Karl, who must live in a place where time passes more slowly than it does for the rest of us thereby allowing him to spend more time messing about on a computer for the benefit of a handful of people, has knocked up another of his games.
This one’s called “Cynoids”. The first picture’s the how-to-play screen.
“Here’s my latest game, one that unlike the dreadful ‘Imagine: Blogger’ and ‘Minigames of Parliament’ I have actually spent a lot of time on this one. You canput it up if you want. It’s a proper old-school scrolling shooter, like they don’t make any more. It’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to making something of a commercial standard.”
“Also – the next game coming up (once I have recovered) is Sonic The Hedgehog – Reality Bytes, starring Sonic and Cream the Rabbit… :D” – Karl.
We made it to the second level. Then had to stop for personal reasons. We’re yet to try Karl’s “Imagine: Blogger”.
THE TEXT-BASED INTRO STORY, BY KARL
Story:
The screaming started early.
Like some terrible, horrible cosmic clockwork giant spaceships descended from the sky, blotting out the sun over landmarks from California to Marrakech. The entire population of Earth stopped to gawp at these monstrosities, great dark shapes above the clouds. The ships descended further, and that’s when the screaming started.
The Cynoid bio-ships were a mockery of science – half organic, half ship, much like the species itself. The craft mixed high-tech pulsar weaponry and bleeding edge killware with docking bays made out of writhing, tumorous flesh.
These ships disgorged their deadly cargo, swarms of smaller ships and creatures of many different shapes and sizes. In London a man was torn apart by a floating flock of purple creatures covered in gaping maws. In Moscow the Kremlin was demolished by a skyscraper-sized leech-like creature with long spindly arms that leaked noxious fluid from its every pore. Paris was totally overwhelmed with purple maggots. They stripped the flesh from every living thing in the city within an hour.
Earth’s military forces were overwhelmed before they could be properly scrambled. Conventional firepower deflected from the hulls of the Cynoid ships like stones launched by an errant child. A battle unit in China faced up to a giant tank with a living, screaming humanoid face riveted to it. Their bullets pinged and rattled off its metal frame. Thousands of rounds chewed into the flesh on the vehicle, great chunks of bloody meat falling to the ground. One of its shining red eyes burst, viscous yellow fluid running down its cheek.
None of it did the slightest bit of good – the tank rolled over the whole regiment, bones crunching and bodies pulping under the vast wheels. Those who fled were blasted apart by the tank’s onboard armaments.
Amongst all this chaos the UN convened an emergency summit. The leaders of the greatest nations on Earth squabbled like a gaggle of petulant children, all blaming one another for their failings. Until Dr Aramosa called for science.
A thin, neat man in his mid-forties, with an eerily emotionless face and equally monotone delivery, he announced that he had a plan to get them all out of the mess they were in. Aramosa had been working on an experimental hard-fusion cannon. His speech nonetheless swayed the chamber, the leaders grasping at the little hope that was being offered to them.
Emergency field tests proved highly encouraging – the cannon could cut through the unidentified dark-grey metal the Cynoids built their tech from. The UN scrambled their tech bods to affix what cannons they could build onto space shuttles, reconfigured to be used as jet fighters and heavily armored to repel Cynoid fire.
They were able to buid twelve. Two of the ships combusted on takeoff, frying the crew and spewing flaming debris over Cape Canaveral. One more suffered from engine failure, and the plane dropped into the Grand Canyon. The pilot ejected, but was captured by a roving Cynoid drone, and taken away to be experimented on.
Of the nine left, you pilot one ship. Between you, you are humanity’s very last hope…
