As with Raid on TriCity, Asteroid Chasers can remember your high scores giving the game longer term appeal. Once you do, you find yourself wanting to then beat your own high score. Many times I was killed early on, which only stoked my desire to beat the game and make it to the end. And while this is true, you soon learn some strategies to increase your chances of getting to the end and racking up some points to boot.įor me, the fun of the game is built right into that frustrating nature. At first, the game feels frustrating, as if you are merely at the whim of whatever cards are in the pile. The goal is simple, reach the end of the “deck” while scoring as many points as you can along the way. This means an ill-placed pirate, or just a string of bad luck with many mine cards can end your mission in a snap. This not only robs you of points, but can also be fatal: mines are diffused by surrounding them with probes, and you can only have three “live” ones on the map at any time. However, the pirates have other ideas and will disable any probes adjacent to them. Your job is to surround the asteroids with four probes to earn points (hence the game’s name). There are four main “cards” to place: A probe, an asteroid (two types!) a mine or a pirate ship. This simple premise is deceptively addictive. But each item/card will either be a scoring opportunity or a penalty of some kind. Each turn you’ll be presented with an item/card and can only place it one square away in any direction from your last move. The game looks like it’s going to be a retro space shooter at first glance, but is more akin to a card game. I say fortune, but it’s usually mis-fortune to be fair.

The levels themselves are really just more of the same shoot-a-block business, but it makes it feel more like making progress, and thus a game with an end to reach (rather than a high score to beat).įadest’s second new title is another puzzler, but this time it’s more about strategy and fortune. The story mode isn’t exactly its own adventure, more it serves as a way to break up the game play with some narrative interludes and an element of interactivity in choosing your “path” through a network of levels. Likewise, as lines complete and bring any power-ups above it one row down, a helpful bomb can become a death sentence (bombs trigger when a line is completed taking anything one square around it along with it - including your spaceship if you’re not careful). Sometimes this can be a bit of a gamble if a power-up you want has blocks above it that might bring you closer to the upper threshold and thus the end of the game. As you see blocks falling you have to make a quick decision about whether you want to go for a complete line, or whether a power-up might be more appealing or perhaps you have to sacrifice one to get rid of a baddie behind it. As simple as the game may sound, the hybrid dynamic picks the best elements of both genres and blends them to great effect.

Atari game shooting blocks