It's always a downer when a game you really like at its core is dragged down by external factors. Such is the case with Trap Da Gang [Free], the latest release from Japanese publisher Obokaid'em Games. The basic gameplay is challenging, fun, and wonderfully reminiscent of vintage arcade games from the mid-1980s. But being a free game, it also has an economy that you have to deal with, and while that's not always bad in principle, the extra cruft it brings to the game hurts it. It's still a fun game, but I couldn't help but wish there were some way to play it in a purer form.
Trap Da Gang's premise is simple. Enemies will come across the screen from the right-hand side along one of four rows and try to make their way to the doors on the left-hand side of the screen. If they succeed, you lose a heart. Lose all of your heart, and it's game over. Most of the time, you have no direct way of attacking the enemies. Instead, you have to use a collection of items including ladders, springboards, banana peels, and dogs to redirect the enemies in such a way that they'll hit one of the explosives littering the screen. Defeat enough enemies, and you'll move on to the next stage.
As you go further into the game, the enemies will bring new tricks to the board, such as mecha-suits that allow them to take an extra hit or ladders they can use to change rows on their own. A few stages in, innocent people enter the mix, and if you let them walk into anything dangerous, you'll lose a heart. Si...