My Saturday Evening

Ambrosia recently released an OS X port of one of my all-time favorites, a centipede clone called Apeiron (observant readers may even note that this is where I stole this lj icon from… it was made many moons ago, but this particular graphic has not been changed). It’s been more than a few years since I last played it, and I think my high score was in the 700,000 range, which isn’t too shabby. Perhaps I was perfecting my apeiron skillz all this time, having unconsciously constructed some sort of elaborate Apeiron sim that runs during my brain’s idle cycles…

They’ve got an internet tracker for high scores, as you can see. Currently I’m in 5th place overall, but I’m sure that will slide over time. Not bad considering this is maybe my 5th or 6th game since purchasing the os x port two days ago :)

Turns out that once you get past the first couple hundred levels, the game really doesn’t seem to get any harder. It’s more a test of endurance and alertness. There is also an element of luck involved, as there are several seemingly random events that, when they occur together, can score mad points. Also, I hate the ‘rapid fire’ powerup. It’s great early in the game (say level 20 or below), but once there’s enough stuff on screen, it’s possible to fire much more quickly without that powerup.

To be fair, the real all time high score was set back in 1995 during a contest for the original Apeiron. The winning score was a whopping *35 million* points, which I’m guessing took at least 12 hours (tonight’s game was 2 hours and change).

Thanks ambrosia!

(doh! already down to 6th place!)