Dyson – a neat little game, by independent game designers

I discovered this gem of a title from a Malaysian gaming blog, which has a section for free games. Being a rather poor gamer (sob, sob), with old hardware (sob, sob), I’m always on the lookout for good, free options to quench my gaming thirst.

Dyson was developed by Alex May and Rudolf Kremers, and was entered in this year’s Independent Games Festival. The 26.4Mb installer is downloadable from www.Dyson-game.com. It doesn’t require much in terms of computing resources, and, although there’s some delay on loading the game, it runs fine on basic hardware even when there are hundreds of little units flying around.

The premise of the game is simple enough. It most closely resembles an RTS in gameplay mechanics. The game map is a mix of different-sized asteroids, each with different levels in three attributes. Your units are “seeds” that fly around, orbiting asteroids or flying from one to another. But you don’t directly control the seeds. You can only give them instructions to fly from one asteroid to another within range, or to plant trees (two types: unit producing, or defensive) to colonize asteroids. The seeds behave according to pre-set mechanics, and have the attributes of their originating asteroids.

The minimalist design, both in terms of gameplay and aesthetics, is very pleasing and engaging. There are currently only 6 levels, and no multiplayer (not even planned), but it still promises a challenging experience. The developers promise that they still have further plans for the game, expanding the possibilities and improving on the AI. Even as it is, though, it still offers up a fun gaming experience, and I’m sure even after you complete the game you can still come back to Dyson for an occasional rush. After all, watching hundreds of seeds asteroid-hopping and crushing all resistance is fun!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to figure out how to beat level 5. You can check out a review of Dyson here.