- Site: SketchFighter 4000 Alpha
- Publisher: Ambrosia Software
- Developer: Lost Minds
- Genre: Action
Game Media
By Brad Cook
Mrs. O’Breza writes math problems on the blackboard, but your mind is elsewhere. You tuck a sheet of graph paper in your textbook and begin to imagine grand adventures. You draw a spaceship to pilot and enemies to fight, waging battle while other students struggle with fractions.
Increasingly-complex scenarios pop into your mind as you feverishly scribble with your pen. Your shields take a ferocious beating, but you persevere, destroying opponents left and right until only their leader remains. You eye his mighty warship and swoop in to engage.
Suddenly, you notice an eerie silence around you. You glance up. Mrs. O’Breza stands over you, hand on hip, tapping her foot. “Just let me finish this battle,” you bleat, knowing that your only victory will come on a piece of paper.
Drawn to the Action
Middle school may be a distant memory, but you can still pull out a binder full of virtual graph paper any time you want, thanks to Ambrosia Software’s SketchFighter 4000 Alpha. Mimicking the look you remember well, the game even features the scratchy-scratchy sound of pen on paper when you enter a new level. In fact, the pen you see on the main menu becomes your nemesis by the end of the game, giving you the chance to answer a question that lingers at the back of every grade-schooler’s mind: What happens when the creation battles the creator?
SketchFighter takes you through five settings — the Forest, the Factory, the Wasteland, Ice Caves, and Volcano — with a sixth, the End Zone, reserved for a final battle against every enemy you encountered during the game, plus one you haven’t fought before. A bonus area, Race Track, presents you with a challenge: complete the obstacle course in 40 seconds and get a special bonus.
As you fly your ship through the hand-drawn environments, opportunities abound to upgrade its weapons and shields, as well as discover ways to unlock previously-inaccessible areas. Your new weapons come in different colors, which are handy when you need to fire red pellets at a red force field, for example. Missiles destroy rocks and walls that ordinary shots can’t even dent. All of these upgrades have a purpose, of course, because your enemies will become tougher as the game progresses.
Become the Ultimate Graph Paper Level Designer
The fun doesn’t stop once you’ve conquered the End Zone, however. Take the action online and play with or against other gamers in any of the SketchFighter settings, assuming you’ve both unlocked the End Zone. The only catch is that you’ll find both ships tethered together, so you’ll have to follow each other around the map, even if you’re competing to see who can earn the most points in a certain amount of time. You can also engage in competitive or cooperative games with other players on the same computer.
Finally, fire up the game’s editor to design levels you can trade with friends or even submit to Ambrosia Software for possible inclusion on the SketchFighter Add-Ons page. Or send them to a few of your middle school teachers to show how you put your skills to good use.
Game Hardware
Check out our systems for your best gaming experience.
Keep a Short Leash. Multi-player mode requires a tether between you and your companion. Don’t drag your new friend in the wrong direction.
Move Two Steps Forward, One Step Back. Attaining this ship upgrade requires you to gain the ability to fire missiles and then come back to destroy the wall.
Tricky Situation. Shoot those force fields with yellow pellets and you’ll release all those nasty bugs.
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System Requirements:
- Mac OS X version 10.2
- Intel or PowerPC processor
Tips and Tricks
- Watch out for the walls during the early levels: they’ll deplete your shields if you bump into them. No point in carelessly diminishing your defenses. When you upgrade your ship later, that’s not a problem, however.
- When you enter an area with rocks and enemies, eliminate the bad guys first. Then concentrate on the rocks, many of which yield power-ups when destroyed. That way you can replenish your shields and missiles before you move on to meet the next group of bad guys.
- If you decide to return to a previous area, you’ll notice that not only have your enemies reappeared, but so have the rocks that produce power-ups. If the early stages of a new area prove hairy and you’ve already destroyed all the rocks there, you can return to a previous one and boost your shields before trying again.
- Note, however, that if you fly over an upgrade when your shields or missiles are at maximum, it will still disappear, so ignore the upgrades you don’t need at the moment, and you can come back to them if necessary.
- Choose the right weapon for each situation. You might want to spray pellets everywhere when enemies are surrounding you (the super pellets also bounce off surfaces, which is helpful), while stationary targets are more easily dispatched with the concentrated fire of the laser beam. The waves are good for enemies coming at you head on, in one group, and the homing shots are perfect when you need to destroy something on the other side of a barrier.
- Your enemies can often see you before you see them, especially the turrets, so be ready at all times for shots coming at you from off-screen.
- Not all enemies will attack you. Some will ignore you, while others will only show an interest in you once you shoot them. Watch out for the bad guys that swarm you in a group: they’ll push you against walls and other obstacles, which is bad for your shields during the early levels.
- Don’t forget that you can back up by pressing the down arrow. That trick is especially effective against those pesky turrets. Come at them head on and hold down the fire button. When they shoot, back up and turn away from their shots. Then engage again, repeating that action when they shoot.
- SketchFighter is not a linear game, which means that you don’t simply progress from area to area, level to level, never looking back. You’ll often need to return to a previous area, or even an earlier level, to open a door that you couldn’t access before you gained a new type or color of weapon.
- If you’re having trouble, press the Escape key to bring up the pause menu. There you’ll see a hint you can click on and read a tip that’s relevant to the area you’re in.
- When you reach the final level, you only need to destroy one of the ships in the first group that attacks you. It’s the only one that doesn’t shoot at you, and it tends to stay to the side, while the others chase you in a group. Unfortunately, the ship looks just like its siblings, so use homing shots, which will zero in on it and leave the others alone. There are more enemies to defeat after that, but we’ll let you figure them out.