A new shipment of 9 games arrived today from another eBay seller. None of the games are in MobyGames yet (or so I thought). It may be awhile before I have time to process all of them but I wanted to do my traditional hasty processing of at least one title that really grabs me. To that end, I selected one called Galactic Swarm. A lot of games in this pile come from PC Treasures and were originally developed by companies that I’m beginning to readily recognize. I’m eventually going to be an inadvertent expert on budget-type PC game titles.

Judging from the copy on the back of the sleeve that carried the game CD-ROM, I pegged this as an advanced Asteroids clone. When I checked the readme on the disk, I found out that the game is actually called Swarm, and it already exists in the database. Why is there this need to rename games like this? There must be a good reason, probably a legal reason. Anyway, the MG entry is from the very early days of the database and was so sparse that I pretended it didn’t exist and made it a goal to redo the entire thing.

The sparse, one-line description on the game’s entry confirms that it is, in fact, an Asteroids clone. However, it’s one that has very pretty graphics and also attempts to have a story. Each level begins with a voiceover from the character Saul who gradually explains how he got mixed up in all of this.

Here is Saul in his T-77 taking on an asteroid:

To get back to the story, mining a substance called EZT is big business and Saul is getting in on the action. It’s dirty, dangerous work, but it’s all he has ever known, or so he intones. However, he also indicates that he is indentured to a big, evil corporation for mining this stuff.

Anyway, there are reportedly over 100 levels in this game and the enemies only get meaner. But there are also plenty of weapons to pick up along the way to gain an edge.