So I’m happy to announce that Indie Brawl, one of our two community projects (the other being BMcC’s Balding’s Quest), is seeing a public release today. IB puts many of the virtual heroes of indie games together in a multiplayer fighting extravaganza. This build has three “complete” fighters to choose from (Naija, The Golden Knight from Bonesaw, and Liero) and several WIP ones (The Dwarf, Trilby, Nikujin, Xoda Rap, and Iji).
One of the things that makes me really proud to be a part of the TIGSource community is that our collaborations and projects see fruition. It’s not an easy task to complete a project over the ‘tubes with so many disparate people – it requires a lot of dedication from the community and management on the part of the project leaders. That we have people who are passionate enough to take a “hey, that’s a cool idea!” and turn it into something real is nigh incredible.
Big props to Soulliard, the tireless team leader and programmer, without whom Indie Brawl would not exist. And also to godsavant, Oracle, and Clemens, who put a ton of work into the pixel art. And Josh “TwiTerror” Whelchel for the music. And everyone else who contributed! Hope you enjoy the build! Remember, the project is always looking for more help!
Aces Wild is a side-scrolling beat’em up in the style of Katakijin or Dishwasher: Dead Samurai. Currently not much beyond a demonstration of the gameplay engine, your goal in the recently released demo is simple. Kill everything, run to the next area and then kill everything there. Rinse, Lather, Repeat. The draw here is two-fold; For starters the game is a visual treat, from the way the characters move and fight to the way the terrain tilts as you jump, giving an incredibly natural sense of depth. The other side is that rather than following the sublimely delicious Scary Girl with a dodgy collision detection system, the fighting system is incredibly satisfying and fluid.
Faith Fighter, the controversial browser-based fighting game where you could pit your favorite deities against each other Primal Rage-style, has been pulled from the creator’s website, following a brief statement from the Organization of the Islamic Conference condemning the game as being “incendiary in its content and offensive to Muslims and Christians.” Molleindustria, who also developed the game Operation: Pedopriest, explains why they removed the game, citing a failure on their part to communicate the inherent irony of the game, which was created shortly after, and partly as a response to, the uproar over the Danish newspaper cartoons which depicted the face of the prophet Muhammed.
A more detailed write-up can be found here, on the liberal news and opinion blog The Huffington Post. Faith Fighter can still be played on Newgrounds.
Alright, so it’s not really quite that simple, but there’s no denying how satisfying the combat system is in this game. Zeno Clash combines the immersive and brutal combat of Breakdown with an intuitive control scheme. Light punches are your left mouse button, with strong punches on your right with space blocking and arrow keys as movement. What’s interesting about this system though is that you’re not completely stuck on a direct course with your enemy, what I mean is that you do have a slight independent movement of your head whilst you’re fighting. You can combine this with the block to either dodge or parry, and to lock onto another enemy in combat, you simply have to look at the targer and press E, which you can do whilst you’re still dealing damage to the enemy in front of you. You can even do this to be aware of who is around you, if you’re preparing to throw your opponent in their direction. It’s simple, it’s satisfying and it’s very very fun.
Man I love these steam-shots. They basically cover everything I want to say anyway!
So yes, pre-loading has started on indie shooter-fighter hybrid Zeno Clash so if you’ve already purchased the game be sure to start downloading through steam in order to play it as soon as it releases!
Well, that’s the theory anyway. Also this will be the last day then that the 25% discount will be in effect, so if the recent positivereviews have encouraged you to check it out you can still save a fair amount in the price of admission. Good luck Ace Team!
(Update: Game is out! Steam Unlocking Begins! Discount is over!)
Zeno Clash , an FPS with splashes of shooting and melee action (and IGF Finalist!) will be released sometime in April, and to celebrate the developers are having a sale on Steam where the game will be half off for a single day. That makes the current price $9.99, or £7.49 or even €7.99 depending on just where in the world you hail from, which is a huge saving.
So TIG, is it a big enough saving for you to want to put down money on something which doesn’t have a playable demo, or does the IGF Finalist status give you more confidence in putting down the money early?
(Update: Sale is over, but the discount will remain at 25% off until release on April 21st!)
Scuba Steve’s Action DooM is still somewhat of a rarity amongst Doom mods – a full-featured total conversion that genuinely tries some new things. With AD, Scuba and his team not only tried to emulate the linear gameplay of classic 2d shooters like Contra, they promoted it as a real retail product that you might buy when the genre was at the height of its popularity. Though as far as Contra-style FPS’s go, 8bit killer is a superior game, Action DooM gets credit for being the first. And for displaying the lasting potential of the Doom engine.
Four years later, Action DooM 2 is here! Whereas the original AD mixed Contra with Doom, AD2 is obviously inspired by beat ‘em up games like Final Fight. Even though there are guns available in the game, they are scarce – for the most part you’ll be using your fists, along with a slew of hand-to-hand weapons like knives, 2×4s, and chains. These items break quickly with use, but are strewn around each level fairly liberally.
The idea of picking up new weapons constantly is a good one, although combat is kind of hit-or-miss (pun intended). For the most part, there’s little strategy to beating up your opponents – just move in, hit, and then move away. It gets slightly repetitive, and I would have loved to have been able to throw weapons, or perhaps use different types of attacks. Throws? Combos? Chokes?
But overall, it’s hard to complain – Action DooM 2 is obviously a labor of love and there’s lots to like, from the awesome graphics (hand-pixelled by Steve) to the wonderfully overdone Sin City/Max Payne-style noir cutscenes (complete with voiceovers!). There’s also a really impressive amount of variety to the enemies and the environments. I enjoyed the various in-jokes (no way!) that can be found on the walls in the form of advertisements and graffiti.
AD2 (which can be played with or without Doom 2), definitely sets the bar high for creative Doom mods, and was a treat to play through. The full game is available for download, but if you really enjoy it, you can also buy a boxed version for $9.99 that comes with bonus maps.
Castle Crashers is now on XBLA for 1200 points! Get it while it’s hot! (Congratulations to Tom Fulp, Dan Paladin, and the rest of the Castle Crashers team!)
How is TIGSource absent of what could be the greatest independent post-apocalyptic sandbox-game ever!?
Ska Studios, the maker of the soon-to-be released XBLA game “The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai,” holds the title for perhaps the greatest free zombie game to date. Survival Crisis Z mixes the free-roaming, do-what-you-want aspects of games like Grand Theft Auto, and the post-apocalyptic zombie/infected scenario from movies like 28 Days Later and I am Legend.
The game has two main game-types: story and arcade. In arcade it is very simple: you will simply run around the streets of a city as the only survivor, facing ever increasing numbers of zombies until you die. This mode often only lasts a few minutes, and offers rewards for high-scores ranging from new mini-games available from the menu to a character editor for the campaign.
On to story mode:
As the main Character, you roam the city, trying to survive the outbreak in hopes that help will arrive. You aren’t alone either: other survivors like yourself have formed into clans, and the city’s police force has even set up a few strongholds.
For awhile, the city might seem peaceful almost, with only one ore two of the infected attacking at once. But wait until nightfall, and the streets will literally be crawling with them. Will you stay with other survivors in a stronghold? Or will you try to keep moving or hole up by yourself?
The “living city” aspect of SCZ is amazing, better even than many commercial games that have attempted the same thing: you’ll come across police patrolling the street, or even walk straight into shootouts between fighting factions. You can even interact with these factions by visiting various strongholds and ask for a job. These jobs range from simple “take this package across town” to rescue missions to even taking out entire other factions’ strongholds. As you do these missions, the various factions of the world will treat you differently based on how much they like you.
You don’t need to follow any sort of storyline however (although, if you want to escape the city, you will have to at some point), and there are plenty of things to do. You can simply explore: looting bodies as you go around the randomly-generated city, or even venture into the dark sewers and try to flush out the zombie invasion. Or you can run a personal trade-route: purchasing supplies for cheap at one stronghold, and then traveling to another where they will fetch a better price. You can use any money you get to purchase new weapons, supplies, or training. Yes, I said training. SCZ has a rpg-like system of several skills that you can develop. From personal healing to bomb-making, these skills can then be used in numerous ways to your advantage.
During all your travels throughout the city, you’ll even begin to pick up other lone survivors like yourself, who will travel along with you and even fight alongside. You’ll have to keep an eye on their health however: if they are bitten and not treated within a few hours, they might turn on you and attack.
The zombies of the game range from the fast, newly-infected variant from 28 Days Later, to the slow, shambling-yet-hard-to-kill version from the Zombie films of old. There exploding zombies, child zombies, dog zombies, giant zombies, and of course zombies that you always think you’ve killed, and then they get back up and attack again (much like those damn “magic” birthday candles).
Another fun aspect of the game is that you (and any “crew” that you have collected) can attempt to take over other stronghold for yourself. Sometimes this entails protecting it against a massive flood of the infected, and sometimes you must kill the current owners who are less than pleased to be evicted…
There are three “campaign/levels” in the game, and each is progressively harder than the last. So if you want an awesome survival-horror game for free, and you’re not a fool with Vista such as myself, look no further than Survival Crisis Z (or if you have Vista, do as I do and throw SCZ on a thumb-drive and play it on a friend’s computer with XP).
Also, although this version of SCZ doesn’t have multiplayer, who knows what lies around the corner...?
EDIT: for Vista users, there is a supposed fix, although it has only worked for some of those who have tried it. See the comments for this post if you want to try it for yourself.
