Save the Day is the latest game to appear on the fledgling HTML5 games portal Turbulenz. We covered their previous release Score Rush back in April and at the time noted that Turbulenz were trying to do something different: namely to offer console quality gaming in the browser. Save the Day is yet another testament to this fact.
Created by industry veterans Denki the game is a highly evolved take on the Choplifter genre. As the pilot of a tiny helicopter you must madly dash around rescuing the hapless people and animals stranded on the imminently erupting mountain. You can only fit a few in at a time and must deposit them onto any of the helipads strewn around, where they’ll jump out to safety giving you a much needed score boost and of course room to go and pick up some more.
Alongside your life-saving duties you can also play fireman and deal with the raging infernos putting them out with your water cannon, often revealing hidden areas or hauls of diamonds in the process. Bonuses also pepper the level providing much needed time increases, speed boosts and health packs. This is all set against a deadly countdown after which the mountain erupts and it’s game over. The effects are incredible – even with the highly cartoon styled visuals it’s still an unnerving sight as the sky darkens with ash and your spot light becomes genuinely useful.
There’s plenty of fun to be had competing against your friends. As the game is so quick to play (just a couple of minutes in and out again) you can easily drop in for a few sessions, beat someone close to you on the leaderboard and still get your work done. The game is nicely integrated into the Turbulenz system and competing and winning badges is easily as satisfying as on Xbox Arcade. But for those who have a phobia about signing up to sites to play something they’ve just released a “Play anonymously” feature too, although I’d recommend against it.
Of course we wouldn’t even be featuring this game if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s a shining example of just how good modern browsers are. It’s WebGL and JavaScript to the core and even supports game pads (once the game starts, they don’t work on the UI). Shove it into full screen, pick-up your Xbox controller, turn up the great audio and it honestly feels like gaming on a console. Which is no mean feat for browsers who not that many years ago had trouble even agreeing on how much padding to put around a box.