Fuel Overdose is an upcoming tactical action racer by indie developer I-Friqiya, that hopes to reignite the nostalgic feelings of top down, isometric racers.  The developers at I-Friqiya aren’t just aiming to imitate this genre though, they are hoping to reinvent it.  With intensely stylistic art , highly customizable vehicles, tons of upgradeable weapons, and great racing  gameplay.

The action part of Fuel Overdose looks amazing, with a variety of different weapon types to choose from, and each of them upgradeable.  Combine this with the highly customizable vehicles, and a bunch of possible driving styles, and you are left with a game that will let you play it in exactly the way you want to.  Fuel Overdose is not an arena car fighting game though, it is truly a racing game at heart (although with astounding combat added to the mix).  I would even say that it looks like it would play similarly to Mario Kart, only on a much more violent and adult level.

 Fuel Overdose provides everything that racing game fans love as well, including advanced driving techniques such as skidding, drifting, spinning, and even using grappling hooks to help perfect turns.  Want to race without all of the weaponry?  There is a mode for that, allowing you to play Fuel Overdose in a strictly racing based gameplay mode.

Fuel Overdose will be available soon for the PS3 (via Playstation Network) and the PC.  If you want to find out more about this game, then make sure you check out their official website.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Fuel Overdose’ – Tactical Action Racing

Explosions, more explosions, tanks, and then some explosions on top for good measure. That’s what the teaser videos for Commotion Games’ upcoming Recruits tell me the game is all about. Bearing more than a passing resemblance to Running With Rifles and perhaps the Men of War franchise, Recruits is a rather lovely-looking UDK-based isometric shooter in development. It’s still early days yet, but you can buy in now for one third of the planned release price and get access to the current playable Alpha build, which includes three levels. Here’s the developer’s official Alpha pitch video:

And here’s a less talky video of a tank blowing a great many things up, as tanks do:

Good-looking stuff. Although I do hope that in later builds, the tank turret rotates a little slower. That, and perhaps the sound of battle might drown out the tropical wildlife, rather than birds calling louder than the sound of exploding tank shells. You can read more about Recruits on the official site here, track development progress on IndieDB here, or put your money down on the public Alpha build on Desura here. We’ll be trying to wrangle an official preview copy from the developer’s dusty, blood-stained hands soon, and give it an official IGM shakedown. Until then, just imagine a tank shooting a man in the face. Forever. That’s Recruits. Allegedly.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Tanks Very Much – ‘Recruits’ Launches Via Desura Alphafunding

Modulaatio Games’ Running With Rifles has such an incredibly simple concept. A huge, persistent battlefield, mostly populated by autonomous NPC units with their own command heirarchies – it looks a lot like a self-playing RTS, but it throws the player into the fray as a single, frail rookie soldier. Survive, rise up the ranks, shoot little color-coded army dudes and capture the bases scattered around the enormous maps either solo or online.

It’s simple, but shockingly effective, due to the persistent nature of the battlefield. The fact that allied and enemy forces are winning or losing battles elsewhere on the map, and the impressive individual and squad AI adds up to something far more than the sum of it’s parts. Right now the game is still heavily in development, but pre-purchasing gets you access to regular beta builds and the final game once it’s complete, and development of the game seems to have picked up in pace a little in recent months.

The big feature currently in development is vehicles – not in the current build, but apparently just on the horizon. The past few patches have brought a variety of bug-fixes, tuning and usability enhancements. Most notably, you can now turn on a terrain height overlay, allowing you to more easily judge exactly how high or low you are on a uniformly coloured hill, which used to be hard to judge when the game is viewed from such a steep aerial angle. Essential to know when you’re trying to snipe someone on the next ridge.

There’s a playable demo available of an earlier build, but the current beta version is far and beyond that, and is a very compelling experience by itself, with great potential for growth. It’s also great fun in multiplayer, as demonstrated in the gameplay video above, with 16 human players split between the multi-hundred-man armies, and capable of rising up the ranks to command a squad of NPC followers each. It’s one of those games that can make you feel very small, but very significant. A single well placed grenade can change the course of an assault, after all.

The third episode of the Isometric Cube Engine Studio-developed third-person tank shooter, Snorms, will be available for download later today via Desura.

The news signals a surefire case of London Bus Syndrome, with Episode 2 having been released just a couple of weeks ago after over a month’s interim period following on from the game’s initial release. This third episode also marks the apparent finale of the game’s story arc, according to the game’s official blurb.

Among the prime offerings included in the latest addition to the game are 12 new levels, including 2 secret areas, 6 new standard monsters, one fearsome new boss battle and five new weapons, one of which can only be accessed by playing the game’s ‘Hard’ difficulty mode. For those keeping score at home, that brings the game’s final tallies to the following figures:

• 41 maps
• 22 enemies
• 14 weapons

With the three episodes now complete,

• 41 maps
• 22 enemies
• 14 weapons

With all three episodes now in the books, Isometric Cube Engine now claims that Snorms contains up to 15 hours’ worth of gameplay, which doesn’t seem at all shabby for a £3.74 release. However, it’s also worth bearing in mind that the price will increase to $4.99 once the game’s Alpha phase draws to a close at an as-yet undisclosed date.

To find out more about Snorms, you can visit its official site, whilst the game remains available for purchase on Windows PC, Mac and Linux through Desura.