Thank you Casual Gamer for your erudite explanation of the game play. I never got back to playing it to see if it was worth keeping after my initial review earlier yesterday morning. I think on the basis of your review I'll keep this game and see if I can interest my son into playing against me, {for an eight year old he has quite a logical mind so may even beat me, :lol: }; as I do agree the game will probably be a little more interesting when playing against another player. :D The set up of the game screams two players anyway. Also thanks goes to Lockett for his good review.

It's a pity Magnussoft didn't include a better help menu or an in game tutorial ;) which IMO can often really help with such games. Perhaps if any one from Magnussoft is reading these comments they will hopefully update this game as well as most of the others they have given away. :idea: I personally think most of the Magnussoft games have a lot of potential, if only they were willing to listen to what the masses have had to say about their products for example the password used for level saves is just too antiquated and fiddly; and I’m sure most casual gamers just couldn’t be bothered with making a note of the passwords and even if they do I’m also sure many lose the scraps of paper the codes were written on; which invariably means having to repeatedly start from the beginning which IMO just destroys the game. ( I have a really good arkanoid that I’ve not got further than about level 5 despite having had the game for a couple of years simply because it’s password saved, I can’t be bothered with it any more because I’m fed up of starting from the first level every time I’m in the mood for playing it ). Also, the breakout games they developed have appallingly bad ball physics, and for other games poor controls. All of which could easily be put right with a little extra work from the coders :?: I thought their brick busting games were really good apart from the ball control, which if corrected could make both of those offered (Barkanoid and Aquanoid) worthy games. They should perhaps contact the makers of one of my favorite freeware breakout games Poing :idea:

http://www.firestormproductions.co.uk/contact/

Because these guys at Firestorm productions have got a game with great ball physics that some of the more well known developers of arkanoids/breakouts could learn from. As I've said in previous comments from other days, you can slice the ball to make it curve as well as control the ball in a much more intuitive way. Which is all Magnussoft need to improve both their Breakout games? At this point in time I would certainly consider buying both of those games if the ball physics were improved. :lol:

Another disappointment. Where's the Alawar games gone? Talk about strategy games, that both kids and adults can enjoy, GOATD was doing great with new games ot test out. Why not Sheep's Quest for one, the round two of Tiny Worlds a while back. Enough with the brick breaking and matching stuff!

:( :( :(

Will not be downloading this one today. Not my type of game. Welcome back WhiteRabbit, good to have you here again. Look forward to your reviews. Thanks Lockett for your review on this game today. Be back tomorrow. Merry Christmas 2 all!
Tamarra26

Well, I tried it because the controls shouldn't be a problem like in previous Magnussoft games.

The strategy is figuring out where to make the best matches so you can continue playing. If you can't make a match, you have to switch your tile to a joker tile, if you still have any. If you don't have a joker left, you have to hit the "Q" key to sacrifice a life, resetting the tiles and jokers. Watch the timer because, if you run out of time and have no more lives, you're immediately returned to the main menu without any explanation!

When the matched tiles disappear, the next one in line becomes that type, any upper tiles fall down into the vacated spaces and your next playable tile will be whatever type the replaced one was. Hitting the wall changes the direction of movement downward, which can also be confusing when figuring tile replacements. Once you figure this out, the game is fairly interesting. You might need an actual second player though, for it to be "fun".

The premise of the game seems dumb, and it should have been programmed better so the tile actions wouldn't be so difficult to comprehend. Anyway, for a Magnussoft game, it is at least playable (which is saying a lot)!

The (c)1989-2006 is the length of copyright coverage on this product.

WOW, This is really a great game. The graphics are outstanding, the music almost had me up and dancing, but I must admit the game is a bit difficult, but I'll keep trying.

Just kidding of cause. Got so tired of reading all the negatives thought I would throw in something positive, even if it were a lie, which it is. As soon as I saw that it was a Magnussoft game I knew it wouldn't be worth downloading. Maybe tomorrow will prove to be better.

hier werden schon wieder einfach Kommentare gelöscht! Warum wohl?
Das ist Zensur und ist nicht akzeptabel in einer Demokratie!

What an awful game. My comments are pretty much the same as #5.
Played for 10 mins and then removed.

You have to keep in mind that GOTD can only give away what the developers agree to. It's not as simple as going from one developer to the next, cleaning out their toyboxes as you go. While not a huge fan of magnussoft games, I know things could be worse. You're not going to see big-name games here, but save the tears for when they start repeating the DoubleGames family of turdware. If you're new to this site, be careful what you wish for.

Thank you anyway ... I am passing on today's offer. I really do enjoy looking at the screen-shots and reading the comment before making a final decision = YES, the comments are very helpful, good and bad! Thanks.

LS.

Telkens als ik een leuke game wil downloaden krijg ik de laatst tijd de onderstaande foutmelding:

The archive is either in unknown format or damaged. OK

In de forums lees ik echter zelden dat er zo'n storing is.

Kunt u mij helpen?
Bij voorbaat dank.

>Fredi

That's how long they've been around? Then why would they have a different time listed on the main menu of Sokoman? Not to be rude, I'm just perplexed.

Well, this game PLAYS like something from 1989.

wow!what happened to all the good games and software gotd used to giveaway?here lately,all the games really suck,and so does the software,I'm sorry I know I shouldn't be complaining,after all,the stuff on here is free,I use to be so excited to get a free game or software download(I couldn't wait)so if anyone wants to yell at me for voicing my oppinion,go for it.I am sorry,but this site just isn't what it used to be.

Sweating, I toss in fitful slumber. Will GOTD finally have my number? PLOTS - alas! - brings me naught but strife. Please, Dear Santa! Bring me a life!

Thanks all the same, GOTD, I'll just head back to the couch until the next giveaway!
And #12: Lay off Lockett. He may not be too bright, but he's a sweet, tender boy.

This was a game I was interested in when I read the discription. When I seen who the publisher was I decided to pass. I agree with others that 17MB size is smaller than other games from Magussoft. But even still that is 17MB of wasted space as far as I'm converned. I second Lockett's concern about a month of Magussoft offerings. I think we have seen enough of their games. Please move on to a better publisher.

I must confess.... the comments are so overwhelmingly negative about this game, I just had to give it a try!

What should I say?
This game is by far the WORST GAME EVER distributed through this site! Slow game play, squeaky music and sound, and a game design that brings the game to a stop after all three "jockers" (check out the help page!) are used which no other possibilities to win the round. I never uninstalled a game faster than this one!

Don't bother downloading it - it's not worth the time!

It would be ok I think if you could disregard any blocks that were no use but you get stuck if you can't use a block and can't move on so thumbs down for this one.

Well this game just SUCKS...

But what else would you expect from magnussoft...

Thanks for all of the free stuff but gee can we get something good?

Very simple game. I don´t pay for this.

Oh well, tomorrow's another day. Thanks anyway GGAOTD

It seems this game is not a big hit and from the comments will be most uninstalled the same day, whilst others won't even bother.
A little off the point, but still could be of great use for those that ended up uninstalling one too many times, try out Returnil offered in the other section months ago. they have a free personal version. Basically you can install apps "virtually", test them and when you reboot, all traces of it are gonne. I've used since it was first offered here and it is very unobstrusive in its use, meaning it does not interfere negatively with all the rest that you might be doing. A must are partitions on the pc.
Sorry, this is not about the game, but just a thought about all the uninstalls mentioned lately.
Thanks Lockett for your review!
Pura vida, AlexSJ

Hey #6, it didn't take the game 17 years to make, haha. That's how long the company has been around, duh. Nice to know you can subtract though.

archaic

Installation

The download is 17.2Mb, installing to 18.2Mb, which for a Magnussoft game is quite small. The downloaded file unzips to two files the read me and the combined activation and set up module. Installation is as simple as you can get for any giveaway.

Introduction

As usual some of the menu’s are written in German, but those words are almost the same as the English equivalent, so you should have no problems with this. The AVI file is refreshingly short and can be bypassed (partially) by pressing the Esc key.


The Game

The game itself looks like rather an intriguing puzzle game, that had me confused right throught to level seven where I unfortunately used up all my joker tiles and could go no further. I honestly had no idea as to what I was doing as whenever I was able to match up a colored tile the color next to it disappeared instead of th color that was supposed to. I will keep this for awhile longer and see if I can work out what I suspect is a simple puzzle game.

You can play against a friend which is activated by going to the options menu. You get three jokers at the beginning of each level. The aim is to score a specific amount of points per level and not to get rid of all the blocks. You shoot the blocks from the left and/or right (depending upon whether you are playing the one or two player game) towards the stationary blocks that start as a grid of nine, but increase in size as you progress through the levels. There are solid fixed tiles set above the colored tiles which can be used to deflect one of the tiles you are shooting onto a tile that is placed out of line of sight of the figure that is holding the tile to be shot.




Conclusion

I can’t give this one a score at this time as I haven’t sussed out exactly what I’m doing :oops: Though it does look like a promising puzzle game.

I have to agree with Josh, Once the joker blocks are played it's impossible to continue ( I think I scored 3 then got bored!)

Hard to believe that some people might have actually paid for this.

Even as a Giveawayoftheday, It's hard to justify NOT uninstalling it.

Screw this game...I don't get it...

For reasons pretty much covered already by Josh (#5), I don't care for this game. But I would like to congratulate magnussoft on finally offering a game that's a reasonable size.

My review of Plots! 2(the site says Plots!, but the game says otherwise):

Wow, another Magnussoft game. Does anyone else think that this will devolve into a month of Magnussoft titles the way that all of November's games were from Alawar? I hope not...

The first thing that I noticed when I ran the game was that it has the same obnoxious low-res intro that Sokoman has, except it's longer and weirder. Instead of rainbow lasers zinging around the screen, it's a bizarre whirlwind of silver. This swirling vortex morphs into the Magnussoft logo, then that one morphs into a slightly different version. Strange.

It took me about fifteen minutes of screwing around with the game to figure out what I was supposed to do. It seems that you have to kick "tiles"(or stones, as both terms are used on the HUD; I think that they look more like blocks, though) across the screen at others of the same color. Then, a number of things happen simultaneously. First, both tiles are cleared. Next, the tile on the opposite side of the match is changed to the color of the tile that you shot, while your next available tile changes to that other tile's original color. If you think that I'm making it sound more complicated than it is, then you are wrong. It would probably be easier to figure out the whole color-swapping thing IF IT HAD BEEN INCLUDED IN THE "HELP" SECTION. Yes, the manual itself doesn't mention the game's basic mechanism. I don't know why they used that setup, considering that it shoves you into several impossible situations that only the "joker"(or jocker, again referred to as both by the game) can get you out of. The joker is a tile with a lightning bolt on it that can be used to clear any other tile, but since it switches to the color of the tile that you just cleared with it, you end up in the same situation again, exhausting your supply of jokers with no way to get them back. There's not even a "game over" screen when you lose - it just stays in the game until you hit Escape. Oh, and you move about as slowly as a snail swimming through glue.

The graphics range from really weird to really creepy. The scariest thing in the game is the "Optionen"(how hard is that to translate, Magnussoft?) screen, which has a bizarre blue-lit model of the protagonist, whom I will call Springman. Since Springman isn't in the screenshots on this page(because they're from Plots! 1), I'll describe him. Picture Rayman(for those of you who don't know who Rayman is, he's this guy with his hands and feet detached from his body), but with a spring for a body and a clown head. If that isn't creepy, then I don't know what is.

The in-play graphics, while hardly unsettling, are just bad. The tiles are OK, but the backgrounds are low-grade and mirrored for each half of the screen(for some reason, two-player mode is always on). The animation is also weird, with Springman walking too smoothly and the sliding blocks only having about three frames.

The sound is just weird. The music's OK, being the same tracks that Magnussoft apparently uses in all of their games(actually, it's just one track, for some reason), but everything else is just wrong. There's this stupid five-second-long intro to each stage, but it plays at the same time as the music, creating a jarring moment of dissonance before you play. When you finish the level, Springman bounces with an obnoxious "boing". Also, when you exit to the menu, there's a weird warping sound effect.

There's no discernible theme or story, but Springman will haunt my dreams for weeks. For me, Springman IS the theme, and I will base my score on that.

Overall, I give Plots! 2 a score of three out of ten(four for gameplay, three for graphics, three for sound, and two for theme). I gave it extra gameplay points for trying to be original, but the actual gameplay itself, and everything else, is so bad that I can't recommend it.

At least the game's only 17MB - a real feat for this company.

Small side note: Judging from the text at the bottom of the main menu, it took Magnussoft seventeen years to make it. At least, that's what I'm inferring from "(c)1989-2006".

This is a truly terrible game. The worst I've seen yet. I love puzzle games, but this one fails on several levels:

1. Character moves slow (e.g., "shooting" is a 1 second block kick process, walking is slow).

2. No cue about upcoming block.

3. Blocks disappear in pairs which is rather child level stuff.

4. Biggest flaw: no way to discard bad blocks. You can't even tuck them to the side for later. So, once you've used up your Joker blocks, you're screwed if you get a nonmatching block.

I'm sorry but this game is horrible! Didn't even keep on my computer for 5 minutes.

At least it uninstalled quickly
after the 3 min it took me to get bored
of this slow pointless game.

Not really my sort of game thanks anyway...

This reminds me of the old sega game i'd seen during my childhood. Now i can get my hands on it. :D