Four men, a sack-full of Boom, a spaceship full of mutant alien beasties and a high-energy chiptune track to keep you moving. What’s not to like? Pineapple Smash Crew – the first game by one-man outfit ‘Rich Make Game!’ (with help from chiptune musician Syphus) – has been one to keep an eye on since it’s debut at the Eurogamer Expo last year, where folks played and enjoyed it a lot. Now it’s out and available to buy from Steam, Desura and other stores – so, the big question: How does it hold up to long-term scrutiny?

The Japanese indie scene is finally making it’s presence known to the English-speaking world. Hot on the tail of Fortune Summoners, Nyu Media (who released Satazius late last year, with additional backing from Capcom) are gearing up to release a full trilogy of gothic-themed vertically scrolling shmups to all standard digital distribution platforms – Steam included, presumably – for $10. Keep an eye open for Tennen-Sozai’s eXceed collection in the coming weeks. Gameplay footage and some thoughts after the break.

Update: A playable demo of eXceed2nd is available now, with a demo of eXceed3rd ‘coming soon’.

The 2011 phenomenon that is Bundlemania continues unabated into the much more futuristic-sounding 2012. Sneaking in out of nowhere, Indie Royale is back with a ‘bonus’ bundle comprised entirely of Serious Sam games, including the whole third-party indie series, including Vlambeer’s Serious Sam: The Random Encounter and Mommy’s Best Games’ Serious Sam: Double D. As usual, the base price (otherwise pay-what-you-want) is going to creep up – now is the time to snap this lot up for cheap.

I’m aware of the fact that the indie and mainstream game markets are practically saturated with zombie titles right now, but I’ll be damned if I still don’t love ‘em. I guess for many of the more basic zombie games, the undead are just the enemy du jour. Judging by the proliferation of zombie games, though, we must really like tearing into them.

Prolific XBLIG developer Stegersaurus Games brings us some simple but effective platform gaming in the form of Lots of Guns, released 5th January and available for just 80 of those awkwardly denominated points on the Microsoft marketplace.

So, it seems Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw of Zero Punctuation fame/notoriety/loveliness is currently working on something entirely new, as officially announced on his personal blog. The project is to be called Poacher and will be a Metroidvania platformer, which is pretty intriguing given his past tendency towards old school adventure gaming.

I’ve always been a fan of the Alien Breed series. No, not the underwhelming recent update by Team 17, but the classic Amiga/PC shooter series. It was simple, intense fun – claustrophobic corridors, limited resources and a never-ending stream of horrible alien bug-monsters pursuing you. While Frozenbyte’s Shadowgrounds series recaptured the essence of these games somewhat, Outpost: Haven manages to recapture the atmosphere almost perfectly, while adding some new tweaks to the formula.

One of my very favorite games growing up was Contra, a side scrolling shooter for the NES. Super C was even better, I think, but Contra still held a very special place in my young gaming heart. Today, we see the release of 8-Bit Commando, a side scrolling shooter that’s very similar to Contra… and that’s a good thing.

Tis’ the season to be bundled. This one is a bit different, though – to celebrate this most icy and expensive of seasons, lovely game-making-type chap Rob Fearon has put all his games up as a single combined free download with the option (if you feel so inclined) to donate a bit of money afterwards, if you feel you’ve got a karmic balance to work out. If you like your shooters arena’y, bright and loud, you should probably grab it now.

How would you like to end the year by playing every FPS from the early 90s up to modern day, all at once? Fighting Half-Life 2 Metrocops with the magical weapons of Heretic, or showing the grunts of Quake who’s the boss with some classic Strife weaponry? I’m fairly sure this amazing multi-mashup mod violates every copyright ever written, but I just don’t care. It lets me blow up the enemies from Duke Nukem 3D with the Quake 2 BFG. Trailer and more after the break.