By Alec Meer on November 29th, 2007 at 12:20 pm.
I haven’t been sleeping well lately. Spheres of Chaos has just ensured that isn’t going to change any time soon. It’s an Asteroids homage that’s actually, properly psychedelic. And I don’t mean Winamp visualisations or Tempest-esque faux-psychedelic – I mean poking holes in your conciousness, last episode of The Prisoner psychedelic. It’s made of explosions of colour that do their best to obfuscate what’s going on, soundtracked by the freakish melodies of distorted bell-tolling. It’s left me startled and giddy, but thoroughly impressed. Geometry Wars seems laughably pedestrian by comparison.
This indie brain-melter’s been around for a while, and formerly carried a pricetag, but creator Iain “If nobody complains about being unable to see the game then I must be doing it wrong” McLeod has now made it freeware, as a sampler for the impending 3D, high res sequel. Going on the screens I’m not convinced 3D entirely suits it, but that may just be because if I look at any more colours right now, I’m going to pass out.
This everybody is what a migraine looks like
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I’m never going to stop digging the phrase Hopped Up On Goofballs.
KG
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I have no idea what a goofballs is but i like the sound of it.
Coincidentally I will add this to the list of time machine experiments.
No112: Visit an early Grateful Dead Kool Aid Acid Test and make them play Spheres of Chaos. Video Results.
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ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE.
And oxygen.
And water.
And food.
And sleep.
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I remember reading about this in Acorn User years ago… Nice to see a game originating on RISC OS not languishing in hobbyist obscurity forever. (Compare Iron Dignity, which began as an ARM/RISC OS tech demo and ended up as the PC-only Stealth Combat but seems to have been largely overlooked.)
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guy, this thing really gives me some waves of nostalgia.
i used to talk via ICQ with the creator. really nice guy. he made the game after reading “developing games for dummies” or a similar-named book.
and he was a hardcore fan of disco music and was always researching new p2p programs.
nice guy.
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Ah the fond memories, the wasted hours (well days, or possibly months), it was great.
I do hope the new shiny one is as good.
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..I always thought it was hepped up on goofballs..
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If you’re on Goofballs, you don’t really care.
KG
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This isn’t one for the epileptics, I see.
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It’s the only game to give me a bit of motion sickness, medium fade plus colour changing.
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Yeah, I can’t quite see how the 3D’s going to work either… although another RISC OS game, Magnetoids, did something interesting with the idea of 3D Asteroids.
Yay for McLeod!
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I remember this one on RiscOS too… now I come to think about it, it really is the even-more-psychotic pre-cursor to something liKe Geometry Wars.
Just a lot harder.
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Love this game. Love this review of it, too.
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