Net Yaroze Round-Up Volume 3!

Samsaric Asymtotes (Phillipe-andre Lorin, 2003)
I've written in an earlier volume about one of Phillipe-andre Lorin's other game, Invs, which I thought was a pretty good game. Unfortunately, Samsaric Asymtotes doesn't live up to its predecessor. Although it does have an attractive and unique visual syle, with a combination of monochromatic sprites and backgrounds with the player's attack being a wide, brightly coloured laser, it's also boring to play. There's no scoring at all, barely any mechanics besides shooting enemies and avoiding their shots. It's just not fun to play.

Adventure Game (Robert Swan, 1998)
I loved this game as a kid, when it appeared on one of the Official Playstation Magazine's coverdiscs. It's not what you would traditionally consider a good game, but it is mildly amusing (admittedly, it was more so when I was 12, but it still has its moments). You play as some guy with a sword, who goes on a quest to save the stupid people of a small medieval town from some vaguely menacing birds. The script is full of silly conversations, with a lot of the humour coming from the low intelligence of the NPCs, though there are also a few jokes about the shoddiness of the game as well as references to other Yaroze games. I'm sure I was able to finish this game at some point in the ancient past, but now the terrible camera in the action parts caused me to quickly give up after going round in circles a few times.

Time Slip (David Johnston, Mike Goatly, 1999)
It might sound a little hyperbolic to say so, but this game has probably the best use of time travel ever seen in a videogame. It's a platform game, in which the player controls a snail who, for some reason, is trapped in an endlessly repeating minute of time. They have to collect a certain amount of coins and reach the exit, while every minute they are sent back in time one minute. As a result, there will eventually be numerous snails going about the stage, holding door switches for each other and so on. The real challenge comes from the fact that if you touch any of you past selves, you create a time paradox and destroy the universe. It's a good game, though it's very very hard, and it's also been ported to the Xbox 360 via the Xbox Live Indie Games store.

Robot Ron (Matt Verran, 2001)
Obviously, it's a robotron clone with an amusing pun for a title. You control a small mushroom thing and shoot swarms of enemies who look kind of like multi-coloured alien glyphs. If you've played any robotron clone, you pretty much know what to expect with this one. There is one nice little touch, that a point is scored for each bullet the player fires, as well as the obvious points scored for killing enemies. This seems like an odd choice at first, but since all power-ups are lost with the loss of a life, and the power-ups make the player shoot bullets faster, it does kind of make sense, since players that stay alive longer will end up shooting vastly more bullets.