NetTower is a
game for the
Macintosh, written by
Andrew Watterson of
Outer Circle Software, which roughly equivalent to
Snood in the addictiveness/mindlessness department. It's based on another game called "
NSTower", which I've never heard of. The author claimed the aforementioned was fun, but got boring after a while, so he decided to improve on it.
You play NetTower in a little window. You control a little guy who runs back and forth constantly in a small, cylindrical tower. You hold the space bar to fill up the "power meter", and release it to make him jump, at a height relative to how full the meter is. The object is to jump upwards from platform to platform, climbing infinitely higher in the tower.
For each "floor" you climb, you score one point. You lose a life if you fall off a platform and drop below the bottom of the screen, at which point your little guy says "Ow!" and bounces back up. You start out with 2 lives and get a free life at floor 25, 75, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 350, 400, 450, 500, 750, and 1000. There are 5 difficulty levels, each of which make your guy run progessively faster, thereby requiring quicker reaction time.
The additions to NetTower include special platforms: moving platforms, speed-up/slow-down platforms, vertical/horizontal platforms and toggles, and springboard platforms, which make you jump super high. There are also items: a mushroom that makes you jump higher, a UFO that makes you able to walk on air, a rock that makes you jump lower, a beer bottle that makes you run at erratic speeds, and a ghost that makes you float ubiquitously upwards.
NetTower also supports plugins, which can change any of the graphics in the game, as well as supporting external music files (although the stock music is pretty cool, too). The stock graphics are colorful and eye-catching, and the sound effects are well placed and humorous. All in all, a very well-done and cool mindless game.
You can download NetTower here:
http://www.outercirclesw.com/nettower.html