Protoganda (Preview)

October 10th, 2007 at 9:12 pm (cactus)

According to his site, cactus will releasing a new 3D shmup within a week or two. He describes it as “a bossrush game with gameplay mechanics inspired by Warning Forever.”

He has also posted a gameplay video that shows off the gameplay mechanics and the stylish graphics. Check it out here. Apparently, a donation of at least a dollar will let you get to play the game in it’s current beta state.

5 Comments

MSOIDS

October 7th, 2007 at 4:37 pm (cactus)


What do you get if you combine a MS Paint doodle with a nifty vector engine and throw on a mouse controlled Asteroids variation? Something wonderful, for sure. Add online highscores and you’ve got a charming little game.

Use space to generate new colours, move with WASD and shoot with the mouse. Simple as that. Make sure to extract the game to a separate folder!

Name: MSOIDS
Developer: cactus
Category: Arcade
Type: Freeware
Click here to download

10 Comments

Akuchizoku Demo

October 4th, 2007 at 11:34 am (cactus, shmupdev4)

Here’s a slightly more polished version of the competition version of cactus’ Akuchizoku. It might still have some smaller bugs and is a bit rough on the edges, but probably worth a try for fans of retro graphics and music, as well as shmup freaks.

The demo features three levels and three different pilots, two difficulty levels and two modes of gameplay. The difficulty adjusts the amount of bosses and enemies you get to battle, so those who whimp out will miss a lot of content.

There is a gameplay video of the first level available here, which can be used as a guide on how to beat the difficult bosses. The controls can be a bit complex for the various pilots, read an explanation of how to play here.

Worth noting is that you can’t select pilot in story mode, while you can instantly access any level and pilot in free play mode.

Music as always by the excellent John Marwin, and the great effects provided by Aaron Kurtz.

Name: Akuchizoku
Developer: cactus
Category: Shoot ‘em up
Type: Demo
Click here to download

14 Comments

Mondo Medicals

September 14th, 2007 at 5:59 pm (ac0907, cactus)

This is cactus entry for TIGSource’s B-Game Competition. It could be described as an illogical puzzle game played from a first person view, with plenty of bizarre elements. And it’s downright evil. Most of the levels are designed to confuse you, and the solutions aren’t always that easy to figure out. Move around with the arrow keys and press Z to interact with stuff (There are in game instructions, but they might not be that easy to interpret). There are eight levels total, good luck beating them all!

There is a complete walkthrough over at cactus’ forum for those who find the strange puzzles too hard. His site has also gotten a complete overhaul, and you can now find some new screenshots from his current WIPs and scrapped projects there, and on his forum.

Name: Mondo Medicals
Developer: cactus
Category: FPS/Puzzle/Bizarre
Type: Freeware
Size: 2MB

2 Comments

xWUNG

August 18th, 2007 at 8:27 am (cactus, sh0807)

In xWUNG, you play by moving the mouse to swing a ball. The ball’s attached to a wire, and both of them kill enemies on contact. Be careful of the debris as it’s deadly. There are bosses that appear with regular intervals. Make large combos to get good scores. [source: the2bears]

Online high score table

Name: xWUNG
Developer: cactus
Category: Action
Type: Freeware
Size: 2MB
Direct download link: Click here

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Ugliest game ever… Playable?

July 25th, 2007 at 10:38 pm (cactus, sh0707)

Just looking at the gameplay video should make you want to give your computer a bath. Anyway, here’s the gameplay instructions:

Z: Fire beam against enemies
X: Fire beam against bullets
Z + X: Fire strong beam against enemies (depletes time)
C: Change ship
F1: Toggle motion blur
F2: Launch highscore table
F3: Toggle random mode

Don’t fire for too long, you’ll overheat and explode! Don’t let the time run out or you die. Killing enemies adds more time to the counter.

The game needs to be extracted before playing. There is an online highscore table too, so don’t worry if it freezes up for a few secs, it’s just sending your scores.

Use joy2key for joypad support!

Name: Burn the Trash
Developer: cactus
Category: Shmup
Type: Freeware
Size: 1.8MB

13 Comments

Fractal Fighter

June 21st, 2007 at 8:18 am (cactus, h0607)

Fractal Fighter is a new vertical shooter by cactus which features a limited palette of only two colors. Each boss consists of different weapon parts that the player has to destroy in sequence, randomly created using a tree generation code. A commendable effort especially when considering that the author spent less than a day to create the entire game from ground up.

Name: Fractal Fighter
Developer: cactus
Category: Shooter
Type: Freeware
Size: 2MB

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Clean Asia II?

June 18th, 2007 at 9:08 am (cactus, preview)

Okay, maybe not Clean Asia II. But nearly a sequel in a sense. It’s cactus‘ shmup-dev game number two. This time the game seems to be very retro.

The title is “Akuchizoku“, which is bad Japanese for “Evil Blood People”. The current plan is to have it play for five very different levels, with the possibillity of an additional small bonus level or two. You get to pilot at least five different fighters, and the game will have a custom made score by John Marwin plus an in game storyline. And it will be shareware, because both authors are apparently in need of funds.

However, there is no price on the game, instead the “customer” makes a donation of at least $1 to get his copy of the full version. Generous donators will be extremely appreciated and therefore get their names in the credit (and possibly a few subsequent cactus games for free, if the economic situation allows it). For those who feel that games should be free to play, there’ll be an optional demo version with a bit over 60% of the content from the full version available for download. Note that the full version will probably be released for free whenever there’s no point in requiring donations anymore. So anyone who “buys” the game shouldn’t consider it that way. Look at it as a donation, and feel that you’ve done a good deed instead.

Additional screenshots: [1] - [2] - [3] - [4]

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Crazy Patterns

March 25th, 2007 at 9:18 am (cactus)

Another one for the shooter fans, Crazy Patterns is a bullet dodging simulator with randomly generated patterns. Use the Z key to shoot, and the counter will increase accordingly when damage is inflicted. Hold the X key to activate the slow motion mode.

Name: Crazy Patterns
Developer: cactus
Category: Shooter
Type: Freeware
Size: 1MB

2 Comments

Insect Invade 2

February 25th, 2007 at 3:08 pm (cactus)

Insect Invade 2 is a two-dimensional shooter where you are a drunken man trying to defend himself from the invading insects. Of course, these bugs will not give up easily, they will hunt you down.

Name: Insect Invade 2
Developer: cactus
Category: Action
Type: Freeware
Size: 2MB

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