They Came From The Sea is a well put together mini game that reminds me greatly of the early Nintendo Gameboy games such as Pokemon and Zelda.
This game however has you protecting a bunch of eggs from strange creatures that are coming from the sea, with your only task to prevent the eggs getting eaten by these creatures.
The game starts out quite easy with you just having to protect the eggs from a few of these sea creatures. However it is not long before you must protect the eggs from all manner of creatures that are coming from the sea.
The game mechanics are quite simple as you just have the arrow keys, space, and S which give you all the utility you need to defend these eggs. Space will use your sword to slash at these creatures and help you protect the eggs from these sea creatures, but don’t let them get too close or else your HP will take a beating.
Average play time – 10 minutes
They Came From The Sea is a fantastically simple game with some great retro graphics and great music. Everything comes together well in this fantastic little arcade game.
They Came From The Sea was created by Omaromeir and can be played now on Newgrounds.
If you are a developer with A fun indie game that can be played over a coffee break, we want to hear from you! Private message us on twitter @IndieGameMag or shoot us an email at editors@indiegamemag.com with the subject “Indie Intermission” and you could be our indie intermission pick of the day!
Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Intermission – ‘They Came From The Sea’ A Great Little Arcade Game
Earlier today, Valve released a list of eighteen games and two software titles, chosen by Steam users, for distribution on Steam.
Presented in alphabetical order -
Agarest: Generations of War
Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures
Battle Worlds: Kronos
City of Steam
Cradle
Dead State
Dead Trigger
Death Inc.
Dreamfall Chapters: The Longest Journey
Elsword
Faceless
Frozen Endzone
Hammerwatch
Legend of Dungeon
Pinball Arcade
Planet Explorers
Rush Bros.
Shovel Knight
“As with past batches,” the announcement from Valve reads, “these titles will be released independently in the months ahead, as they complete development and integrate with any of the Steamworks features they are interested in utilizing. Some will undoubtedly launch with Steam Early Access, while others are ready to launch in full soon.”
Visit Steam Greenlight and help your favorite game get selected for the next batch.
Check back with IGM in the coming weeks, as we take a closer look at many of these titles.
Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Newest Batch of Steam Greenlight Games Announced
Welcome to the weekly roundup of free indie games, this week I’ve found quite a few awesome retro inspired titles to have fun with. The games this week have ranged from zombie shooters to side scrolling shooters and pretty much everything in between.
As always clicking the title will take you to the original article whilst clicking the image will take you to the game.
Monday: ’Atomic’ A Minimalistic Fast Paced Arcade Game
Atomic is an interesting arcade game that has taken a great deal of influence from Super Hexagon along with bullet hell games. Atomic combines the two very different styles of games together to create this fast paced arcade title that is a great little time waster.
Tuesday: ’Zombie Grinder’ A Lovingly Created Zombie Arcade Shooter
Zombie Grinder is a great little multiplayer zombie shoot em up in which you must battle through the unrelenting hordes of the undead to try and reach new high scores and unlock new items. Although still in the beta stages Zombie Grinder already offers a great deal with a great selection of maps and modes to keep you busy for several hours.
Wednesday: ’Maldita Castilla’ A Supernatural Sidescroller
This one is for all of you who played the classic side scrollers back in the 80-90s as Maldita Castilla aims to bring back what made this decade of gaming great. Along with awesome visuals expect compelling gameplay that really does throw back to the golden age of gaming.
Thursday: ’Bat Country’ Giant Mutant Bats Can Put A Damper On Your Day
Who would’ve thought that a helicopter could get taken down by a swarm of giant bats? Although this may sound implausible it does end in some rather interesting results. Bat Country is all about the old style arcade flight games with strange stories and a distinct pixel art style that although rather simplistic is also elegant.
Friday: ’Endless Forms Most Beautiful’ A Beautifully Recreated Spectrum Game
Endless Forms Most Beautiful is a PC port of the original Spectrum game and thus feeds into the retro vibe of the week. Each level consists of just one screen in which you must pick up all of the mushrooms before the enemy get you. Although the idea is simple actually obtaining all of the mushrooms can be very challenging especially on the later levels when ranged enemies get introduced.
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This brings us to the end of another week in indie gaming. I hope you have all enjoyed the games that I have selected this week. Please come back tomorrow for an all new game and the start of a new week of Indie Intermission.
If you are a developer with A fun indie game that can be played over a coffee break, we want to hear from you! Private message us on twitter @IndieGameMag or shoot us an email at editors@indiegamemag.com with the subject “Indie Intermission” and you could be our indie intermission pick of the day!
Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Intermission Sunday Round Up – A Mostly Retro Week
Today’s game is Atomic from Amidos, a developer I have followed quite closely over the past few months due to his great innovation and ever interesting games that have largely came out of different game jams.
Atomic is a very interesting yet simple concept for a game which only requires you to use the space bar for all the actions. Following a very minimalistic approach, in Atomic you appear to be an electron orbiting a nucleus and must increase your orbit to collect squares whilst trying to avoid the bullets.
It really is a very elegant game that plays fantastically and it should not take you long to realise just where the influences come from. The whole style is very reminiscent of Super Hexagon which is great in my opinion as Super Hexagon is such a fantastic game.
Although the basic idea is simple mastering the game can be very difficult leading to a lot of fun and frustrating moments as you try to beat your last score.
Average play time – 5 minutes
Atomic is a nice and relaxing time waster that offers a lot of challenge whilst not being too unforgiving. With great visuals and awesome music expect to get a great deal of fun out of Atomic.
Be sure to play Atomic on Newgrounds now. Also be sure to check out Amidos’ site for more games and info.
If you are a developer with A fun indie game that can be played over a coffee break, we want to hear from you! Private message us on twitter @IndieGameMag or shoot us an email at editors@indiegamemag.com with the subject “Indie Intermission” and you could be our indie intermission pick of the day!
Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Intermission – ‘Atomic’ A Minimalistic Fast Paced Arcade Game
Driftmoon, Ridiculous Fishing, Natural Selection 2… all games that went through long development processes (some more than others), and in today’s Developer Links you can read detailed tales from these processes that you may find enlightening.
Postmortem: Unknown Worlds Entertainment’s Natural Selection 2 (Gamasutra)
“This past Halloween, in 2012 — 10 years after the release of the original Half-Life mod, and after almost going out of business multiple times — we released Natural Selection 2 using our own “Spark” engine on Steam. It went right to Number One and has since sold around 300,000 copies. This article hopes to summarize what we learned during this epic period of toil…”
Indie Tools: Dagon (IndieGames)
“Senscape‘s Dagon engine has been open-sourced! And, yes, it’s the very same and apparently extraordinarily sleek engine that will be powering horror adventure The Asylum and thus an engine specifically designed for the creation of modern, cutting edge adventure games.”
Ridiculous Fishing Is Almost Done! (Vlambeer)
“If you’ve been paying attention, you probably followed the development of Wasteland Kingsduring our participation in the annual Mojam. We’re extremely proud of the $450.000 raised for charity during the whole event and just as grateful for all your support, the nice comments in the chat and your enthusiasm for the game. However, Wasteland Kings was not all we were working on: while Jan Willem and Paul were jamming away on Wasteland Kings, Rami, Zach and Greg wrapped up something else over in New York: we submitted Ridiculous Fishing to Apple.”
Penny Arcade’s On The Rain-Slick Precipice Of Darkness 4 – Music Sampler! (Zeboyd Games)
“Over the weekend, Hyperduck submitted final versions of all the Precipice of Darkness 4 songs and we’re dying to share some with you.”
Super Hexagon On Linux (distractionware: devlog)
“One final port announcement! Super Hexagon is now available on Linux. If you’ve got the PC or Mac version of the game on Steam, then you should already have it in your library!”
A Prisoner’s Tale (The Behemoth Development Blog)
“The guard did growleth as he pushed us out, / Catnip stanking up each breath. / ’Your turn has come at last,’ he mewed, / His eyes aglow with death…”
Seven Years Is A Long Time (Driftmoon)
“It took us a while to complete Driftmoon. In fact, it took us over seven years. But we’re here now, and Driftmoon is finally just two days away from official release! Now is a good time to look at our long journey to today.”
Loadtesting For Open Beta, Part 1 (SpyParty)
“Way back in 2011, right before I opened up Early-Access Beta signups, I loadtested and optimized the signup page to make sure it wouldn’t crash if lots of people were trying to submit their name and email and confirm their signup. I always intended to write up a technical post or two about that optimization process because it was an interesting engineering exercise, but I have yet to get around to it. However, I can summarize the learnings here pretty quickly:WordPress is excruciatingly slow, Varnish is incredibly fast, I ♥ Perl,1 Apache with plain old mod_php (meaning not loading WordPress) was actually way faster than I expected, slightly faster even than nginx + php-fpm in my limited tests, CloudFront is pretty easy to use,2 and even cheap and small dedicated servers can handle a lot of traffic if you’re smart about it.”
Over the past week I have looked at some of the Global Game Jam 2013 games along with a few others from across the internet. Of course the Global Game Jam 2013 has produced a great deal of awesome titles but with so many jams running over the month of January it has proven difficult to cover every title. Hopefully this weeks cross-section brings out some great games people may have missed, so sit back and play some video games!
As always clicking the title will take you to my previous article, whilst click the image will take you directly to the game.
Monday: ’An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge’ Not Your Typical Game
Another very thought-provoking game from the guys over at Seemingly Pointless. Although very different from the one I covered last week this is short and sweet but equally as interesting.
Tuesday: ’Surgeon Simulator 2013′ We’ll Make A Surgeon Out Of You Yet
Ever wanted to try your hand at surgery? Who hasn’t really, well now you can thanks to the great guys at Bossa who created this great satirical game for the GGJ2013. It’s a great deal of fun and highly frustrating as you fumble about helplessly for the implements.
Wednesday: ’Cosmology’ A Frantic And Fun Minimalistic Arcade Game
A very minimalistic arcade experience that is fast and furious from the start. The concept is simple, all you have to do it avoid the squares but as you may expect the execution is significantly more difficult to achieve. I love the basic nature of the game it’s great and offers a lot of fun for its duration.
Thursday: It’s A Dogs Life ‘Wolfy: A Love Story’ Life In The Wild Can Be Ruff
Another game picked from the GGJ2013 and one about dogs. It’s an interesting game that has some really nice style choices throughout. Although the gameplay needs more fleshing out the basic concepts show a very interesting game that really is rather different.
Friday: ’Simple Love’ Jump For My Love
Full of interesting ideas Simple Love is a nice minimalistic game which was also designed for the GGJ2013. It has some nice ideas and I am quite a fan of the heart beating louder as you head in the right direction. However the maze is very simple and does not really benefit from this. Full of interesting concepts and rather fun to play it’s well worth your time.
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And so concludes yet another week in gaming. Expect more game jam games next week as I try to give a few more developers a little bit more exposure. I hope you have enjoyed this weeks selection and I will catch you all tomorrow for a new Indie Intermission.
If you are a developer with A fun indie game that can be played over a coffee break, we want to hear from you! Private message us on twitter @IndieGameMag or shoot us an email at editors@indiegamemag.com with the subject “Indie Intermission” and you could be our indie intermission pick of the day!
Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Indie Intermission Sunday Round Up: A Ruff Week
Longing for some chunky retro vibes and aesthetics with a modern gameplay twist? Skyrise and MixedBag are offering to let you join their development by participating in beta builds of their free game, Futuridium.
Futuridium is a fast-paced, action-packed, classic shoot-’em-up, but with an extra dimension. The visual style hails to classic arcade-style saturation of colors and overlays similar to how the pixels on older machines would burn into the screen and blend together. Rather than stick to the classic shooter conventions, Futuridium is a 3D arcade shooter that gives the player a camera following their ship from behind and the ability to turn their ship 180 degrees. Each level is a massive alien flagship, and it is up to the player to fly back and forth along the length of the ship and destroy all of the blue energy cubes so the player can reveal the golden power cube and take the ship down. Without any upgrades, special powers or bonuses, Futuridium focuses on pure player skill to adapt to the different ships and scenarios you will face.
Your score is determined by a chain multiplier that continues to increase until you die. By destroying the blue cubes in fast sequences, you can make the chain longer, giving you a larger bonus score when the chain stops. Alternating between enemies and cubes will raise your score even higher.
I’m sure most people here have fond memories of the 90s era of video gaming, the simpler days of the 16 bit consoles with such colourful, basic and just great fun games. Well Marcus Horn wants us all to relive our childhood once more with his latest game Retro Arcade Adventure Remade (RAAR).
RAAR is a classic 90s arcade styled hack and slash game in which you must battle your way through wave after wave of enemies. Expect some frantic and fast paced one screen hack and slash action just like the good old days, but with some of the conveniences of the modern day sprinkled over the top.
Marcus Horn has gone out of his way to ensure RAAR looks like a 90s game by sticking to the 16 bit colour scheme of the consoles of the day. Along side this expect some awesome music that will take you right back to the 90s in this nostalgic time warp.
The gameplay mechanics will be focused around a single screen in which you will be forced to fight constant waves of enemies in order to reach the boss battles. Like any good hack and slash expect 9 power-ups which include the ability to turn the player into a dragon, and epic boss battles that require unique and interesting tactics to win.
Retro Arcade Adventure Remade currently has an open alpha available for download here. Marcus Horn is looking for more feedback on the game so give it a quick play and see if this type of game is for you and what may need extra work. You can also check out Retro Arcade Adventure Remade on IndieDB.
Released back in June of this year, Clean ‘Em Up is a fast paced, top down shooter for the PC, not unlike the variety of other arcade shooters currently available, but it has a setting that sets it apart from the competition. In Clean ‘Em Up, you get to experience the normally mundane battle between viruses and antivirus programs in an action packed, neon world.
The main goal of Clean ‘Em Up makes the game intriguing (and will resonate well with fans of Tron), putting you in the place of an antivirus program who needs to protect the computer it resides on, destroying viruses and saving files from decryption along the way. Its nostalgic arcade shooter gameplay style, paired with stylized, neon graphics and an interesting setting make this game worth spending at least a little time with, and when you take into account that this is the first commercial game from developer Omidos Entertainment (an indie dev from Egypt), it makes the experience all the more grand.
Fans of top down arcade shooters, or any form of highly polished games should definitely take a look at Clean ‘Em Up. Clean ‘Em Up is available for $3.99 from Desura, as well as part of the Neon-SHMUP bundle(with games Koya Rift and P3-Biotic). If you like Clean ‘Em Up, make sure to support the game’s page on Steam Greenlight. And make sure to follow the dev on Twitter (@Amidos2006) for future news about the game, or to check out the official website for details. More info about the developer can be found at their official website, or by following them on Twitter (@OmidosGames).
Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Clean ‘Em Up’ A Fast Paced Colourful Computer Shooter
