Posted by Alex Macqueen
Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:58:00 GMT
Strangers, by Jan Willem Nijman (a.k.a. Jwaap or JW) and Jonathan Barbosa Dijkstra, is a short platformer set in a traditional sci-fi world. Jan Willem excels graphically here, as always, but what really makes this worth the download is the story, which has an interesting twist that you may or may not see coming. Gameplay-wise, it’s fairly standard platforming fare with movement that feels great, due in part to its FPS style controls. The jagged edges and interweaving colors of the art resemble a bizarre watercolour, and this effect is enhanced by the unintentionally blurry fullscreen mode. Each setpiece and character is made up of a number of large boxes, which creates a fascinating visual effect that plays on our tendency to gravitate to geometric shapes. There’s no music in-game, but according to the topic in which it was announced, this song is intended to be listened to during play, which is quite suitable to the overall style of Strangers. In the game, the unnamed main character is accompanied by his dog, Columbus, and he encounters quite a few slimy, one-eyed monsters in his exploration of a rather small alien planet. To say more would give away the best part, but once you’re done playing, hit the jump for my thoughts on it.
Posted by Alex Macqueen
Sat, 16 Jan 2010 08:10:00 GMT
Amon26’s The Hunt is a prequel to his run-and-gun horror masterpiece, Au Sable. In first person shooter format, the characters and entities residing within the world of Au Sable are presented from an entirely different point of view than in the latter game. The player’s gun-wielding maniac acts as narrator in place of the original’s red-haired girl. It’s a fair bit shorter than All Of Our Friends Are Dead or Au Sable, but almost as effective.
Essentially, this is a creepy version of those weird deer hunting games you can find in arcades. What is lost in innovation in gameplay, however, is gained in disorientation. Being the first 3D game Benjamin (Amon26) has made, walls are frequently bumped up against and aiming is extremely difficult. Many would call this a fault; I would argue that the clear disorientation of the creator in the design process accentuates the player’s own disorientation. When the realization dawned on me that nobody was holding the reins and control had been relinquished to the game itself, rather than its creator, I wanted to scream and hide. The gradual removal of the player’s own power through larger and larger crowds of enemies is the conscious reply to the glitchy brokenness utilized in all of Amon’s work. Fear of the unknown guides the player’s emotions through the first section, where there are no enemies, only dead bodies. Later in the game, the only two enemy types have become familiar to the player yet still prove effective in scaring and unnerving them: the knowledge that The Hunt is “only a game” cannot and will not save you.
The graphics are the characteristic Amon red-and-black sprites. While these are very good, much is reused from Au Sable, and the colour scheme is beginning to wear itself thin. The faux 3D of The Hunt is similar to Judith’s style in that all the action takes place in a three dimensional plane with two dimensional creatures living in it. It’s at once groan-inducing and horrifying to see these paper-thin monsters gambol about around blood-soaked remnants of humans in a dance of death. The device used to show the main character’s health is quite ingenious: the static covering the screen becomes more and more dense as greater amounts of damage are taken. Although as it is, the art is nowhere near perfection, different graphics would seriously alter the game and remove one of its most important elements.
The atmospheric glitch-industrial music playing in the background is fantastic. Amon26’s sound design and compositional abilities are easily his greatest artistic asset, and The Hunt showcases this to amazing effect. The voices of the last act are the primary vehicle to draw the player’s fear out until the end, and they succeed extremely well. None of it’s the sort of thing that can be properly listened to outside of the game, but as a part of a holistic experience, it’s essential.
In summation: The Hunt is brilliant, although flawed. A plethora of bleeding corpses and winged demons await you. Go forth and do battle.
You can download The Hunt here. You can also get a compilation CD with AOOFAD, Au Sable, and a few extras from Amon’s Lulu page. If you’d like weird t-shirts or plastic models of the characters from these games, those are here and here, respectively.
So you find yourself between two sets of pylons which effortlessly inverse the laws of gravity and no less than five sets of absolutely fatal spike traps. Somehow, this is actually close to the safest you’ve felt since you left the ship.
Welcome to VVVVVV, the eagerly anticipated platform adventure from the brainly fantastocity of Terry Cavanagh whose work last year with Judith and Don’t Look Back sowed the seeds of anticipation for this his biggest title to date.
To surmise, your ship has befallen some sort of disasterous event and your crew have become separated across a strange dimension. It’s your job to reunite them and possibly pick up some secret trinkets along the way. Aside from your ability to walk either left and/or right, you also have the power to flip gravity at your will. The rest of the adventure then builds on this power again and again, adding new and interesting ways to solve puzzles with no small quantity of intelligence or dexterity.
There’s a demo available online which contains two levels for you to sink your teeth into, and the full version is available through the main site at the generously quaint sum of $15/£8.99 (For both Mac and PC, with the Linux version coming VERY SOON), and the game does seem rather packed full of extras for those of you brave enough to seek out all those trinkets. You’ll probably struggle, you will definitely die and you will absolutely do it all with an unrelenting grin on your face.
Congratulations to Terry, and happy V-Day everyone!
I think we’re well due for an iPhone/iPod Touch post. My Touch has become the peripheral of choice for the go, so I made sure it was well-stocked with games. Here are 10 of my favorites:
Eliss – Steph Thirion’s Eliss was one of the first iPhone games to catch my eye, and still stands out as one of the best games for the platform, in my opinion. It’s gorgeous and challenging, and makes great use of the iPhone’s multitouch.
Canabalt – Conceived by Adam “Atomic” Saltsman, the big brain behind Flixel and Edgecrement, Canabalt has you leaping from roof-to-roof in a frantic and stylish escape from a dying city. It’s the best one-switch game I’ve ever played and the latest update – which features new environments and sick beatz by Danny B. – make it even better.
Evacuation – We covered Bennett “Benzido” Foddy’s Evacuation on TIGSource before, when it was a Flash game. It’s even better on the iPhone.
Little Master – Likewise, Benzido’s cricket game started life as a Flash title before it became an iPhone game, and we covered it before. What can I say? I really like his work!
Sword of Fargoal – Jeff McCord’s classic roguelike game has been rebooted by McCord and his partners, Paul Pridham and Elias Pschernig. For those of you yearning for a good roguelike experience on the iPhone, this is it! It’s a fantastic update to the game.
Earth Dragon – Earth Dragon was created by Chaim Gingold, the design lead for Spore’s Creators, including the Creature Creator (now indie as the day he was born). It’s quite cute and fun and makes clever use of the accelerometer and touch to let you control your dragon. The art is by Jane Ng, who also worked on Spore.
ZenBound – Zenbound is a calm (I wrote “clam” first, and almost left it), meditative game that has you tying up wooden animals with rope. It’s really striking to look at. The creators, Secret Exit, are best known for their Stair/Truck Dismount series of games.
Stair Dismount – And yes, Stair Dismount has finally made it to the iPhone. This version has a variety of different levels and lets you paste your friends’ faces onto the ragdoll via Facebook. I chose Edmund McMillen, because his photo was cropped the best. Then I chose a baby.
Skull Pogo – Chevy Johnston’s Skull Pogo started off as a Game Maker game, but it works best on the iPhone, where you can use the accelerometer to control your little skullpogoman. Aside from being an awesome, creative, and helpful dude on the forums, Chevy knows how to make an addictive game. The recent update is pretty sweet, too.
Cross Fingers – Because of a certain someone asshole, Edge has been removed from the App Store again. But at least he didn’t prevent Mobigame from releasing their next title, Cross Fingers, a sliding-block puzzle game that uses multitouch. Although perhaps not as unique as Edge, I actually prefer CF as a game to play on the go.
So there you have it! 10 good games for under $22. And I’m sure you got more, so lay it on us in the comments.
I think DrPetter’s Deflectorpool is pretty brilliant. It’s got a unique combination of mechanics, a well-balanced difficulty ramp, a great combo system that effectively employs risk/reward, and lots of ways to score. It’s also deceptively simple and looks/sounds nice, to boot. Players who enjoy mechanical games should really enjoy this one.
In the game you control a “bat” that’s dangling from the bottom of a paddle that’s floating in water. Colored balls drop from the top of the screen, and your bat will collect balls of its color for points. By holding down the mouse button you can bump a different-colored ball to change colors. If a ball drops off the bottom of the screen, the screen is pushed upwards – if the water goes past the top of the screen, you lose.
The fun comes from getting large combos, which becomes ever more risky as the balls begin to pile up on top of your paddle. You’ll inevitably find yourself juggling furiously trying to avoid changing colors until the last moment. At the bottom of the screen, friendly messages encourage (goad?) you to keep going and striving to reach 10, 20, or 30 balls.
DrPetter’s still best known for his tools like Sfxr and Musagi, but if he keeps this up he’ll soon be well known for his games as well. In my opinion, Deflectorpool is great.
The concept behind Osmos is quite simple: bigger motes can swallow smaller motes. Most motes just float around, but the player and other intelligent motes can propel themselves by “farting” (my term) out smaller motes, becoming smaller in the process. Farting can also be used to push things away.
The execution of Osmos is extremely well-done. In the hands of another casual developer the motes might have had bug-eyes and squeaky sound effects, but the creators wisely went with a minimal and organic design which is very effective. Despite the simple graphics, there’s a lot of detail to the motes, which react to their environment by pulsing, glowing, and animating in various ways. The coolest effect, in my opinion, is how the motes change color depending on how much bigger or smaller than you they are. It’s really satisfying when you swallow a large mote and watching the whole screen turn from a malevolent red to a peaceful blue. You are now the king!
Osmos is a competitive Petri dish. The mechanics create a lot of interesting dilemmas and the graphics and music make the deceptively serene world come to life. The different game modes pit you against a variety of challenges that are well-suited to the mechanics – some of the levels get quite tough. I really enjoy this game. The chill atmosphere and abstract graphics shouldn’t fool you into thinking that it’s necessarily slow-paced or boring.
The game’s been out for awhile, and right now it’s on sale at Steam for a dirt-cheap $2. You can also support Hemisphere Games by buying it direct from them for the full $10.
Xbox Live is starting to look up; with well established Indie names making their way to the Xbox in the next year with Polytron’s ‘Fez,’ and Derek Yu’s ‘Spelunky,’ heading to the XBLA in 2010, and XBLIG starting to have actual, non-massage games, the Xbox is slowly becoming an Indie portal.
However, even with these fine names coming to XBL, there’s a few things I demand before I will consider XBL a true host to the Indie community.
First and Foremost: Roguelikes, and lucky me – not one, but two roguelikes are headed to XBLIG this winter.
If you’re a registered supporter of Captain Forever you no doubt just received an email informing you that the next installment of the series, Captain Successor, has been released. The basic game mechanics are the same, but Successor puts you in control of a new ship, Eris, that is piloted by Captain Lan, and the game features a variety of new ship parts, like torpedoes, homing missiles, ramming spikes, and auto-repair systems. The ramming spikes are fun, I’ll tell you that much.
Not only that, but Forever is now free to play, so give it a go. If you enjoy it you might consider paying $20 to support the project. Supporters can play Captain Successor as well as any further games in the series.
Au Sable is a game by the maker of All of Our Friends Are Dead, Amon26, and appears to be at least a spiritual sequel to that game. Fans of the previous game might enjoy the new one. For those who didn’t play that one, they are both platformers which focus on delivering dark and creepy feelings.
There’s more variety than the first game, and the controls feel tighter, and the art is just as nice. My only complaint is that the mouse cursor is off by default and the only way to learn how to turn it on is in the ReadMe file (which I missed and played through the game with that difficulty).
Again, you can get a taste of the game from Ortoslon’s playthrough if you’re sleepy or unconvinced by this review.
Hammerfight came out unexpectedly on Steam this week. Formerly known as Hammerfall, the game is set in a unique fantasy world and puts you in control of a flying machine that can be equipped with various knives, swords, flails, hammers, axes, and guns. Use the mouse to fly and to fight – Hammerfight employs a physics engine to let you swing weapons using the motion of your machine.
This game is strong and very manly in an ancient sort of way, kind of like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments. Because of the direct control you have over swinging your weapons, getting a solid hit in Hammerfall feels REALLY good, and you’ll be doing a lot of it during a variety of manly activities like hunting giant cave worms with a ball and chain or fighting for your life as a slave in the arena. After each battle, a victory screen will pronounce your glory and say things like “You are now known as Derek the Barbarian,” or “You are the Worm Slayer,” or something like that. Also, as you progress, you’ll get decked out with all manner of sweet flying machine armor, and have banners hanging off of you that flap around as you kick ass. It’s awesome.
When the game was still called Hammerfall there was a playable demo available. Hammerfight is still the same great experience, but with all the polish it needed to be a full commercial release. (For one thing, the English text has been cleaned up considerably, making the storyline much more easy to follow.) It’s just as gorgeous, detailed, fun, and challenging as it was before, just better.
Hammerfight is a masterpiece, and $9.99 is a bargain. Go grab it!
