Games Thursday : Fraxy – Boss Shooter
Fraxy was featured by many freeware game websites a couple of years back – here’s Indie Games’ post harking back to May 2007. While the reviews of this engrossing little timekiller may have all but disappeared, the author has never stopped development on this boss shooter and has continually added new bosses to the game (it’s either that or I haven’t played long enough to encounter all possible bosses when playing Free Play random mode).
The replayability of Fraxy lies in it being readily configurable to suit individual gaming styles. Your default ship comes with a fast firing laser Bullet and a stronger Blaster shot but can be configured with up to 5 different weapons under the Player tab with the supplied config.exe. Alternatively, you can change your ship settings under Player Status when you pause the game.
The game features a roster of 40+ bosses out of the box with each requiring a different strategy to defeat e.g hit-and-run guerilla tactics, circle-strafing, etc. There’re the usual slow heavy hitters like Snow-Ray, bosses that mimic charging bulls like Blazer and even dancing swords among the bosses. More can be added to the game with the editor and as you can see from the screenshot below, there is a mind-boggling number of options in the editor for creating your very own boss enemy.
There’s some pregenerated campaigns in the Try mode but I usually play the Free Play mode where you can pit your skills against a randomly generated string of bosses. The game provides visual cues with the critically damaged parts of the boss glowing red which makes it easy to target and destroy individual parts of each boss before finishing it off for good.
Once destroyed, each boss releases powerup(s) which can be used to either upgrade your ship’s weapon power (P), energy regeneration rate (R) or maximum energy (E) before the next boss teleports into the arena. Energy is everything in this game – it not only represents your health but also provides the necessary power to fire your weapons or for a temporary burst of speed to get out of a tight spot or quickly position yourself for a shot at the more elusive bosses.
This screenshot was taken exactly two seconds before my ship was rammed to pieces by this charging Blazer.
The cursor keys move your ship and left and right mouse buttons fire your currently selected weapon and activate the afterburners respectively. Pressing Shift or using the mouse wheel cycles through your weapons. The controls are of course fully mappable.
Download Fraxy.
MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
OpenTyrian – The Best DOS Shoot’em Up – Now for Windows XP/Vista and Other OSes
Jets N Guns Review
100+ Best Freeware Games x2
Raiden Fighter Aces Trailer + RaidenX Flash Raiden Clone
Gametop.com – Stop Paying for Games!
on 
on 
on 
on 
on 
on 
on 
Time for an updated download then!
Yep, not many freeware games do regular updates after they’re been publicly released, aside from bugfixes.
A really commendable effort IMHO.
Absolutely so!