Super Crate Box

Developer: Vlambeer
Steam Release: Oct 2010
Hours Played: ~3.0
Similar To: Muffin Knight / Room 13 / Super Mutant Alien Assault
Rating: 2/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY
There isn't much that the massive Path of Exile and the not so massive Super Crate Box have in common but the fact that neither will cost you a penny means they're the only free games to appear in my Top 300. Inspiring games such as Mutant Alien Assault, Muffin Knight and Room 13, SCB contains a simple concept: monsters get dropped down a hatch from the top of the screen and make their way along a few ledges to a pit at the bottom. If they reach it they'll reappear at the top, turn red and repeat the journey while speeded up. More monsters plus larger ones with added hit-points and some annoying ones that fly get gradually added to the mix and it's your job to reduce their number by blasting at them with your weapon while frantically scurrying around for crates. A crate will always contain a random weapon and you can only change it by picking up the next crate. 

BALANCE & PACE
In a slightly counter-intuitive move, the game doesn't score by the monsters you kill but by the amount of crates you collect. So beginners who pick up their favourite weapon and feel they're being clever by keeping it and killing loads of the little blighters for the higher score are kidding themselves. Nope, this is about scurrying around as fast as you can and picking up crates. Don't like the weapon? Grab a crate ASAP. Like it? Grab a crate anyway. You begin on the red map and can only graduate to blue once you've collected ten on red. Pick up ten on blue and you earn the right to tackle yellow. More weapons get added to your roster as you fulfill crate collecting conditions with most being much fun to play from the sizzling disc gun, to the booming bazooka, the dual pistols, punchy revolver, blazing flame-thrower et al. At around 1 to 3 minutes or so, games are quick and fast.      

PRESENTATION & DESIGN
The reason for Super Crate Box's success, apart from the fact that you shell out zero dollar for it, is all in the design. Weighing in at just a 28MB download, the game uses very simple pixel-art graphics that are sharp and crystal clear. As you'd expect, the frame-rate is as smooth as silk and controls are responsive and as fluid as silver. On death the game insta-restarts at the click of the fire-button as you jump straight back into a new game at the blink of an eye - and it's this instant gratification, along with the determined belief that you can do a lot better, that has the player glued to the screen for that one-more-go. This is really the main spell that SCB casts and the secret to many a game's success. The rich variety of guns, its all-round explosive nature and the repeated frustration of falling down that frickin' pit again and the feeling this aint gonna happen again are additional factors that make us crawl back for more.  

PROGRESS SYSTEM

When first starting SCB you're forced to play the brief tutorial that teaches all you need to know. Once you've unlocked the red, blue and yellow map it's a case of collecting as many crates as possible per run while improving your best score. Most mere mortals will play normal mode and be satisfied with this while those with more expertise will attempt to collect 40 crates on each map to unlock its curiously titled SFMT mode which, in turn, unlocks Ambush mode once you've hit a score of 20. Ambush mode throws another spanner in the works whereby some monsters spawn right down next to the pit! All progress is conveniently tracked at the stats-screens which concisely show all scores on all modes on all maps - on one screen. Hurrah! Enemies, characters and weapon unlocks are also revealed on other stats pages as well. 

CONCLUSION

As an incredibly casual jump in/jump out game Super Crate Box is quite possibly one of the most accessible you can get. For one, if my antique laptop can power it then pretty much anything can. For seconds, instant restarts are becoming all the rage in this quick-fix / instant gratificational digital-aged world in which we live... and thirdly, did I mention it was free? Yep, there are hundreds of games I paid decent money for that will never see the light of day again while Super Crate Box will definitely be seen again. The only problem is that while it runs fine on my Windows XP powered laptop and ran fine on my pre-updated Windows 7 PC system, it seems to be having crashing issues on Windows 10. However, as I've heard no other complaints, the fault may be entirely at my end. Nevertheless, any platform shooter fan should check this one out.