Greebles

Greebles is a 1997 Mac shareware action game by Peter N. Lewis (Stairways Software) in which you drive bulldozers around 100 grid-based levels, shoving blocks into the titular Greebles, with multi-player support for up to four players on one Mac and up to nine networked machines.

Push, smash, repeat

You steer a bulldozer through a top-down maze of crushable blocks, hunting Greebles (cockroach-like monsters) and the occasional fish. Levels finish when every Greeble is squashed; some blocks hide power-ups, others hide more enemies.

Solo, party, and network play

Greebles supports up to four players sharing a single keyboard plus AppleTalk/TCP networking for as many as nine Macs (36 players total). The roster mixes friendly and nasty computer-controlled bulldozers so the game is fun even when nobody else is around.

Levels and difficulty

The shareware ships with 100 unique levels and three difficulty bands: Easy, Normal, and Suicidal. Custom-game options include infinite lives. Registered users get instructions for designing their own levels, with multipack discounts as low as US$8/copy for five-plus seats.

System and registration

Greebles needs System 7.0 or later, a 68040 or PowerPC, 256 colors at 640x480, and 3 MB of RAM; networked play wants Open Transport 1.1 over TCP/IP (modems are not recommended). Registration is US$15 with multi-user discounts. A modern remake by Lewis is available on Steam and itch.io.