You Found The Grappling Hook - PRO EDITION

Posted by Terry Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:43:00 GMT

Messhof has created a PRO EDITION of You Found The Grappling Hook exclusively for Business Week Arcade, which recently featured the game. In the comments on his blog, he describes the changes:

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Posted in Platformers, Stealth, Business, Windows, Freeware | Tags messhof | 15 comments

Splinter Source... Redux?

Posted by Derek Yu Mon, 11 Feb 2008 23:11:00 GMT

Zi-Xiao Liang wants me to tell you that he’s working on a new game based on one of his old games. Unfortunately, it’s not a remake of his top-down shooter Scientology PWNED, which ironically got PWNED pretty hard by Scientology. Instead, Mr. Liang is (probably wisely) choosing to base this game on Splinter Source, his side-scrolling 2d stealth platformer.

Hit the jump for five more screenshots of this as-of-yet-unnamed, no-release-date-set platform game which Zi-Xiao is describing as “Super Mario mashed with Splinter Cell, piled on Metal Gear Solid (and if the player chooses to do so, sprinkled with Contra).” Which is a recipe that makes either a Roast Awesomebeef or a Meatloaf of Disaster (hold the TIGERSauce). Let’s hope it’s the former!

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Posted in Platformers, Stealth, Previews | Tags ZiXiaoLiang | 15 comments

The Art of Theft: Trilby Rank playthrough

Posted by Terry Sat, 01 Dec 2007 14:49:00 GMT

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been uploading Trilby rank videos of each of the Heists from Yahtzee’s new game. I just Trilby ranked the last stage today, so I thought it would be nice to put them all together along with the introductory texts to each level, as a full Trilby Rank playthrough.

Not shown are the bonus heist (which is basically just a rerun of all the game’s levels), or the awesome minigame you get for completing the bonus heist with the cream suit (which I don’t want to spoil for you).

Chapow City, 1991. They call it the city of stolen dreams. It’s the city that your parents warned you about. It’s the city where money is the only thing that matters, where the rich live high above the streets and the poor pick through their trash. In England, I was strictly small time, picking rusty locks in ancient manor houses. It wasn’t enough for me. So I came here, to America, with only one idea on my mind: to become the greatest thief in the world. To seek other people’s fortunes. I have been mentored by some of the best criminal minds of their time. I have honed my skills to their absolute peak. In the homeland of the idle rich I will show them just how powerless they are. Because no lock, no bar, no guard, can stop me from going where I want to go. My name is Trilby.

Be warned, everything after the jump is a spoiler!

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Posted in Platformers, Stealth, Videos | Tags Yahtzee | 15 comments

Pineappo

Posted by Derek Yu Fri, 16 Nov 2007 06:23:00 GMT

Picked up Pineappo because I thought an Ikiki game about tropical fruit might be interesting… nope, it’s another overhead commando game!

The “pineappo,” in this case, must refer to the grenades you use in lieu of a gun (press “z”). You can also punch guards by pressing shift (very dangerous), or… perform an action which appears to be spitting (“x”). I think it’s meant to draw the guards’ attentions, but I’m not sure.

It’s fun to see how Ikiki’s designs develop from game to game. This one definitely feels like it comes somewhere between Tetuhau and Hakaiman, when you examine the mechanics involved, as well as the overall polish.

I feel like I just uncovered the missing link, or something.

Posted in Stealth, Windows, Action / Arcade, Freeware, Doujin | Tags Ikiki | 9 comments

Trilby: The Art of Theft

Posted by Terry Tue, 13 Nov 2007 16:29:00 GMT

I posted this over at indygamer blogspot a few days ago when I first came across it; at that stage I hadn’t played very much of it so there wasn’t a lot I could say about it. I’ve since finished it.

Before I say a thing about this game, I really must say something about its creator. Chances are most people reading this have already heard of Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw; he’s created more polished, complete games than most people have walkabout demos, his Chzo Mythos quadrilogy made the fifty really good indie games feature here as an example of indie gaming’s finest, and of course, he’s the author of Zero Punctuation – The best thing ever to hit game reviewing, in my opinion. It’s clever, it’s original, and above all, it’s bloody funny. He reviews Peggle and compares Popcap to the evil team in an 80s sports movie, he rants irrelevantly about American foreign policy for half his Medal of Honour review, he gets his viewers to cripple themselves as punishment for not buying Psychonauts en masse – what a legend!

Although expectations are pretty high when a guy with that kinda track record releases a new game, I’m sure it’ll be no surprise for anyone here to learn that The Art of Theft doesn’t disappoint. It’s excellent.

The concept is great: two years before Five Days a Stranger, Trilby is an aspiring cat-burglar in Chapow City. The Art of Theft deals with the story of his daring heists and how he made his name. Although the writing’s excellent, the focus is on gameplay – it’s a stealth platformer (not a combination you see very often) which demands patience and impeccable timing to get ahead.

I should warn you that the game has some serious flaws though – the difficulty curve ramps up too fast, save points are too infrequent leading to frustrating repetition when you inevitably lose a mission and have to start again, and then there are a few little things: like cutting wires, which is an unwelcome game of chance in an otherwise entirely skill driven game.

But hey, I wouldn’t have written all this if I didn’t absolutely love it regardless! What we have here is one of the most original, well designed and addictive games released this year. Hardly a single room goes by that doesn’t show off some little moment of brilliant creativity; usually a well written note or nifty construct of some sort. It really is superb.

I was going to put this at the top, but it’s a bit spoilerish so I’ll put it here instead: Want to see the game in action? Here’s a video of me making the first level look easy:

You can download it here, on The Escapist.

Posted in Platformers, Highly Recommended, Stealth, Videos, Windows, Freeware | Tags Yahtzee | 40 comments

Hakaiman

Posted by Derek Yu Thu, 14 Jun 2007 16:49:00 GMT

I had no idea that developer Ikiki is one prolific motherfucker, since all I knew of his work was Nikujin. Check out this page of all this games. Holy hell, this guy is like the Takashi Miike of indie games. And I vow that I shall play them all and review them on this site!

Hakaiman (direct download), the second of his games I’ve played (and considered to be one of his best) is a top-down espionage game. There are six missions in total, that have you stealing the plans, infiltrating the base, etc., with nothing but a machine gun, a handful of grenades, and your gigantic brass balls at your disposal.

Whether you want to go in guns blazing or silently snap necks is up to you, but guards are thankfully quite simple-minded and, unless they see you, will not actively seek you out (and even then, for only a short while). They will also respond to loud noises, like explosions. It’s not very realistic, but it makes the game infinitely more fun and playable.

The lowdown is that this game is really, really sweet, and the many ways you can kill your opponents and yourself make it very replayable. There’s even a high score system that tracks your speed and other factors (types of kills, perhaps?). And unlike Nikujin, which is the gaming equivalent of trying to pick up a glass ball with chopsticks, Hakaiman is totally beatable.

I loved this game so much that I even made a walkthrough for it, with screenshots of every level, before and after the carnage.

(Thanks to raigan and Jon Mak for the link to all his games and for giving me heads-up on this one in particular!)

Controls and hints in the extended.

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Posted in Highly Recommended, Stealth, Windows, Action / Arcade, Freeware, Doujin | Tags Ikiki | 29 comments

Nikujin

Posted by Guest Reviewer Mon, 11 Jun 2007 14:39:00 GMT

[Guest review by Xander]

Nikujin (direct link) is a bit of an oddity. It was created by a person known as ‘Ikiki’. And that’s everything I know about the creator, except that he created one of my favourite 2D-platformers. In Nikujin you play a ninja, who’s goal is to progress through a ninja fortress of increasing difficulty, utilising your ninja skills to ensure your survival. There’s no real tutorial to the game, so to run through quickly, the arrow keys are your directional movements, Shift is jump and Ctrl is your sword attack. Now, whilst this game looks simple, especially given it’s incredibly basic style, the gameplay gets a little more complicated.

There are special tricks to the game, which you can only really learn through experimentation. For instance, holding down when landing from a height allows you to roll, so that you don’t hurt yourself. If you land on top of an enemy, pressing down will stab your sword into his head, killing him instantly. You can then jump from there to get a vertical boost, from where you can hold up to cling to the ceiling. You can also hold up to run up walls, also achievable mid-jump, or whilst clinging onto the ceiling provided you are very close to a 90 degree corner. It’s certainly easier to learn through practice, as you will meet obstacles that will push you into realizing your capabilities as a ninja. For instance, you run at a set speed, but if you walk into a wall and then immediately run the other direction you will use the force to launch into a continuous sprint gaining you a significant leaping boost. Combat takes a back seat to the platforming, it’s really just a case of slashing the enemy a few times, or killing him before he’s noticed you, indicated by the Metal Gear Solid-style icons above their head.

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Posted in Platformers, Highly Recommended, Stealth, Windows, Freeware, Doujin | Tags Ikiki | 71 comments