Bombermine: 1000 player Bomberman fun [Game Saturday]
I can't really remember when I first came into contact with Bomberman, but I think it was on the Commodore Amiga when I started to play a game called Dynablast. The game has been released for nearly every system since then and if I had to pick the best Bomberman version there is, I'd certainly pick the Sega Saturn version which supported up to ten players. Yes, it got a little crowded in front of the television but the fun was very well worth it.
Bombermine has been making the rounds recently. It is an online adaption of Bomberman for up to 1000 players. Yes, that is a lot of players. Currently, there are hundreds of players on each server and while you won't meet them all as the map is quite large, it is certainly fun to play against that many players.
The game is played in rounds to give everyone the same chance at winning. The core game mechanic is still the same. You take control of a Bomberman who can drop bombs on the map. Bombs are used to defeat other players when they are in the bomb's blast radius when it goes off, and to destroy blocks. For each block that you destroy, there is a chance that a bonus is found underneath it. This ranges from extra bombs to increased blast radius range to speed increases or the ability to throw bombs while you are moving.
To make things interesting, additional elements have been added to the game. There are for instance different types of blocks. Some are not as easily destroyed, others are indestructible. There are also chests, a goal that you need to bomb a ball into, or arrows that allow you to only move in the direction they point at.
As far as bombs go, you got your plain simple bomb and a whole array of advanced bombs. There is the radio bomb that you can detonation remotely, the Nyan-bomb, designed after the Nyan Cat meme that is super powerful, or the almighty Nuclear Bomb.
That's however still not the end of it. You may experience status changes when you move over certain fields in the game. This can have a positive effect, like invulnerability or invisibility, or negative effects when you become Nyan Cat or Kenny from Southpark.
As far as controls go: you move with the arrow or WASD keys on your keyboard, and use Space or k to drop bombs. Radio bombs are detonated with Ctrl or l, the Q key switches to Eagle's eye" view mode, Enter lets you chat, and P toggles full screen mode.
You can also enter /obs to observe a game, which can be useful to wait until a round is over. Each round lasts 20 minutes and points are awarded for a variety of activities including bombing other players in the game.
Verdict
Bombermine is a fresh approach to Bomberman and while it is doing a lot of things right, it lacks one of the core features of every other Bomberman game: blasting your friends to pieces. The anonymity of the game, caused by the large number of players on the map, may not appeal to all users.
Then again, if you are looking for a Bomberman game with new game elements, this one may be right up your alley.
Servers down all the time.
aaah can’t stop to play this game :'(
unplayable :-)
Cool. Will try this out. Did the Google+ buttons just disappeared?