Review: Mono
January 7th, 2006, By Duncan Gough
Mono, not the illness which stuck down Wil Wheaton earlier last year, but an abstract shooter that is a worthwhile download. As the developers, binaryzoo say, mono was “initially only written with the intention of testing our new scripting system but we’ve decided to release it anyway in the hope someone might get some enjoyment from it….God knows there are plenty of strange people on the internet ;)”.
You take control of a simple white disc and shoot at anything that moves. The coloured discs that drift around the screen break up into smaller discs much like their Asteroid counterparts. There’s plenty of eye candy on offer to, the bold colours and simple sprites mean that you instantly know what to do. There are plenty of weapons powerups too. Like RaidenX, it’s good news in that there’s a lot of variety to the game, but bad news in that the weapons configuration you like might not stick around for long enough, given that it’s harder to avoid power-ups than it is to collect them.
Here’s the official instructions, from binaryzoo:
Written using DARKbasic, mono has been around since early last year. It’s the kind of simple, full-on shooter than I’m a fan of. Any game that makes me think of going back to BulletML and creating an insane space shooter like rRootage has to be good, after all. Just like duo, in fact. It seems that binaryzoo have a good idea of what makes me tick when it comes to games. Intense, good looking space shooters and intense, good looking puzzle games, like duotris. They even have a slightly warped sense of humour:
Black – fast paced, power-up enhanced shoot-em-up action.
White – fast paced, power-up enhanced shoot-em-up action.
Choose from 3 different difficulty settings.
( Warning: Due to a coding error these are actually different! )”
Taken from http://www.binaryzoo.com/games/mono/