I have another “Shmup” (Shoot’eM-Up) for you here today, similar to Geometry Wars from a couple of weeks ago. Unlike Geometry Wars, however, and more similar to Every Extend Extra Extreme from Q Entertainment, the object of this twin stick shooter is to create chains of explosions over top of some pretty interesting music. The game is Everyday Shooter, created by Jonathan Mak of Queasy Games, and this formerly PS3-exclusive shooter is now on the PC. As the winner of three IGF 2007 awards including Design Innovation, Excellence in Audio and the GameTap Indie Award, it’s very much worth a look.

You’ll forgive me if I refer to Geometry Wars more than a few times. It’s just the most convenient point of reference that I have on hand. Anyway, in Everyday Shooter, like in Geometry Wars you will be navigating your way through a 2D board while avoiding shapes of all colors, shapes and sizes that are swarming around and toward you. Unlike in Geometry Wars, however, your objective is not to destroy as many enemies as possible, as quickly as possible. Rather, you’ll be attempting to set off a chain of explosions that will take out as many enemies as you can. By creating chains you will cause your fallen enemies to “drop” you points that you’ll then have to pick up manually. Bigger chains will net you larger point rewards, so take your time on setting them off.
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I’m in the middle of setting up all my computer components on the new computer and ironing out issues. I’m not suave enough to have made a comic ahead of time as I’ve been installing other things around the house (‘Blu-ray’ player, new sound system, Death Ray, etc). So I’ll be skipping this week with all kinds of new content next week. Until then!

Synaesthete is an action-rhythm game created by four students at DigiPen. It was the winner of the Best Student Game award at the 2007 Independent Games Festival (IGF).

Synaesthete, at first glance, looks far more complicated to play than it actually is. It follows familiar principles that we have come to know in the mainstream rhythm games; watch for “notes” to descend to a certain point, typically denoted by a button, and then hit the corresponding button at the appropriate time. Missing a note in Guitar Hero, for example, will cause your music to skip and it won’t pick up again until you’ve gotten yourself back on track. In Synaesthete, however, missing a note does nothing to disrupt the flow of the music.

In Synaesthete you control an avatar called the Zaikman. The objective is to navigate the Zaikman through a series of rooms. Enemies spawn in these rooms, and Zaikman will be locked inside until he defeats the enemies. You help the Zaikman accomplish this by hitting “notes” successfully; this will fire energy beams at enemies based on his proximity to them. The Zaikman can be damaged and his health is indicated by a meter that is located just below your “note bar”. You don’t have to hit every note, but since the notes are your weapons, you don’t want to miss too many.
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So after a lot of talk about just waiting for digital download, I went and got a Blu-ray Disc Player. It apparently converts normal DVDs up to a higher quality. Well I’ll find out soon enough. So now we have a DVD player/burner and VHS all in one, and then a Blu-ray player. Everything runs off of HDMI cables. Watching movies on the big screen is about to get a whole lot sweeter in this house. I’ll let everyone out there in HD-land know how it looks as soon as I get it hooked up and try out a Blu-ray disc and a DVD on it.