Robot
and the Cities that Built Him is a 7-day prototype Flash game by Kyle Gabler of 2d Boy. In the game you play a deadly robot going on some kind of coke binge. The robot attacks automatically (LASERDEATH!), and the gameplay involves moving him about, and managing his laser charge and various upgrades.
I think this is the only game ever created while listening to Bette Midler’s version of “From a Distance” on loop for a week. It’s also one of my only games involving genocide. What is man? What is machine? What does it mean to be human? Perhaps from a distance we’re not so different from giant kill bots? Can a computer make you cry? Yes, if it has lasers.
It’s a neat concept – it just feels a little bit unfinished. Probably because it is! There are only two robot available for purchase in-game, currently.
In other 2d Boy news, World of Goo will be hitting PC and Wii first (soonish, I hear), followed shortly thereafter by Mac and Linux. You can pre-order the PC version now for $20.
Cursor*10 is an amazing little doujin flash game that asks “Cooperate by oneself?!” You have 10 little cursors and you have to make it up to the 16th floor. I’ve made it to the top and my high score is 183. I think that’s pretty good (i.e. I know you can beat me)!
This game’s nothing too special. I don’t even know if it’s technically indie, either. I just wanted to draw your attention to the cartoon it’s based on, a series of shorts made for MTV Japan about two rabbits trapped in a Russian prison.
A brother and sister are driving together late at night and run over the corpse of an old man who is carrying 10,000 dollars. So begins Move or Die, a visual novel where you play a hitchhiker riding with the duo who must advise them on what to do.
Unfortunately, Move or Die suffers from the same problem many games in this genre do: there are too few “right” choices, and the “right” choices are not obvious. Discovering a winning solution requires too much trial-and-error versus using your noggin. I have to say, though, I found the basic idea behind this one to be interesting.
The creators have more episodes planned, but considering this first one was released in 2005, I wouldn’t hold my breath!
FreeRice is a website that tests your vocabulary, and for every word you get right, its many sponsors (Apple, American Express, Macy’s, etc.) will donate 10 grains of rice to the The United Nations World Food Program. To date, the site has donated 1.3 billion grains of rice, and the rate at which rice donations are growing each day reminds me of the chessboard story.
I always jump at the chance to improve my vocabulary, and it’s nice to know it’s contributing to something good. It’s fun, too! The site automatically adjusts its level based on how many correct/incorrect guesses you make. You viviparous stentor, you.
And coming up next: World of FreeRiceCraft. 10 grains of rice for every goblin smashed. You heard it here first!
You awaken in a large complex, slightly disoriented. Glowing dots hover mouth level near you in every direction. Off in the distance you hear the faint howling of what you can only imagine must be some sort of ghost or several ghosts.
Just what you wanted to be for Halloween: a Civil War surgeon! Dark Cut² puts you behind the forceps of a newly instated battlefield medic, with a variety of grisly and primitive tools at your disposal. Think Trauma Center circa 1863 and you have the idea.
The presentation of the game is nice, with realistic, photo-based graphics to really bring out those wounds in all their pustulent glory. Being Flash-based, it does tend to wreak havoc on your system, though, so I hope you have a decent rig.
It’s a short game, with only four surgeries available. I’d love to see this as a full-length downloadable game!
Content Directors for this year’s IGF, Steve Swink and Matthew Wegner (a.k.a. Flashbang Studios), have recently released a quirky, physics-based puzzle game called Splume, made in only four short weeks as part of a new development path experiment they’re conducting. In Splume you shoot balls that attach to other balls… and… wait, why am I describing this when you could simply watch the video, or, in just a few more mouse clicks, play the game? Here’s what’s important: It’s fun and polished and free.
So apparently Flashbang will continue releasing compact games like this for some months, then decide which games are the best to flesh out into “full” versions. Can’t wait to see what they come up with next!
Splume has an online scoretable, level editor, and live feed of recent play history across the galaxy. Check it out. And enjoy.
In The Visitor you take control of an alien slug, hellbent on Earth’s ruination. And bursting out of as many stomachs as possible! SPLURT!
It’s a rather short, not-too-tough flash game that is mostly about hotspot hunting, but the great graphics and wicked theme make it a gaming intestinal tract worth bursting out of (weak analogies ftw).
