Collateral Damages

Collateral Damages was one of those games you'd find in the late 2000s, tucked away on a Flash game portal. It fit right in with the era's appetite for simple, destructive fun, often made by independent developers whose names weren't always front and center. You loaded it up in your browser, and it just worked, no fuss.

You control a lone figure armed with a rocket launcher in a small, blocky city. Your main goal is to cause as much destruction as possible before the authorities overwhelm you. You move with the arrow keys, aiming your reticle to fire rockets at police cars, helicopters, and the fragile buildings that make up the skyline. The Z key fires, spacebar makes you jump, and the X key deploys a temporary defensive shield, a brief respite from the incoming fire. The pace is relentless; each destroyed vehicle or structure brings more police, and the screen quickly fills with explosions and debris. It feels chaotic and immediate, a straightforward test of how much havoc you can create in a few minutes.