Fren-ze

Posted by oddbob on August 30, 2006 · Lovingly Filed Under Other peoples games 
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One of the great joys of reading The2Bears excellent blog is getting reasonably up to the minute news on the latest shmup releases (odd considering its the main focus of his blog - who’da thought it?), so it was with much pleasure a few nights ago I read of the release of Hermit Games latest opus, Fren-ze.

There are very few Indie releases that have ever pressed such an urgent need to push the buy button after a few brief moments playing the demo before, Fren-ze joins the hallowed few with pride. Partially due to being an utterly wonderful game and partly for having one of the most insanely low price points I’ve hit upon in a while. (Pretty much on par with The Pickfords excellent Naked War for value for money) Running in at a daft $5 for the full 4 level game its an absolute bargain.

4 levels? Is that all? Don’t be fooled - this is definitely a case of quality over quantity. Its also, a brutally hard game that positively revels in kicking your arse from here to kingdom come… which would be a problem if the game wasn’t so carefully and lovingly crafted to near perfection. Looks wise, it mimics the Aba Games clean vector stylings, which by now, you might have gathered I’m a sucker for a lovely retromodern style so it most definitely appeals to my eyes.

The game involves traversing increasingly difficult patterns of bullets and a variety of enemy styles, beating the mid level bosses for power ups and generally, attempting to stay alive and score as highly as possible - all the hallmarks of a fine shooter then. Now, the scoring in Fren-ze is a little bit different to what you’re used to and is based on earning 1 point per pick up pushing you ever onwards to pick up the blue glowy things that the enemies leave behind in a vain hope to break the three figure mark on the scores.

All told, a beautifully polished game with gorgeous visuals and a spankingly harsh difficulty level that never feels unfair.

Screenshots not as pretty as the game

Purdy Purdy Frenze

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