OIDS is a space Shoot 'Em Up Video Game by FTL Games, released for the Atari ST in 1987 and the Apple Macintosh in 1990.
It can perhaps best be described as "Choplifter! in the world of Lunar Lander while flying the ship from Asteroids". As a member of the organization SaveOIDS, your mission is to rescue android slaves called OIDS from the Biocretes who created them.
The player must fly their V-Wing to rescue the OIDS, destroying the factories they are being held in and then landing to pick them up and carry them back to your mothership. Meanwhile, the player must avoid attacks from Biocrete defenses, avoid crashing into the world's surface, and avoid running out of fuel. The V-Wing is a One-Hit-Point Wonder, but a deflector shield can protect it for a brief period of time before it needs to recharge. The V-Wing can fire back with "nuclear pellets", which fires several normal shots, and a limited number of "nova bombs", which create a large explosion. Gravity is constantly pulling the V-Wing down, and its only means of control are rotation and thrust, so flying through narrow spaces is tricky at best.
The game came with a Level Editor, and FTL sponsored a monthly contest for the best user-submitted level, awarding $100 to each month's winner. All entrants received a disk with all the monthly winners after the contest ended.
A shareware remake for Mac OS X was released in 2003, and a reverse-engineered version for the Commodore Amiga was released in 2014.
Tropes found in OIDS include:
- Artificial Gravity: Biocrete defenses include Gravbases that will attract the player's ship, as well as Repulsors that push it away.
- Bottomless Fuel Tanks: Averted, the V-Wing has a limited amount of fuel, and can only get more by either landing next to a fuel depot or returning a load of OIDS to the mothership.
- Collision Damage: Impacting anything in any way other than a controlled landing on a flat surface, or a controlled docking with the mothership, will cause the V-Wing to explode.
- Cool Gate: There are multiple colors of teleporters, which will take the V-Wing to a teleporter of the same color.
- Deflector Shield:
- A variant - the shield will protect the V-Wing for a while, but doesn't recharge on its own. Instead, the player must manually recharge the shield, which burns fuel.
- The Biocretes have shields as well, which will recharge over time until they're destroyed.
- Every 10,000 Points: An extra V-Wing is awarded for every full load of 8 OIDS returned to the mothership.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: The V-Wing explodes as soon as it's hit by any enemy attack, or by crashing into anything.
- One-Word Title: OIDS.
- Status Line: Shows your score, fuel remaining, shield status, number of ships remaining, number of OIDS on board, and number of nova bombs remaining.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can easily kill the OIDS in many ways, including shooting them, burning them with your ship's exhaust, and turning on your shield when they're in range of it. If you crash with OIDS on your ship, you can see them burst into flames in the status line.
- Video-Game Lives: The player starts with 4 V-Wings, and gains another for every full load of 8 OIDS returned to the mothership.
- Wrap Around: The planets are larger than one screen, but wrap around from side to side.
