It’s a little bit of a departure for Freeverse, which has dabbled with arcade-style games with the release of Burning Monkey Puzzle Lab, but usually sticks to more familiar ground like card and board games. WingNuts harkens back to the classic arcade gaming of yore, with modern twists to keep owners of newer Macs interested and engaged. It borrows a page from coin-op arcade game classics like Time Pilot.
In WingNuts, you must battle the evil Baron Von Schtopwatch and his Temporal Robotic Airforce as he sends wave after wave of aircraft from different time periods to assault you and your team stationed on the aircraft carrier USS Flotsam, patrolling the waters of the Bermuda Triangle. You must pilot your jet craft to destroy these marauding invaders before it’s too late. Along the way, you can collect powerups that will refuel your vehicle, restore shields, add points and collect downed pilots. You’ll have bombs, missiles and other weapons at your disposal as you go up against biplanes, blimps, bombers, great big boss aircraft and all sorts of other foes.
WingNuts features more than 30 levels of progressively more difficult play. The game features 2D OpenGL-based graphics, with some spectacular particle effects to boot.
System requirements for WingNuts call for a 333MHz G3 or faster; ATI RAGE 128 graphics or better; Mac OS 8.6 or higher (including Mac OS X); OpenGL; and QuickTime 4 or higher. The demo is free to download and play, and the full game costs US$24.95, plus $5 for shipping and handling. Freeverse said that WingNuts would ship in about three weeks.