Gaism

By: ithamore

On: March 16th, 2007

The 3Punge

judges
have cast their preliminary votes, and now the entries for the 12^th
competition are available for the public to play before voting
(Engrish
translation of the ballot courteous of Google). There are several
mediocre games once again, but there is one gem: a vertical shmup
called Gaism (direct
download). It has a wonderful old school feel with its pixelated
graphics, swarms of enemy formations to blast through, myriad of
energy units to collect, and progressively more difficult boss at
the end of each of the 3 levels.

The cannon, the ship’s only weapon, rotates to aim in the
opposite direction of your movement when not firing, which is a
crucial feature at times. The collected energy increases it’s
firepower, but shooting also uses up small increments of it’s stored
energy. However, the onslaught of enemies provide few moments to
release your trigger finger. And it doesn’t help that you get only
one life, which isn’t as bad as it sounds, since the game uses a
damage = -1 firepower level system.

As a shmup packed into 3 intense minutes, Gaism is the perfect
shooter to celebrate March as Shmup
Month
during your coffee break.

Update: 3Punge is now hosting the games on its own server, so the direct download link has been edited to include Gaism’s new address.