*waits to be spammed by literary boobs*

* Pecker is a strangely titled curio in which you play as a tiny red-headed girl called um… Pecker. At first glance, you could call this a Pacman style game as ‘Pecker’ runs around a sort-of-maze avoiding monster things, while trying to collect… diamonds(?). Things get rapidly more hectic, however, as the monsters start reproducing like mad, and PECKER’s odd, jerky animation style adds to the confusion. I found PECKER intriguing but hard until I pressed the SPACE bar and discovered the tiny girl was in posession of a weapon of mass destruction. My diamond collecting quest became easier at that point, but still not that easy on later levels. I think there may be a couple of useful tips embedded in the Japanese readme file, but it’s in Japanese. All in all, I found ‘Pecker’ to be a rather interesting Pacman/Robotron mashup, but with a Peckerish style of its own.

* WinDepth is another version of that old classic submarine-destroying sim, in which you are a ship (at the top of the screen), armed with depth charges that you deploy with reckless abandon on the submarines that glide below you. It seems like a particularly well-done version of this type of game. There are subs that shoot missiles at you, subs that explode, odd giant fish things and plenty more besides. And bonus rounds, too!

* Carax ‘95 is a nice Galaga clone with more freedom of movement than most and a super-rapid firing laser.

* KANIMISO64 seems like the most original… and by far the hardest of these four. It’s kind of like sumo-wrestling… except you’re a ball, inside a small rectangular box. You fight against other balls and the aim is to knock them into the sides of the box, thus making them explode. Naturally, the same thing happens to you, if you get knocked against the sides. The game is *really* difficult because it’s very fast (apparently running at 75 fps… maybe there’s a way to slow it down?) and also the balls seem to be magnetized, so they naturally repulse each other… They can also grow larger, and divide. I’m not sure how or why these things happen. Anyway, it seems like a really cool game, but it’s damnably difficult.

Final verdict: Four good games! Much more fun that most of the quick indie blasts I download. I’d like to see more from bio_100%! And thanks for the link, Jim!