This week I look through some more great Ludum Dare games trying to bring some of my favorite games into the lime light getting them the love they deserve. This weeks selection is pretty awesome with some geometric struggles and some colourful capers.
As always clicking the title will take you to my original article whilst clicking the image will take you to the game, enjoy.
Minimalism is a great little puzzle shooter in which you must morph your shape into that of the locks across the level to try to make it to the end. Of course it is not just about getting the correct shapes you must battle your way through this maze of unrelenting shapes to reach your goal.
My Mini Castle is a rather cute little game that has you commanding this solitary penguin to throw his potatoes at incoming slimes. It’s a very simple idea but executed fantastically with these great graphics and fun mechanics.
For one reason or another I don’t get to feature many strategy games on here so I leapt at the option to feature Production Ville. In Production Ville you must setup a village that actually turns a profit. This is made all the more difficult by everything having an initial price along with an upkeep fee that can make you think twice before expanding to open a new mine.
Mono is a somewhat unique physics based puzzler that has you taking control of this rogue circle as you try to navigate the unforgiving levels in front of you. Although Mono only has six levels each adds some new mechanics creating an ever-changing experience that is just a great deal of fun.
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That about does it for this weeks round-up. I hope you have enjoyed playing some – if not all – of the games I have selected for you this week. Have a fantastic Sunday and see you tomorrow for an all 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!
Anomaly: Warzone Earth is a game that has sat in my Steam library for as long as I can remember. I think I picked it up in some indie bundle from a few years ago, but I honestly cannot remember. The only thing I knew about it was that it involved the tower defense genre, and because of that, I had very little interest in the game. My issue with tower defense titles is that I find them dull. Being stuck in an area and forced to watch as units scurry down a predetermined pathway is just incredibly boring for me. I prefer making on-the-fly decisions, being rewarded with bright explosions, and namely not being anchored to one location. To my amazement, Anomaly 2 delivers all of that.
How Anomaly 2 works is that it inverts the tower defense mechanic, so that it is the player’s job to get their convoy through the tower-filled gauntlet, and to the objective at the end. There are multiple pathways through every level, and players get to customize their convoy along the way. The enemies, just like a typical tower defense game, have plenty of towers at their disposal, and it takes an apt player to know what unit to use against what sort of tower. Knowing what to use when isn’t difficult thanks to a handy tactical map that players can pull up whenever they like. It shows not only the enemy positions but also allows players to alter their convoy’s route on-the-move. You, are the TomTom.
From what I’ve gathered with my five-ish hours within Anomaly 2, the human race is on the rebound after getting their butts kicked by some sort of robotic alien species that the humans have cleverly taken to calling “The Machines”. The last bastions of humanity have banded together in convoys to keep on the move, always running from their robotic pursuers. Hope for humanity remains in the mystery of Project Shockwave, a weapon which has the potential to wipe out the alien aggressors. The initial levels of Anomaly 2 involve seeking out the remaining scientists responsible for Project Shockwave and looking after their well being, to ensure their research does not go to waste.
While the story isn’t anything special, it really just serves as an excuse to fill a post-apocalyptic Earth with really badass robots. These machines are Decepticon-caliber cool. Unfortunately, they do nothing but try and kill you through the entire game. Fear not, for you have some pretty neat tools in your arsenal as well.
Players control a little commando future-soldier who they can order around the map. The soldier is not limited to the roads, so he is able to run anywhere the player wants him to. However, the enemies will target the soldier if he strays too far from the convoy, so it is generally a good idea to stick close to your little armada. The soldier is armed with some enhancements that play out to be crucial as the game progresses and the gauntlet becomes tougher to get through. One ability, for example, drops an area-based healing effect, that causes friendly units passing through to quickly regain their health. Another ability allows the soldier to drop an EMP bomb and disable enemy towers, knocking them offline until the convoy units engage them. While being a pretty straightforward mechanic, it really helps to keep the monotony of typical tower-defense games, at bay.
The convoy units themselves are not helpless, though. In fact, these units will do the majority of the work…as long as the player helps them stay alive. So far, every convoy unit has an alternative form. Take, “The Hound” for example: in its default form, it sports a big mini-gun that gradually powers up to full-speed, dealing massive amounts of continuous damage. This is great, if there is simply one enemy after another to take down. But, if there are two enemies across from one another, switching The Hound into its secondary form transforms the vehicle into a bipedal machine which sports a flamethrower on each arm, allowing it to roast two nearby enemies at once.
Some enemy towers are great at countering specific vehicle forms, so players have to literally stay ahead of the game by constantly checking the tactical map to know what is coming. Heading down a road unprepared will certainly get you killed.
Anomaly 2 is not your typical lazy tower defense game. It’s badass, action-packed, and you’ll only survive by the skin of your teeth. With four difficulty settings that can be switched at the start of every level, the game ensures that all types of players will be able to find a challenge within the game’s hostile, ice-covered, environments.
Anomaly 2 is set to be released May 15th, pre-ordering through the official website gets buyers some pretty neat bonuses.
When video games first came around we saw games that allowed you to battle the beasts of hell, race F1 cars, and explore far flung worlds. Basically if you could imagine it A game would come to cover you.
With all these wild fantastic ideas you would never expect developers to create games about working in retail (Cart Life) or other mundane ventures, however Lucas Pope has created the latest simulator to simulate the life of a border control agent during the 1980s.
Papers, Please is a dark insight into the life of a border control agent for an imaginary eastern block country during the cold war era. Papers, Please is equal parts mundane as it is brilliant as you set out to complete ever more complex and comprehensive checks on people moving over the border working to the time constraints set in place by the working day.
Papers, Please is such a dark and depressing insight that it gives this game such gravity it is impossible to resist the call of this mundane lifestyle.
Average play time – About an hour
Papers, Please is currently still in beta although if the current beta is anything to go by I am sure the finished game will be a dark and moving insight into humanities struggle to provide for their family.
Be sure to check out Papers, Please and find out just why the mundane is so magnificent. Papers, Please can be downloaded via Lucas Pope’s Site.
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!
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.
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!
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.
If you haven’t heard of Minecraft by now, and are on this website or the internet in general, I really don’t have any clever jokes or even insults that could capture my disbelief. It’s creator, Notch, is currently working on an even more ambitious project. It is a science fiction game called 0×10^c
The first real footage of 0×10^c to be released is a compilation of tests. These tests show off some pretty impressive features for the game when compared to it’s predecessor. It shows us it’s rope physics, dynamic lighting, and a computer. There are also bobble effects and material physics that seem to affect how easily a player can move on them. And that’s pretty much all there is to the video.
The game’s website features a full list of features, which you can read below.
Lots of engineering.
Fully working computer system.
Space battles against the AI or other players.
Abandoned ships full of loot.
Duct tape!
Seamlessly landing on planets.
Advanced economy system.
Random encounters.
Mining, trading, and looting.
Single and multi player connected via the multiverse.
Of those listed, I am most interested in the economy system. Tell us in the IGM forums what you look forward to most about 0×10^c!
Notch plans to use an alpha funding system similar to the one used with Minecraft, though multiplayer will likely be subscription based. The game is not yet ready for purchase, but by the looks of things it is coming along quite nicely.
If you haven’t already, you can follow Notch on Twitter or visit the game’s website here.
You know it’s not every day that I drool over a Kickstarter project, less so one that is just exiting the mechanical portion of their design but holy crap does Blackspacelook good. Pixelfoundry’s third-personRTS space mining game hybrid is a beauty to behold and that’s without the majority of their art assets in place. But, you don’t need me to tell you that since there is a full nine minute video about their Kickstarter, full of gameplay footage just below.
If what you saw there isn’t making you practically vibrate with excitement then you obviously have no soul. Let’s go down the checklist quickly for all the features this game has planned that you should be excited for. You can take control of a futuristic mining Lander and use it to make fully functional mining bases on several asteroids. Explore several fully destructible and manipulateable spherical environments that you can toy with at will from the safety of your Lander. Defend your bases in large scale battles against an unrelenting enemy that currently happens to only be cute black cubes. Last but certainly not least, Blackspace is looking to be one of those currently few games that is going to use the new Occulus Rift technology. I have to admit, the idea of piloting that Lander with the head-tracking functionality of Occulus is a pretty nifty trick, hopefully that same level of innovation will be featured more often with this new technology.
That seems like a pretty good list of reasons right there to go toss $15-$20 at Blackspace. Better yet, the overall goal for the project isn’t anywhere near as high as I figured it would be for a project of this scale, Pixelfoundry is asking only for $350,000 which is an incredibly reasonable price for a game of this quality. If you are looking for more details on the team, their budget goals, Kickstarter tiers and more just drop by their Kickstarter page and poke around.
As far as the history of side-scrolling RPG platformers go, I am not certain of any of the origins of such a combination. Perhaps Paper Mario counts as one of the first, but I do not want to make that statement certain as maybe Castlevania would count as one also. It is an interesting mix of genres and one which Kill Orbit from Jesse Norman attempts to perfect in his side-scrolling RPG Platformer.
Maybe side-scrolling is the wrong description, as the action in Kill Orbit centers around a 360 degree rotating center-axis. Players control a space captain who can jump, shoot, and manipulate the camera around a set axis. Since the game is in space, gravity only plays a minor hindrance to the main character’s ability to soar through the air. Floors become ceilings and walls become floors as the camera is manipulated. The gameplay video can better describe the action so check that out below.
As the game progresses players fight monsters, gain skills, and destroy powerful bosses. The main character space captain man can then be given a boost in power through obtaining skill orbs. The skill orbs help our hero become the best possible spinning platformer dude he can be.
You can learn more about Kill Orbit at the official website. There is also a nice demo for players to try before they buy. A single copy is priced at a reasonable $4.50 and will earn the buyer a discount of the same price on Jesse Norman’s upcoming title MechLore, an isometric robot-action RPG. For more info on Kill Orbit and MechLore and all your other indie game news keep it with Indiegamemag.com.
No matter how gratuitous Positech’s Gratuitous Space Battles may be, there are some out there who would appreciate a method of controlling the madness. So this may be a turn off for those who are adept at the game and big fans of its current state, the addition of new options in-game is never really a bad thing. In its new free update, Gratuit0us Space Battles offers gamers more of a sense of stability via mid-battle control.
Given that by its very nature, the strategy title employs a turn-based system, this may annoy those who expertly destroy their opponents online. Not to worry, though, as the update only comes in handy for single-player offline play. Specifically, “the player can select ships and issue movement and fire orders mid battle, and even edit the ‘standing’ orders for ships in the middle of an engagement.” The developers stress that it’s only an “optional” update and that it will be available from patch 1.60 onward. Those with Steam copies should be able to download the update shortly.
Though the game is three years old, it still has an active fan base and — thanks to recent involvement in bundles — its community has only grown as more and more gamers have come to try the space battle strategy title. It is of course still available for purchase on the developer’s website (or Steam or Impulse or GamersGate), but players old and new who want to get a sense of the update can check out the video below.
Two-dimensional space shoot-em-ups are filled with contradictions. The massiveness of space is confined to a small square that the participating ships are incapable of escaping. But a more important irony is that these games often make the endlessly boring aspect of space into an exciting and quick battle. Chroma Cell, a new title from Øyvind Byhring, continues this pattern of turning space upside down by making it seem more fun that it usually is.
Chroma Cell is an arcade shoot-em-up, comparing itself to other titles like Stardust HD or Geometry Wars. It features two gameplay modes, Classic and Event. In Classic the player must earn as many points as possible from killing enemies until eventually succumbing to the enemy horde, while in Event they must stay alive while fighting enemies for long as they can. The game is available through it’s site, and is currently “pending” on Steam Greenlight. Like any Greenlight games we have mentioned since it’s launch last week, those interested in the game are welcome to visit its Greenlight page and offer it up votes in hopes of seeing it on Steam some day.
The trailer for Chroma Cell, linked above, features a soundtrack from Per Byhring, and is downloadable for free at the game’s website, or the composer’s SoundCloud here.
The game uses a “Pay What You Want” system, where the user donates before or after downloading the game installer. This is a nice little way to demo your game, and I hope it works well. If you are interested in downloading – or even buying the game, you can do so at the developer’s website, here.
