, Battle Space, Carpe Universum, Fraxy, Ray Hound, Still Bomber, The Ur-Quan Masters, Chicken Invaders, Space Invaders, Invasion 3D, Cosmic Invaders, Echoes, Gadlaxian, Liberation Army, Optimus apparatus, Privateer Gemini Gold. The rest of the links below are games that can be found over at Gametop or Freegamespick. Not all the games are spave shooters, for example Star Racing and Machine World, but all have a space or shooting theme, so I though it appropriate to include them. All of the Gametop and Freegamespick games do open up your browser when the game is closed down, (though this is inocuous). A few of the installers may even try to instal tool bars and hijack your browser, however they can be avoided by ensuring the tick boxes that are presented during installation are unchecked. Make sure you have a pop up blocker switched on as well.