Serious Game Classification

Frequon Invaders is so unique that it's hard to describe. Even a cursory glance at the screenshot will make you wonder: What kind of game is that?

The objective is simple and conventional: The Frequons are invading! Destroy them before they reach the bottom, by moving the mouse onto the frequon. Sounds easy enough, huh?

Well, the game is complicated as it doesn't display the frequons directly, but in a "two dimensional fourier space": All you see is a colourful band of waves, which change according to the relative position of the frequon to the mouse. When you get close to the frequon, you'll see dark bands appear, if you get even closer, the dark bands widen until the frequon itself is revealed as a dark spot. Move the mouse on it to make it explode.

The game is so abstract that, as the author states it, "unless you dream in complex exponentials, you may be quite flustered the first time you play." A configurable training mode exists to help you develop an intuition to detect the frequon's positions. The training mode can also be used just for fun to create interesting wave patterns!

While the first levels are quite easy, later levels are made harder by having more frequons at the same time, resulting in more complicated wave patterns, or by damaging your radar, thus limiting the displayed information, like showing the only magnitude of wavelength, or only some primary colors.

As in Space Invaders, you can never win this game; all you can do is destroy as many frequons as possible before they get you. Your best performances are recorded in a high score table. Sound is limited to some blibs when a frequon appears or is destroyed. [source:mobygames]

Distribution : Internet - Free
Platform(s) : Macintosh - PC (Windows)

Links

• http://www.mobygames.com/game/frequon-invaders/