Chromium B.S.U. : (2.17Mb)
Chromium B.S.U. is an arcade-style, top-scrolling space shooter available on Windows, PSP, Mac, Linux and numerous other UNIX-like operating systems. It is a free software distributed under the Artistic License.
The original version of Chromium B.S.U. was designed in 2000 by Mark B. Allan and released under the Artistic License. Since then it has received the contribution of numerous people in the open source community. The gameplay is based on a player who plays the role of hero, shooting their way through a barrage of enemy forces. The game is similar to 2D top-scrolling space shooters played in arcades.
The storyline of Chromium B.S.U. consists of the player taking the role of a captain aboard a cargo ship. The name of the cargo ship is Chromium B.S.U. the player is given the task of delivering cargo to troops on the front line. The cargo ship has aboard a series of robotic fighter spaceships. Your job is to make use of these ships to ensure that the cargo ship makes it to the front line.
The game is no longer maintained by the original developer and the windows version hasn’t been updated since 2008, but the Linux version is still being maintained by enthusiasts. That said he has said Some audio drivers are having problems with the version of OpenAL that is distributed with Chromium, so he plan to release a new version that uses the SDL_mixer by default when he get some time.
Gameplay:
Players are expected to shoot all enemy aircraft in order to ensure that the enemy aircraft do not reach the bottom of the screen. For every aircraft that reaches the bottom of the screen the player will lose a life. This particular rule makes Chromium B.S.U. unique amongst the usual scrolling space shooters and adds a new degree of difficulty to the genre. Another aspect of the game that makes winning difficult is the lack of ammunition. Ammunition must be utilized efficiently in order to win.
When a player is having difficulty destroying foes the player has two options. They can crash into enemy vessels and deal damage to the ship as well as themselves. The other alternative is to self-destruct, thereby destroying all the enemies on the screen.
In the first level of the game there are only three types of enemy ships. More enemy ships are introduced to the player as they advanced through levels. The game was designed to be played on short time intervals as a quick relief. Long hours of dedication is not the goal of the project. However, due to the addictive nature of the game many players play the game in this manner.
Reference access HERE Nov 2010
Video of Game play:
You can see several videos of Chromium B.S.U. game play, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and one of the PSP Gameplay HERE
Download:
You can download the windows version of Chromium B.S.U. HERE. Click on the Win 32 link near the bottom of the purple coloured page, open up the parent folder; if the download doesn’t start automatically click on the direct link (just below where it says “Your Chromium B.S.U. download will start shortly…” There are also Linux, Mac OS X, UNIX-like OS and PSP versions available from the initial purple page via the link I’ve provided above.
