After Dark Games - Rodger Dodger

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Now for the most anticipated game of the pack: game #5, "Rodger Dodger" ! You control a sphere through 18 different levels, making this the only other game in the "After Dark" pack which actually has levels (the other being "Mowin' Maniac"). Once you clear all 18 levels, the game loops back to level 1 but the score keeps on going, so it's like an endurance to see how many times over you can beat the game. The goal in every stage is to collect all the green "things" on the playfield, then go to the exit indicated by the flashing green dot which advances you to the next level. You have to do this before the timer runs out. The meter at the top of the screen acts as the timer and it's also your energy meter. The meter goes down faster or slower depending on the difficulty setting and depending on the enemies you come in contact with. If it runs out completely, you die, and all the green collectibles are back, so you have to try the level all over again. The green "infinity" symbol and the green circle replenish some of your energy, but don't fill the bar up completely. The green star gives you an extra life, but you can't have any more than 4. The stars also don't respawn if you die - they just get replaced by a regular green spiral, so you can't collect the same star twice to act as infinite retries on that level. Standing in your way are a lot of enemies, some of which kill you instantly upon contact, while others drain more or less of your energy. I don't even know what these things are supposed to be - they're just random shapes thrown together, so I'll just call them "this thing" or "that thing". The red-yellow square, the yellow triangle, the yellow sphere with two red spikes orbiting around it and the red-yellow-pentagon thing don't kill you immediately upon contact, but instead take away some of your health. The yellow triangle and the red pentagons with spikes can also turn doors, just like your sphere, so you can't hide from them forever. The only difference is that the spiked things kill you instantly, while the triangle doesn't. The red and yellow pentagon, which only shows up in the last stage, can actually drain your life from a distance, without making contact with you, so try to stay as far as possible from it. Any other enemies not on this list kill you on contact and you have no way of defending yourself, other than running away (I guess that's why it's called "Rodger DODGER" - get it ? You DODGE stuff...). You can actually trap enemies inside tight spaces by waiting for them to come next to a door and then turn that door at just the right moment, forcing the enemy inside, but this is pretty hard to do considering they constantly move around in random patterns and rarely go near the doors. Both you and the enemies can only move along a grid (you can't go diagonally) so the controls feel a little stiff, especially when you're being chased by an enemy and you want to get away as fast as possible. One thing I really don't appreciate from a Sierra game is the soundtrack (if you can even call it that): it's just a 4 second loop being repeated over and over - there was no excuse not to have an actual melody ! It really becomes tiring after a while, so turn off your speakers or mute the game ! The game gets pretty hard once you reach the later stages - by that point there's so much sh!t on the screen it's hard to even survive, let alone collect all the green things. Even so, save for the repetitive music, Rodger Dodger is a great little time killer which keeps you playing just for the sake of seeing the next level if nothing else. Give it a shot !