Freeverse Software has put together the first in a series of compilations featuring some of the best in independent Mac gaming.
Volume 1 centers around five main games, but also includes several extras, and pulls from not only its own game catalog but other indie Mac developers as well. The term "original" here refers more to the fact that these particular games were created expressly for the Mac platform, as opposed to games ported over from Windows, and not in the sense that they're all necessarily original ideas.
Given that these are smaller games studios, the quality of titles offered lands squarely in the "slick shareware" camp; and in fact, all the titles compiled are also available individually as shareware (or the current equivalent: demo downloads).
Don't expect Halo, don't even expect Katamari... but these days there is some extremely addictive and polished work coming from the DIY sub-world (as titles like Alien Hominid have shown us). But let's get on to the games!
Active Lancer
This is the type of game that it seems every publisher is mandated to put in their collection: the all-classic vertical scrolling shooter, a la Raiden. Fortunately, that's not a bad thing at all. It's not original, but it is safe.
Active Lancer is Freeverse Software's take on the genre, and they change it up just enough it give it a re-brand, but generally leave well enough alone. The story... doesn't matter at all. You're shooting everything in sight. You have the choice between three players, the main difference between them being whether you want to trade speed for armor.
The game itself looks eerily similar to Raiden, so much so that if you have one you don't need the other at all. Active Lancer excels at giving you more gun options (each player comes default with three types of air combat, and the standard bombs for ground), which, depending on the circumstance or your own style of play, make for nice strategic choices (for example, if you picked a slower character in order to bump your armor up, there is a weapon that employs heat-seek to kill the baddies so that you don't have to rely on your acrobatic flying skills quite as much).
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