A boss fight shoot ‘em up at its core, what makes Fraxy so great is the fact that the game comes with an easy-to-use editor that lets you make your own bosses to share with other Fraxy players!
Check out some user-made creations here, at the Fraxy wiki, or here, at the Something Awful forums.
Controls: By default, you control the game with the mouse (left mouse button to shoot and right mouse button to boost) and the arrow keys (for moving). Firing your weapon, boosting, and getting hit all drain your energy bar. Shift switches your weapon.
NIGORO (formerly GR3PROJECT), creators of La Mulana, continue their tradition of making really, really friggin’ hard games with Death Village, a decidedly smaller, more casual title that will nonetheless have you crying by the second level. At least, that’s where I started crying. But then again, I always cry when I play games. (And also when I touch myself!)
I’m not certain what the story is behind Death Village, but your goal in each level is to get a funny old man through a haunted house and to the exit door. You don’t have direct control over him, but by slamming doors and enabling a variety of traps and scary things, you can lead him over. The atmosphere is spot on, with creepy graphics and sound effects bringing the haunted houses to life and pushing you onward.
The learning curve is deadly high, however, so make sure you at least watch the Level 1 video to get a handle on how the traps work. I couldn’t beat level two, which, on the bottom floor, requires you to somehow jump a gap. So yeah, anyone have any ideas?
That doujin fighting game article sure sounds like something up my alley. Anyway, here’s another item of interest to fans of import titles from Japan. A demo is available, but with only two playable characters there’s not much to experiment with (yet).
Ah, right. Here are some hints on how to do a proper combo.
(Some of the members in the development team were responsible for Melty Blood.)
Previously mentioned on TIGSource, Akatsuki Blitzkampf is a fighting game that takes place in a world where sauerkraut sushi is a delicacy, the world of Philip K. Dick’s famous novel The Man in the High Castle... the world where the Axis powers won World War II.
I’m a fan of fighting games, but no expert, so I’ll let Hunty tell you about it. All I’ll say is that it’s got a nice, clean, fascist look to it.
Fairy Attackers has terrible scrolling. Every time you change direction the camera moves. Seriously, I ate three breakfast tacos before I played this game and I almost yakked them all up.
Aside from that, this is a fairly mediocre Wonderboy homage all the way around.
Whether it’s cosplay, or Les Miserables, or just really, really low resolutions, Japanese doujin game developers like to spice up their fighting games with some ridiculous ideas. You gotta applaud them for that.
By the way, is anyone out there some kind of expert, or at least a really gung ho enthusiast, who maybe wants to write up a Doujin Fighting Games feature for TIGSource with me? You provide the info, and I’ll provide the editing and formatting, just like our Doujin Shmups feature was handled.
Tumiki Fighters, Kenta Cho’s toy block shmup that lets you attach your defeated enemies to you Katamari-style to increase your firepower, is purportedly hitting the Wii:
”...recently Tumiki Fighters appeared in a retailer’s database with Majesco as the publisher. This could be a Wii-make of Tumiki Fighters or the other (dismal!) possibility is that it’s an all new game that’s using the same name.”
For Linux and Mac ports of this lovely game, check out its Wikipedia entry.
Inyou Douji Monogatari is a single-screen platformer by MIR, who is apparently a very good Ikaruga player as well as a doujin game developer. IDM puts you in controls of a young girl… well, I have no idea what the story is because I don’t speak Japanese. And I barely speak English.
IDM’s gameplay, however, is very solid. You begin by picking your character. It’s not just an aesthetic choice. Light (blue) and dark (green) have the same controls, and moves, but the levels are much more difficult if you choose dark, because the types of enemies you can destroy and the types of gems you want to collect change depending on which character you choose. New mechanics are introduced in cutscenes before the level, making it a breeze to learn how to play. But damn does this game get hard very quickly!
Thanks to Mr. Peckerston on the forums for pointing this game out! Check out two of his world 1 plays in the extended:
Azarashi is a simple arcade-style game by Pixel, made way back in 2001.
In it you must throw darts (with 1, 2, and 3) at little living seal keychain things to catch them before they fall off the screen. But don’t throw too early, or else—well, look at the screenshot!
The game made me LOL, so why not post it here?
Download here, on Pixel’s storehouse page. (Click the wee dart.)
Pixel’s upcoming shooter Guxt, which we detailed earlier, has just been updated to version 0.8.1.0.
Now, I probably shouldn’t post every time a game is updated, but this one in particular interests me. Apart from a number balancing tweaks and extra powerups and such, Pixel has decided to add color. Not full color, though—only a certain few things. The most prominent being the enemies’ standard blaster fire, which is now bright red.
I find it fairly uncharacteristic of him to violate the four-colour style of his game like this. Maybe it’s just for testing purposes? Or maybe he’s going to introduce color throughout? I don’t know. (Hey Shih Tzu—has he posted any notes about this?)
Either way, the new balancing plus the (for the most part) clearer projectiles means I can get well in to Stage 3 now, no problem. I hadn’t even faced the Stage 2 boss before!
Download here, on Pixel’s desktop page. (Click “v.0.8.1.0”)
