Nimbus

Overview

Nimbus is a game about how Boy Ship meets Girl Ship, and then Girl Ship is kidnapped by the evil Giant Eye Ship, you are the only one who can rescue her!

This is the only time the story comes into the game.

There are a large number of levels on offer in Nimbus, with a Final Boss waiting for you at the end. After getting through the main levels and beating the boss, the Scrapyard opens up. This is an area containing all of the levels that were in the game at the beginning but were scrapped for balance reasons. The Scrapyard contains the most difficult levels in the game that the developers were unhappy with.

Throughout most levels there is a hidden Coin. These Coins represent one of the main challenges in Nimbus as they can be devilishly difficult to obtain. Collecting them will unlock new Ship designs and Trail effects. There are 68 to collect. Along with the coins are hidden exits, which, when found, will open new secret levels for you to complete.

Gameplay

Nimbus' gameplay is based around one gimmick: that the craft has no propulsion of its own, and the player needs to take advantage of the objects strewn around the level to get the craft to the goal. Cannons, Bounce Pads, etc. are used along with gravity to give your craft momentum. During the game you are steadily introduced to various mechanics such as coloured keys and doors, blocks that can only be passed by objects of the same colour and the obligatory spikes.

There are checkpoints through each level but only offer a limited number of retries before you will have to start the level from the beginning, finding a new checkpoint resets the retry count. Playing on Easy difficulty will set the retry count to "infinite". You are being timed as you play the level, and on the World Map you can check your times against others on Leaderboards.

The only controls in the game are for turning in mid air, launching out of a cannon and an air brake to slow you descent, useful for the spike mazes the game likes to throw at you.

The final boss of the game (against the Giant Eye Ship) is the only time the gameplay significantly changes, when the game becomes a kind of bullet hell shooter.

PC System Requirements

• Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP/Vista/7
• Processor: 2GHz Intel® Pentium® 4
• Memory: 512 MB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series, ATI 1300XT Series or newer (Pixel Shader 3.0 capable card required)
• DirectX®: Version 9.0c
• Hard Drive: 670 MB required for install
• Sound: DirectX® 9.0c compatible