Always beware the quiet ones. Spanish freeware guru Locomalito is definitely one to keep a shifty eye on from now on, as it seems that he’s been silently toiling away at a new game. Or, rather, a remake. Endless Forms Most Beautiful was a semi-procedurally-generated arcade maze game originally released earlier this year, but for a platform that isn’t exactly in vogue nowadays; the ZX Spectrum. While it’s good to see such archaic systems still getting some indie love, it doesn’t exactly make the game wildly accessible for most modern gamers. Enter this Windows remake, with an appropriately retro FM synth soundtrack by long-term co-conspirator Gryzor87.

Endless Forms Most Beautiful is a fairly simple arcade score-attack maze game. Playing solo, cooperative or competitively, two representatives from different galactic tribes hop through weird dimensions in search of Imps – strange little critters found across all realities which, according to the manual, are delicious when dipped in chocolate. Whether you’re planning on eating them or not, they’re worth points, and you have to collect all of them to end each level. Controls are super-minimal here, with just the arrow keys or WSAD used for players 1 & 2 respectively. There’s no jumping, but you warp between floors so long as there’s ‘thin’ floor below or a ‘thick’ one above.

The other interesting quirk is that the playfield wraps round, but not in the way you might expect. Run off the left side of the screen and you’ll appear on the right, but one floor higher. Move off the right side and you’ll descend a level, so it takes a little more attention than you’d think to dodge all the enemies. It helps if you think of the level as one big corkscrew spiral. There’s also various surprises to mix things up. Sometimes when you grab an Imp, it’ll drop a bomb, which’ll clear out all enemies on that level, but also kill you if you’re there when it goes off. There’s also a range of powerups to help speed things along.

The original Spectrum version asks you what your favourite four-letter word is at the start. As well as being an excuse to write rude words, this is used as a seed code to generate the strange and unique Imps that you’re trying to gather, and also the levels themselves. The PC version sadly skips this clever step, and seems to just pick randomly by itself. While there’s a linear progression of difficulty through 15 stages, the layout changes slightly based on what the wheel of fate landed on. It’s not a huge amount of randomization, but it helps keep the game feeling fresh if you’re playing it repeatedly. There’s also a vein of rather silly British humour running through the whole thing, especially visible in the rather daft (and also randomly generated) information on each kind of Imp.

It’s all good, clean fun, and with decent replay value alone or with a friend, so it gets my full recommendation. With EFMB complete and released, Locomalito announces that he’s returning to work on his Ghosts n’ Goblins-esque Maldita Castilla. You can find an early demo of the game on the official page, and it’s well worth a play if you ever enjoyed the old Capcom platformer series. Oh, and you can also download the original Speccy version of EFMB and an emulator to play it on over at the bottom of this rather nifty RGCD review, if you want to see how it played on the original platform. Personally, I’ll take the remake any day of the week.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Freeware Pick – ‘Endless Forms Most Beautiful’

Locomalito (creator of 8-Bit Killer, Hydorah and others) releasing a new game is always a good reason to sit up, pay attention and play some videogames. Today marks the launch of his latest project, They Came From Verminest, a Galaga-inspired love letter to early 80s arcade games and cheesy 50s sci-fi. Pop on those red/blue 3D glasses, blast off and come zap some bugs. After the break, the delightfully low-fi, live-action trailer and some thoughts on the game.

Officially a spinoff from Hydorah (his excellent Gradius-inspired shmup), you’re on another mission into space, and into the depths of the bug-filled planet Verminest. This one is shorter and simpler stuff, of course. A fond reminder of just how simple videogames can be, there’s not much to this beyond dodging, shooting and grabbing the occasional powerup. Don’t mistake ‘simple’ for ‘easy’ though. With very limited lives and no continues, it’ll take most people a fair few tries to get to the end.

The graphics are resolutely monochrome here, simple as can be. There’s two visual filter modes to polish things up a little, though. The first is a scratchy 50s cinema effect, just for laughs, and the second is downright nifty if you’ve got an old pair of red/blue 3D glasses to hand. You too can experience pixellated SCIENCE-FICTION TERROR in the THIRD DIMENSION with the aid of ADVANCED DUOCHROMATIC POLARIZATION! Fun stuff, if you’ve got some spare. There’s even an appropriately tinny FM music synth used, just like Capcom’s old arcade cabinets.

It’s an expertly balanced, tough and rewarding little game. The level design mixes things up a little beyond the original Galaga format, and it’s about 45 minutes long if you’re going for the end. It’s also very unapologetic about beating you right back to the start if you don’t make muster. If you have some fond memories of the early decades of gaming, or just want something a little tough and retro, this is an essential download.

[They Came From Verminest]

The King is Dead! Long Live the King?

After approximately five million years in development, Duke Nukem Forever has finally surfaced, bubbling up from the earths core with a great and undignified noise, only to be greeted by disappointed fans and scathing critique. Supposedly a throwback to the early days of PC shooters, it led a great many reviewers to question whether there was any appeal to be found in the old-school in the first place.

The answer? Yes! The long answer? Very Yes. And the jumbo foot-long answer with all the toppings? Of course they were good, and they still are. In fact, here’s 8 free modern-and-updated games to get your teeth into right now:

8-Bit Killer

Starting low down in the evolutionary chain, DIYGamer favorite and indie prodigy Locomalito presents 8-Bit Killer. A rock solid attempt at boiling the FPS down to its purest elements, possibly rendering it more simplistic than even Wolfenstein 3D. Chunky NES style aesthetics and a catchy soundtrack add to a remarkably well tuned and polished shooty arcade romp in a post-apocalyptic setting packed to the gills with evil shirtless men with an affectation for viking helmets.

FreeDoom

With the rise of modernized Doom engines such as gZDoom making it possible to enjoy the seminal iD classic with all the perks modern computing can offer, it was only a matter of time until a project like this came about. Don’t have Doom 2? Well, FreeDoom is officially a ‘placeholder’ data file, containing copyright-free alternatives to every enemy sprite, weapon, sound and level that Doom 2 offered. The upshot of this is that, over years of development, it now stands as a full standalone game in its own right, playable in any of the standard Doom engines available.

And the icing on the cake? It’s fully compatible with the vast majority of Doom levels and mods, of which there are an absolutely incalculable number. Each day, more maps, mods and engine variants are released. Even if some of the sprites and textures from Freedoom are mismatched with some user-made content, there’s still hundreds if not thousands of hours of play to be found here.

And on the subject of Doom, here’s four notable releases all running on Doom-variant engines:
Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl / Harmony / Chex Quest / Mega Man: 8-Bit Deathmatch (V2.0)

The Doom engine keeps on trucking. Here’s another four games based on the old iD software, each offering a unique experience. Action Doom 2 barely even classifies as an FPS, but is worthy of mention here – it’s a Streets of Rage style brawler with a branching, Sin City-esque storyline, and shows that there’s life in the old dog beyond shooting demons on Mars. There’s just enough gunplay to sneak it into this roundup, although expect to be solving most disputes with your bare hands, rather than weaponry.

Harmony is a recent freeware offering, notable for its surreal claymation art-style, and gameplay flow inspired equally by both Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. The story revolves around a ruined world divided – the rampaging mutant menfolk of Earth trying to stamp out the last female resistance. You play as Harmony, a post-apocalyptic amazon on a rescue mission deep inside enemy territory. Plenty of levels, guns and mutants to shoot are on offer here.

Chex Quest is a title that fills many with notalgia and longing for breakfast-time adventuring. A kid-friendly, Doom-based FPS bundled in with packs of sugary cereal back in the 90s in America, it was planned as a trilogy of episodes, but never completed. Recently, the creator of the series went back and decided to finish the project once and for all, and it’s available as an all-in-one package running on a modern engine. All the classic retro FPS style of Doom, but with none of the blood-splattered grimdark demon-slaughter that made it so controversial at the time.

Previously featured on DIYGamer, Mega Man: 8-Bit Deathmatch is a fascinating hybrid. Hyper-fast arena deathmatch with level design, weapons and characters straight from the classic (and now controversially abandoned) Capcom flagship series. Recently updated with another pile of laser-spewing robot content, it now includes levels, weapons and robot masters from Mega Man 7, as well as a new boss level in the singleplayer campaign mode.

Aleph One – Marathon Trilogy

It would seem almost churlish to give so much love to Doom without any mention of its stalwart Mac rival. Apple owners weren’t starved for FPS action either, and before the release of Halo (and if certain grumpy folks are to be believed, the downfall of the FPS genre), Bungie released the Marathon trilogy, a remarkably plot-heavy series of shooters which cast you as an unlucky cyborg soldier, pressed unwillingly into the service of a series of sentient and incredibly powerful AI constructs.

With Bungie’s blessing, the full game data for all three games in the series has been released for free, and the Aleph One engine lets you play them on Mac, Windows and Linux, with or without a range of graphical enhancements and improvements. To this day, a small but dedicated mapping-and-modding scene strives to improve, expand and experiment on these games, too. There’s a lot of meat on them old bones.

WGRealms 2: Siege Breaker

Last, but absolutely not least, is a relatively recent release. WGRealms 2 is a must-have for anyone who likes classic retro FPS gameplay. Starring Duke Nukem himself (and running off a modern variant of the Duke 3D engine), the gameplay transplants him from his familiar urban and sci-fi haunts to a more fantastical, magical realm full of enemies from other classic shooters of his era, and a fair few new variants to tussle with. Environments borrow from Quake and Hexen, while enemies from Doom and Heretic get a fair amount of screen-time. The gameplay, though, is unmistakably Duke at heart, with freedom of movement almost unmatched, allowing you to bounce, dash and dance your way around foes while pummeling them with a hefty arsenal of downright overpowered weapons.

Devastatingly powerful as your weapons are (the cluster-grenade pipebombs are capable of laying waste to dozens of enemies in a single shot, which is satisfying beyond words), this is no walk in the park. Unless you truly consider yourself an FPS master, the lowest two difficulty settings are advisable for a first play-through. The evolution of this game has been a little frankenstein-ish, and the four ‘episodes’ on offer don’t string together in any appreciable order. The first two episodes each offer a linear chain of regular levels, while the latter two episodes are each single extended endurance missions, offering 3-5 regular levels worth of content in a single unbroken rampage. The whole thing feels like a ‘Greatest FPS hits of the 90s’ compilation, and that’s exactly why you should be playing it.

And to send you off with a bang, below is a full video playthrough of the final level of WGRealms 2 – Utter Chaos – a title which it lives up to quite admirably, showcasing the kind of manic arcade pacing and wild level design that you just don’t see in modern commercial shooters. I’m fairly sure there are more enemies and boss encounters in that single level than all of Duke Forever combined. Such is the power and the glory of the 90s FPS. Enjoy, and keep on kickin’ it old-school.

One-man Spanish indie powerhouse Locomalito (and much credit to his musical compatriot, Gryzor87) has come up trumps once more. Today marks the release of his fourth game, Viriax. Like his previous three titles, it is two things above all else: Brilliant and free.

Billed as ‘Arcade medical terror’, you control an adorable, murderous little 8-bit viral creature, on a mission to not only demolish every single major organ inside the human you reside in, but (presumably as a final act of microscopic spite) also destroy the implanted nanomachine factory that has been generating all the obstacles between you and the delicious, juicy core cells of each organ.

Over the course of the game, you’ll traverse six regions of the body, each consisting of 80 vertically stacked and randomly generated ‘floors’ worth of action (every 20th containing a boss). It’s an incredibly simple and accessible game, played entirely using the arrow keys. Up makes you jump, and repeated taps make you ‘swim’ upwards. The left and right keys maneuver you, and the down arrow causes you to pounce on whatever lies directly below you, dealing damage, and cracking open glowing cells in order to reap bonus points or temporary powerups.

Simple, but not easy. Every action beyond moving left and right or the initial jump from a solid platform will drain your energy bar. Every attack, every stroke of swimming will take a chunk out of it, and more often than not, you’ll have to attack or swim to progress. So along the way, you need to collect a steady stream of red blood-cells to restore your health. Some dropped by enemies, others occurring naturally, they’re always in short supply. You really need to pick and choose your fights. Do you leave an enemy alone and keep swimming, or risk attacking them in the hope that they contain more health? It’s very easy to back yourself into a corner and doom your little red virus-monster to an early disintegration.

It’s intense and very stressful. You’ve got no time-pressure working against you, but every action you take beyond the very most basic is a drain on your limited resources, and it forces you to really think hard and fast, as the quick-and-easy route of just swimming upwards at full speed is one of the fastest ways to die. I could spend a lot longer gushing about just how tightly designed this is, just how cleverly the powerups trick you into pushing too hard and making mistakes, and how scoring high requires a vastly different playstyle compared to mere survival, but I won’t. It’d be fairly redundant, considering that the game is free, under 3mb, and available to download now.

Grab it, and get down with the sickness.

Full Disclosure: Locomalito was kind enough to send me several early test builds of this game, and I offered a little help with tightening up translations and balance.

Described as a straightforward, difficult arcade/platform game, with Shinobi, Megaman, Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins and Castlevania III cited as references during development; the title will bring an NES style graphics look and feel, chip tunes soundtrack, and what Loco calls a “clear playability.”

“It’s the kind of game I love to play now, as I don’t have time to play more than 30 or 40 minutes a day” he states. No media for the game yet so of course no release date either, ah shucks. We’ll be waiting for more, check out the full interview to further your education on this quirky developer and his delightful titles.

The title, as the dev describes, is a “game designed to hit straight to the heart of classic shoot em up players, who still love clean designs and challenging adventures.”

The demo is available now through the game’s official site, though no word yet on when we can expect a full release. Give it a try and tell me it’s not faithful to the retro stylings of yore.