From Smash TV to War Games: Space Dementia. Play to survive

As Charles Darwin used to say, “in the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.” This also applies for virtual world. Nowadays, most of the people have ever fought for survival in a videogame. They had to face extreme situations and to make critical decisions for the survival of their character.  And those who adapt the best within the videogame’s environment get to survive and finish the game.

The fact is that survival and environment adaptation are daily basis of human being. We can found them on television, cinema, literature, videogames… Our new game, War Games: Space Dementia, for example, has been created to test your skills to adapt yourself to a space environment. It challenges you to survive the attack of invader aliens that you’ll have to shoot from your spaceship. Are you capable of adapting yourself to survive?


You can play this html5 online game from your PC, iPad, iPhone and Android. It is inspired by the arcade game Smash TV. Such a classic, doesn’t it? It was launched on 1990 and it was set in the future, specifically in 1999. In this game, you control a character who is taking part in a successful and futuristic TV program.

The show is live, the caster is talking and the contestant has to collect money and rewards, but on top of that, he must survive. It is a survival game turned into a TV program.

Extreme TV Show! You have to kill everything that attacks you, apart from collecting as many power-ups as possible and moving on through the different rooms progressively: you will have to face drones, mutants and final bosses.

Are these mechanics familiar to you? It is very similar to “Hunger Games” series. It shows how the TV shows can turn into broadcasted bloodbaths. The film “The Running Man”, from 1987, inspired Smash TV. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is an unfairly condemned convict, stars this movie and he must survive a public execution, which turns into a successful TV show.

Apart from this TV show idea, War Games: Space Dementia is similar to Smash TV due to its gameplay: to destroy enemy airships and collecting weapons and energy to help your progress in the game. This game has dual stick shooter, so you have to use both keyboard and mouse. On the other hand, at that time, dual joystick was quite a novelty for arcade games, but Smash TV was inspired by Robotron 2084. In fact, the general idea of this game is very similar. In this game, a player must delete the robots that rose against the humans and at the same time, he must save the survivals.

So the conclusion is that, Darwin’s survival theory has been always part of human worries. We even use them in videogames and leisure. Dare to experience it and try War Games: Space Dementia!

Article written by Paula Gil Alonso