Freeware Garden: Collaboration 6

The descriptively named Collaboration 6 is a lovely collection of six mini-games by six different indie game developers who decided to unite and build games around a single theme: Earth's invasion by the alien, unnamable green slime from above.

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Only, this is not the ordinary slime beastie from your average b-movie. It's a slime that can divide itself, face internal strife and thus allow for a game collection that isn't ordinary itself. Hence, Collaboration 6 comes with six wildly different games, that function as the six chapters of said invasion's story and come complete with shifting points of view and distinctive authorial tones.

From the weirdly humorous (and potty mouthed) bombing sim that is the fourth chapter, to the frantic single screen shmup in which you play a Duke Nukem-esque guy who jumps around, shoots and upgrades himself until the slime gets him, there's a constant change of pace and logic. Yet, somehow, even the demented second chapter about slime revolting against slime fits properly in, though mostly due to the victorious slime revolutionaries being way more effective than their predecessors. You'll discover this to be true when cast as one of the last human survivors who has to fight the victorious slime in a simple Alien Breed clone with awkward tank controls.

Now, if I were to pick one of the six games on offer though, I think I'd go with Divide and Conquer as my favourite. It is really based on such a brilliant idea... You get to play as the gelatinous cube itself and invade a city, while murdering/absorbing its police and citizens. The twist is you can either divide yourself up into slimelings that can shoot but are vulnerable or unite with them into a big, towering slime that feels all powerful but can't always squeeze through dangerous places.

And then you'll get to mop-up the remaining slime into a sea of lava in what can only be described as a cute finale to a most enjoyable compilation. I would love to see more devs get together and approach a single idea or theme this cohesively.