Sometimes, you call an easy bet. It’s a sure thing! And then the die lands on one corner, balanced perfectly. I think that just happened here. We reported that the Kickstarter for parody two-button fighting game Divekick was almost certain to succeed not long ago, and it sailed past the $30,000 target without incident. And then they refunded everything.

Before all you Divekick fans go running out in the streets, wailing your lamentations, the game isn’t cancelled. It’s more on track than ever, apparently – the silly people behind the game have found themselves a publisher. Better still, they’re still honouring all the pledges, to a degree – rather than being pre-orders, you’re allowed to submit ‘helpful’ tips to appear between rounds, etching your sense of humour onto this massive, shared joke. You can read the full story on the Kickstarter page itself, but here’s the tip of the iceberg:

“One True Game Studios would like to thank everyone for their offer of support, but we have decided to close the Kickstarter despite reaching our funding goal. The reason for this is simple:  the spirit of Kickstarter is as a creative “last resort,” if there is no way to get your game funded, hit up Kickstarter to see if there’s enough community interest in funding it. Well, we are happy to inform you today that we’ve made a deal with a publisher to help us both finish and release Divekick to the masses! The finished game will be loaded with features and characters, and we are sure you’ll be pleased with the result. Keep your eye on OneTrueGame.com for updates. 

Though we will be canceling the Kickstarter, and thus will not be taking your money, we are going to make good on most of your offers to back us. Though we cannot honor game pre-orders or mail out T-shirts without taking money in, we do want each of the 800+ of you willing to back our game to be able to have some ownership in it. Check below to see your specific backer level and in what way we will honor it, and then check your Kickstarter Private Messages and reply to us to get us the details we request concerning your involvement with the project. “

Sounds like everyone wins. Divekick gets a commercial release, people get something for their pledges – now a show of loyalty, rather than an investment – and One True Game earn themselves a whole boatload of karma – you can fit a lot of karma onto a boat, y’know. Here’s wishing them the best of luck.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Divekick’ Kickstarter Fully Funded! And… Cancelled?

NOTE: This game is in Alpha and does not represent the final and finished product.

Ah, the colour red. The colour of blood, the colour of violence, even the colour of the shards in the mao. Also, the colour of love. The love of my trusty javelin, fists, legs and other things that kill hares and make them show their glistening bright red blood. (Disclaimer. You have just arrived at Mad Hatters Tea Party and this game is in alpha. That means that it crashes at awkward moments and is still being worked on.)

Welcome to my 2 part preview series of Overgrowth. In this post I cover the base game itself. Next time, I cover the great modding and map-making scene for this game.

I recommend that you watch the combat in this video to understand the rest of this post.

Overgrowth is a beat-em-up. By “beat,” I mean pummel and kick violently. By “em,” I mean other hares and occasionally wolves. Finally, by “up,” I mean kick their sorry and lifeless bodies into the air. The video above shows what I mean. However there is a lot more to this game. By “more” I mean awesome stuff that very nice people over at the forums have made.

The combat is extremely polished. For every situation all you need is WASD (move, duh), space bar (jump, AIII-EEEE), shift (crouch, roll), Q (throw) and both mouse buttons. Considering the wide range of options – that isn’t a lot. That, is down to the fantastic engine that does something different each time you charge into combat. The smoothness is outstanding during combat. When fighting is the main point of the game, it needs to be good. If you really want to see how well it is done, press tab. Suuupppperrr slllooowwww-mmmmoooo engaged. The rhythm and the interlocking punches are just beautiful. However I can’t wait for more weapon options. Crossbow please.

Overgrowth has been in development for four years by the team that brought you Lugaru – Wolfire. To sustain such a long development cycle as an indie team you need pre-orders, lots of them. To gain attention and the pre-orders that follow you need something to entice a community. Some of the best map-making tools ever certainly help with this. In the video above, I had to place the weapons and characters in. I can plonk them down somewhere in a matter of seconds. It would be like playing Battlefield and just deciding that the level was slightly boring, then adding tank and a terrorist with an RPG. Not possible. Though it is in Overgrowth.

Feeling more adventurous? Add in buildings or take to Blender to create new objects and character models. This game doesn’t have a lot to it. What’s there however is polished. Nowhere else have I seen such good animations and fighting mechanics. There is loads to this game. Sadly there is no story – yet. The lack of a proper time filling level is also notable. However that is where the community steps in. For my next post I will be taking a look at one or two of the best community maps.

PS. You could have an argument about whether Overgrowth is actually a game and not a tech demo or Hare fighting simulator. Though the ultimate objective in any game is to have fun. I take pleasure in being able to defeat a dagger wielding hare with my bare paws. Therefore this is a game. Disagree? State why in the comments below.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Overgrowth Part 1. The Colour Red

They said it couldn’t be done. No, wait, they said it shouldn’t be done, but they did it anyway. With a whole week left, the Kickstarter fund-raiser for parody fighting game Divekick has passed 93% of the required takings, racking up $28,000 of their needed $30,000 to make the two-button parody of tournament fighting games a retail reality. While this is maybe calling it a little early, it’s fairly safe to say that with 25% left on the clock, they’ll raise another 7% of the money.

Divekick is a joke, direct from the fighting game competitive community. A response to the abuse of dive-kicking characters in competitive tournament play, it distills the action of modern tournament combat into a two-button experience. The original version only had two effectively identical characters, but the upcoming Kickstarter-funded retail edition (set to be priced at $10) will offer a range of characters capable of diving and kicking at different angles and speeds. Thrilling!

More than anything, I suppose this highlights the importance of good marketing and the ability to ride the Zeitgeist when it comes to Kickstarter funding. If an extended in-joke can draw $30,000 in funding without too much effort, then you could theoretically get away with almost anything, assuming a strong enough pitch and a  following wind. It’s a strange new age that indie gaming is entering, and this suggests that we’ve seen nothing yet. Once Steam Greenlight goes live, all bets are off.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Divekick’ Kickstarter On Track For Success, Diving And/Or Kicking

You know what classic gaming franchise rocks? Contra. It’s also been absent from the PC since the days of CGA monitors, and even then it was one of the worst ports in the history of videogames. Us PC gamers have – outside of emulation – been largely denied the joys of hell-for-leather dashes through biomechanoid chaos, enemy bullets raining down and spectacular bosses around every corner. Enter Intrusion 2 from Russian one-man band Vap Games, first seen in this early playable demo from August 2010, and now rapidly approaching a commercial release.

It would be unfair to describe Intrusion 2 as just a Contra clone. It’s DNA is a tangled nexus of the very best of platform shooting. There’s a strong bit of Abuse in there – lending it the mouse/keyboard control method – and a dash of Metal Slug, giving it a world of chunky, characterful sprites. Most surprisingly, there’s a strong element of Cortex Command at play, imbuing every segmented sprite, character and bullet with a real sense of physical presence. All this from a one-man project built on Flash of all things seems improbable, but this game is shaping up to be something rather special.

Yes, Flash. No, don’t go running for the hills – unlike The Binding Of Isaac, the game uses fixed-size sprites, rather than scaled vector art. The result is a far more CPU-friendly game, and on any halfway modern PC the action will hum along at a consistent 30fps (the framerate cap) with no noticable hiccups or stutters. It’s an impressive technical feat, and in the near-finished preview built that Vap Games have kindly shared with us, there’s even full gamepad support, should you want to plug in a 360 controller for twin-stick style action. No need for Joy2Key this time!

Right now, there’s not much in the way of plot to go on here – it seems deliberately omitted from the preview version. All I can tell for certain is that you’re a man in a snazzy extra-long red scarf (it billows dramatically in the wind!), fresh from the battle at the end of the original Intrusion and paradropped into a frozen wasteland full of masked soldiers, murderous robots and the occasional jumbo-sized rideable mutant megawolf. Naturally, you do what comes naturally to any red-blooded (or scarfed – ask Strider Hiryu) action hero would do: keep blasting until there’s nothing standing but you.

We’re not looking at the next War and Peace of gaming here (especially as there’s not much peace to go around here) – the game weighs in at 9 levels long, three of which are entirely devoted to massive multi-stage boss battles that put almost anything Konami have made recently to shame. Each level is fairly lengthy as far as platform shooters go, and the semi-regular checkpoints come in handy, especially on the unlockable Hard mode, which adds more enemies and traps to be aware of. Still, compared to any classic Contra game short of the recent Hard Corps: Uprising, it’s of respectable length.

The graphics are – as you can see in the trailer and screenshots – exceptionally impressive for a solo project. The sprite art is detailed and the animation is smooth. The humanoid ragdolls aren’t quite the most convincing thing ever, but it’s a small price to pay for an animation engine that can convincingly render a sword-tailed robo-chimera capable of fighting from any surface. Audio-wise, it’s pretty spartan at the moment. Satisfying enough retro-gaming gunfire and explosions, but nothing to write home about. Music is sounding much nicer, though, and outside of a couple of tracks that don’t yet loop correctly, it’s all good stuff courtesy of Russian metal outfit Android. Perhaps not quite as much manic guitar-shredding as I’d like… but I’m a strange one.

This one is definitely one to keep a close eye on. The final version isn’t due out for at least another month, and there’s still some tweaking and tuning to do on it before a definitive review can be scribbled down for your delectation. In the meantime, feel free to check out the original Intrusion over at Newgrounds. It’s a bit aged and not nearly as pretty as the sequel, but very solid for a free browser shooter, and it’s ending links directly into the start of the commercial sequel.

You can take your dribbling mouths from here over to the official Intrusion 2 website for more glorious information about the game.

When you’re touting your game “as an adventure for all ages,” you’d better have the substance to back it up. If looks are anything to go by, however, it looks as though Geeta Games, creators of the upcoming Lilly Looking Through, are on the right track.

A pleasantly serene-looking animated adventure game, Lilly Looking Through appears to make good on its developers’ claims of magical enlightenment in a variety of vivacious, enchanting environments. The game’s protagonist, Lilly, having bore witness to a startling, life-changing revelation, is led by players through said landscapes in a quest to “rewrite the past, change the present and unlock the ultimate mystery,” according to Greeta.

Here’s a little teaser trailer, released earlier today, to introduce you to Lilly Looking Through‘s vibrant universe.

It looks as though fans of minimalistic science-fiction gaming adventures could have a brand new muse on their hands with the newly-playable Alpha version of Galaxy 55, a curious little project from Deepnight of Ludum Dare fame.

And though it’s a drum that’s been beaten time and time again, Galaxy 55 evokes clear memories of the graphical style we’ve come to associate with Minecraft, but it’s certainly not as though Deepnight is trying to suppress such comparisons. He’s describing the game as “a Minecraft-seque adventure in outer space,” in which players must attempt to conquer the recently-discovered titular Galaxy 55, albeit they’re left to their own devices in terms of how they go about it. Success in Galaxy 55 is dictated by the successful pursuit of one of a handful of potential strategic paths, including trade, exploration, fame, mining potential, adventure and wealth, all of which come together in a persistent world to offer what looks likely to be an impressive degree of scale and freedom.

But these days, a resource-driven game of this ilk just wouldn’t seem complete without some form of co-operative gameplay. Thankfully, Deepnight has that base covered, with players given the opportunity to either go it alone or establish colonies with other players around the world.

Those wishing to find out more about Galaxy 55 can try out the playable browser-based game in its current Alpha form on its official website, where the long-term plans for the roll-out of future playable builds is also outlined in substantial detail.

Play-Em has outed the latest alpha build of Lone Wolf and with it comes 4 player local multiplayer.

If you ever played Altered Beast then Lone Wolf may seem to resonate with a similar vibe, but only in that you can transform into a werewolf. In actual fact, Lone Wolf plays a little more like Streets of Rage to be honest, as you’ll be moving across the screen beating up thugs with your fists and various weapons. The big changer are the RPG elements which mean your character will upgrade as you go along kicking ass, improving in the areas that you use the most.

If you’ve already pre-ordered the game then you’ll be glad to know that the latest alpha build adds 4 player local multiplayer to the mix, with it even being operational with just a single player as they can flick through the party of four at will while the AI controls the others. There’s still a lot of work to do though, with making each of the characters in the multiplayer different and adding comic book sequences next.

If you haven’t pre-ordered Lone Wolf then you can try out the game’s mini combat demo right here – it got a couple of us jeering each other on in a rather weird moment, so we’d say it’s a worth a go. Obviously there’s a lot more to the full game.

More information on Lone Wolf can be found on the game’s official website.

This is a game straight out of a 12-year-old boy’s ‘most awesome game idea ever’ notepad. It’s about vampire ninja/samurai assassins (one of whom has a chainsaw/gun arm) battling evil cyborg zombies on the moon. The premise is absurd, the screen is almost always caked in gore, and the soundtrack is pure grungy guitar all the time. But is it good enough to be worth your $10/800 MS Points?

Back once again with the renegade master!

Update: Looking for the game, now that Sega have backed out on their agreement to let the project live? Take a look here.

It’s been a long time coming. After a massive 8 years in development, one of the oldest, longest fan-projects in gaming history launched last night, quietly and with little fanfare. Bombergames’ Streets of Rage Remake. Technically, this is labelled as version 5, but considering that the previous build released was a fairly rough beta iteration in 2007, this may as well be considered V1.0 – the big one. The final release. Right now, just the Windows build is live, but Linux, Wii (homebrew) and even GP2X versions are coming soon.

Touhou: Cute girls, frilly hats and COSMIC LASER DEATH

Disclaimer: This article contains copious quantities of saccharine anime stylings, and very little in the way of space marines shooting things. If such things bother you, retreat now. Also, be warned that this article ended up far longer than I first intended, so feel free to skim.

Introduction ~ Welcome To Gensokyo

If the rags-to-riches, one-man indie success story of the western world is Minecraft, then the eastern equivalent is undoubtedly the long-running Touhou series. You’ve almost certainly heard of these games, but due to none of them having ever gotten official English-language releases, they remain a confusing and alien prospect for newcomers. Who is ZUN? Why are there so many frilly hats? How on earth are you meant to dodge all those bullets? In writing this, I hope to lay out the basics here, and make the series (and now-sprawling franchise in general) a little more friendly and accessible.