Conceptually, ‘Asteroids’ relies on a basic idea; blow up objects which have the possibility of striking you. Eternal Blast approaches the idea and expounds upon the foundation laid. Developed by Furious Ant, Eternal Blast operates through flash player and requires no more than a mouse (and a functioning computer) to enjoy.

As soon as the play button is pressed instructions are given to the player on what mission needs to be executed: Search and destroy. Steer with the mouse. Thrust by pushing the mouse away from the ship. Destroy all asteroids. Kill all enemies by blowing up their ships. Pick up upgrades, health, and shields. Do not get hit. These exist as your guidelines to success; live by them, or die thwarting them. Eternal Blast asks little of a player beyond a quick finger and a hatred of large meteorites.

Added incentive for playing Eternal Blast are achievements, high score rankings, and variance. Achievements range from game progression achievements to high score achievements such as obtaining a massive 1,000,000 points. High score rankings offer both score and country. So you not only take on the country you live in, but the world in its entirety. Finally, there are a breadth of 15 different ships and numerous upgrades to ready your ship for enemies and asteroids alike. Players will continue battling until they can no longer hold off the ship destroying menaces, so numerous levels are met and conquered.

Eternal Blast is a homage to a classic game. No, this version does not require a nifty joystick or entire Atari console to run, but it offers more of an experience than ‘Asteroids’ ever could. With upgrades, enemy variety, and internet score boards, ‘Asteroids’ has never been so fast and brutal.

You can try Eternal Blast here. Good luck, and make your old Atari buddies proud by trouncing some amateurs with a high score.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Eternal Blast’- Space Revisited for the Retro Arcade Gamer

Well, here’s some truth in advertising. Or at least in titling. Uber Entertainment (developers of the Monday Night Combat series) have unveiled their next project, and it’s a revival of a fan-favourite. Planetary Annihilation is being pitched as a spiritual successor to classic RTS Total Annihilation – they’ve even got the original narrator! They’re adding their own twist to the proceedings, of course. Despite already being a large-scale RTS, it takes place on an interplanetary scale. Want to know what that means? Here’s their gameplay teaser and pitch video:

The footage there is sadly just a mock-up/target render, but it gives you a solid idea of the possibilities. Need to get some troops behind enemy lines? Set up a moon-base and drop troops from orbit. Think the planet is a lost cause? Rig an asteroid with rocket thrusters and smash it into the enemy base. The concept is very much a direct update and expansion of Total Annihilation, right down to the ‘ancient armies of robots fighting across space’ setting, but with a cleaner, more cartoony aesthetic.

A full pre-order will set you back a $20 pitch (or $15 if you move fast, apparently) for this kickstarter, and they’re already 1/9th of the way funded after just one day, so things are looking pretty good for this project. According to their full Kickstarter page, they’ve even got some of the original Total Annihilation crew on board, so there’s a good chance they’ll recapture the spirit of it all. I, for one, have my fingers crossed for this one. Ever since I played Fragile Allegiance back in the 90s, I’ve had a soft-spot for dropping asteroids on people.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Uber Entertainment Seek To Fund ‘Planetary Annihilation’ Via Kickstarter

I must be slipping – a visually creative game with quirky genre-blending gameplay, developed by a crew of ex-Demoscene folks responsible for the particularly stylish/trippy Masagin? How this one got by me, I have no idea. Project Ginshu by Duangle Games is billed as primarily a ‘defence game’, but with aspects of farming, puzzling and adventure, all apparently set in a strange universe known as the Doubt Field – home to the lost (and faintly familiar-sounding) treasure of Dora Do’El.

The game in the early phases of public alphafunding, and those that buy in early at the current price of $20 will get access to builds as and when they’re released. Much like Wolfire, the alphafunding trend-setters that they are, Duangle are making the whole process very open, with a full development blog and regular video updates showing off each new feature as it’s added. Here’s the latest, showing off the first generation of building-devouring critters, and some of the early defences you’ll use against them:

Looking pretty interesting so far, and navigating between the abstract planetoids looks to be a weirdly dizzying experience, but I guess that’s what they’re shooting for. My only reservation at this point is the price tag – while $20 (or more) is a fine price for a finished indie game, I’m just concerned that very few people are going to bite at that price, given that the game is still in Alpha. That aside, I’ll be keeping a beady eye on this one – it could be big.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Space Oddity – ‘Project Ginshu’ Has Building, Defending, Cosmic Weirdness

Father’s Day may have come and gone in a flash of ill-fitting socks and suspectly brewed port, but that doesn’t mean that the festivities are over for the papas of the octopus kingdom. That’s thanks to developers The DePaul Gaming Experience, who’ve been so kind as to offer the editing tools for its bizarre, yet hopelessly lovable 3D adventure game, OctoDad.

The so-called OctodadEditor is a freely downloadable editor that allows innovators with an acquired grasp of complex logical and algorithmic concepts to conjure up a theoretically enormous spate of deviations from the classic OctoDad experience. In essence, then, it’s your standard piece of editing software, but I really wanted to season it up with a few pretentiously chosen items of lexis. Don’t judge me.

One thing is for sure: Knitted Pixels‘ upcoming title, Defenders of the Last Colony, is looking pretty promising. It seems that the developers are keen genre-mashers, their latest game being part twin-stick shooter, part tower-defense strategy, part arcade clone and all cosmic light show. Games like these make me wish I’d signed up to Galaxy Defender Training when I was still young enough to do so. It excites me – all the guns, the machismo, the desperate heroics in the face of an incalculable and unstoppable evil… but I know, if I’m honest with myself, I’d probably have spent the whole time in the vastness of space worrying if the cat was still okay.

Playing through the beta, it’s clear that Knitted Pixels have a solid vision, one that only ever gets obscured by the phenomenal amount of silvery space missiles you get to fire out once you’ve spent enough time not dying. Cooperative play is to be a big part of the game, allowing up to four players to fight together on one solitary screen. This functions alongside several game types which will provide variety to the endless shooting: ‘Survivor’ will let you test your mettle against an onslaught of enemies, whilst ‘Invader’ and ‘Sidescroller’ modes provide some seriously old-school flavour. Alternatively, you can apparently fight it out between yourselves in ‘Versus’ if your sense of companionship deteriorates enough during the course of the game.

The campaign mode seems to be the main focus, though, and is shaping up to be heavily story-driven as you battle waves of enemies in defence of humankind’s last colony. The idea in each level is to give yourself long enough to recharge the mothership shields as you prepare to jump forward from planet to planet. Clearly, this doesn’t always work out. Those alien bastards are pretty relentless and, as of now, the difficulty curve is pretty wonky.

It’s clear the structure of play hasn’t been fully fleshed out yet – there’s no tutorial available or indication of how long the campaign might last – but the beta does give a fair impression of quite how frantic and rewarding play becomes when holding off the horde. And Defenders looks beautiful – it remains sharp and colourful despite the havoc playing out onscreen and those backgrounds… well, just ogle the images posted here.

So, the building blocks are in place and it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on Defenders of the Last Colony if the idea of co-op 2D blasting gives you chills. There’s plenty of polish left to add before a full release (on both PC and XBLIG), but the potential for mass destruction alone or with friends is palpable. No release date has yet been announced besides the inevitable-but-unhelpful ‘2012’ indication on the website. However, the beta is open for everyone to play and you can grab your copy from the Knitted Pixels website, here, to tide you over until that day arrives.

This is starting to become a bit of a habit now – the posting of information about Exodus. To be fair, it’s coming along well and despite being a 2D platformer of the metroidvania variety (there’s a few of them), it’s pretty unique looking. It’s starting to feel like we’re just repeating ourselves now, but just in case this is the first time you’ve heard about Exodus, let’s recap.

Think about Oddworld, the first games which featured Abe – yes, those ones. Exodus bears quite the resemblance, not so much in the look which is much more colorful, but the gameplay seems pretty similar at least. For instance, sneaking past enemies in an exaggerated way, jumping from platform to platform, and running away from little critters who give chase. Exodus certainly seems to be on the slightly more casual style though, death seems to be less of a common thing and, well, just look how friendly looking everything is.

In this latest and most lengthy gameplay footage, we’re introduced to another alien being called Ly’Sax, who seems to be female. Whether or not she has different abilities to the blue alien you also play as is not made clear. We do see her chuck some form of energy ball at a bird and double jump though. Other than that she sneaks, runs and ducks all the same.

Of course, all of this teasing from the developers is building up to the big alpha release on June 15th, when finally we’ll be able to play it for ourselves. Keep an eye on the official site for any more developments.

A game that lures you in by name alone, Heroic Sex Commando has you playing as a saxophone touting sexy bringer; as if the Pied Piper with less dodgy connotations perhaps. The game is pretty rough around the edges but there is a good reason for that. The game was created by Greg Felber who was issued a “Design Challenge” by Firaxis Games to create a game in a week from scratch with just a randomly generated name to go by.

The choice of random never lets anyone down – Heroic Sex Commander was what Greg ended up with. From this he has created a game which you make people sexier by pressing the space bar, thus making them tag along in your pursuit. To progress you’ll need to collect a certain number of people, which isn’t too hard at first, but then you have swap formations to traverse obstacles and avoid losing followers down open manhole covers.

There’s also a rhythm-based element which is supposed to make people even sexier but this is defunct. By far one of the most amusing parts is the game’s Barry-White-sexy voice over which gives you the instructions as you go along learning what to do. That’s all there is to the game really but the principal idea is fairly amusing at the very least. We’d love to see more games made from just a random game name.

You can play Heroic Sex Commando by downloading it from this page or following this link to play it in your browser. It’s free of course but it’s also unfinished.

Thanks IndieGames!

Those who have invested in Minion Master during this alphafunding period will be glad to hear that the digital board game has expanded with the June update. The biggest update concerns the brand new Deck Builder, which any connoisseur of card based tactics games will know is a vital component. This allows player to, quite simply, customise their own decks to play with. At the moment this feature is offline only but you’ll want to get familiar with it all as the online counterpart will be on its way in the next few months.

Also making their first appearance with this latest update are the Horror Creatures. You know the type – Zombie, Shaman, Wraith and a Zombie Brute. Developers BitFlip Games decided to add some words about the Horror Faction, who they say are meant to give a very different play style from the Fantasy Faction.

“Horror is meant to feel like a slow-creep-of-death,” said Delaney Gillilan, Lead Artist. “The Shaman, for example, will summon a new Zombie every round. And when a Zombie dies it has a chance to immediately respawn in place. The Wraith, on the other hand, grows stronger each round it lives. When playing against a Horror themed deck, you better try and destroy your opponent quickly.”

BitFlip were also very pleased to announce that their active community has doubled during the month of May and those that are there are staying, thus making the game a hub for discussion and for providing valuable feedback. You can join in if you so wish, Minion Master is available for $15 from the official website.

The game is heavily inspired by physical card and board games and uses a hex-based playing field. Those who pre-order get instant access to alpha and beta builds, and upcoming features include 6 player co-op and versus multiplayer, a level editor, and a constantly expanding universe of Minions to control.

You can’t say it wasn’t coming. As our recent sleuthing revealed, a curious little entity called the Indie Space Bundle was waiting in the wings of the Steam Registry to be unleashed into the gaming stratosphere. And now, just a day later, it’s arrived.

As the Steam Registry update suggested, the bundle is comprised of the following intergalactic sci-fi titles:

Typically, E3 is a time for those big, gut-busting game developers to announce and dish details on the latest entry into whatever franchise they’re touting. Not for us though, our focus is still firmly on indie games as you should hope and so we’re pinpointing the titles being showcased at the IndieCade booth, all 20 of them. You’ll hopefully hear more great things about them and many others like them as the week goes by, but for now, we’re going to give you a quick overview of these games because why not?

As always, the games picked to be shown at the IndieCade booth at E3 are intended to showcase the breadth of indie games as well as how exciting they are. They are selected from the first round of submissions for the IndieCade 2012 Festival which will take place in October. These aren’t necessarily nominees for the festival, but there’s probably a strong possibility.

Analogue: A Hate Story

Controversial should be the middle name of Christine Love. Her latest visual novel delight, Analogue: A Hate Story, has drawn a fair amount of it due to its portrayal of transhumanism, traditional marriage, loneliness and cosplay. Let that not fool you though, those with some sense and an open mind will highly appreciate the game’s intricate and ultimately gloomy plot, though it being outlined as is about to happen will only leave confusion. The game is set in the far future and involves the player in direct communication with two AI characters -Hyun-ae and Mute – with whom they are supposed to access the logs of a generation ship that fell out of contact with Earth after it left to form a space colony.

The Binding Of Isaac

If this game should need any introduction then consider us highly surprised. Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl’s arcade-shooter come roguelike has proven very popular for its high replayability. Seriously – it dishes it out by the dump truck sized load it so capably can. Another game noted for its controversy, which ended up making Nintendo shy away from it, The Binding Of Isaac follows Isaac as he battles his way through the basements of his house after narrowly escaping the death claws of his crazed mother. You shoot enemies with tears, but that will soon change if the random generations grants you some decent power ups along your way through the filth and muck.

Coalesce

Now it’s time to relax, chill out for a second. Better. Living up to its name quite amicably, Coalesce is a game for the iPad in which players draw curves and lines across the screen in order to connect atoms of a similar color together. The intention is to provide a meditative experience, so alongside this simple gameplay you should expect soft vibes for your ears. For those with mild OCD, you will love this game. In connecting the atoms together you’ll form molecules, and thus bringing order back to the state of things (we’re all about science).

Dark Dot

Originally born as a means to show off Flocking Animation and Modelling Environment (FAME), Dark Dot has evolved as a gameplay experience by getting…well, cuter. You control a flock of Darklets with your touchscreen; mainly avoiding dangers and shooting anything that gets in the way. As things escalate, you’ll need to find new ways to defend your flock. Luckily this will be manageable with a bunch of powers which will have to charged to use. Dark Dot is essentially a standard action shooter with some cool new tech behind it.

Dawn Of Cimmeria

Again with the drawing! This time in a game that fits neatly into the tower defence genre. But don’t scuttle off – there’s some pretty neat stuff going on here. Dawn Of Cimmeria actually has the player drawing “a web of living trees” in order to defend their base. How do trees help with any defending apart from getting in the way? Well, they can smash, shoot, and crush enemies that’s how. On top of this fairly interesting mechanic, the game is realized in what can only be described as a painting. The art style is bold and has a fluid feel to it, really emphasizing the various roots and branches of the trees in particular.

The Fourth Wall

You may have already played this one. The Fourth Wall was released for free a couple of months ago and to quite a good reception. The reason being that, although it’s a puzzle platformer, there’s some pretty interesting gameplay going on here. Indeed, the game is quite the challenge and the level design, due to its main mechanic, is actually rather good. The premise of The Fourth Wall is that you are a wizard who can manipulate the boundaries of this world. In other words, the game exploits screen wrapping to it fullest potential. If you’re sitting there with a question mark over your head – screen wrapping is when an avatar goes through one side of the screen and emerges from the other.

Hokra

Designed with the gallery space in mind, Hokra is a minimalist 2v2 sports game. There’s nothing complex in the game’s mechanics, visuals or audio and it is due to this that magic can happen. When rules are placed upon people in games, it restricts things and for a reason. Those who designed Hokra wanted to bring the player into this rule making process, hence the game’s minimalism. The basic idea of the game is to score goals as with most sport games. How you go about doing that can be experimented during play, with the idea of somebody “cheating” being entirely based on the meta-rules subconsciously applied by the group of players. It’s an effort to readjust the significance of local multiplayer.

Johann Sebastian Joust!

Similar to Hokra, J.S. Joust is minimalist to the point of having no traditional screen with which to engage. This is a public performance game that uses the PlayStation Move controller and its build in accelerometer. As many players can play as there are controllers available and all they need is a bit of space and a Mac laptop. Once the initiations are over, players must keep their controllers steady, otherwise their light will go out and they too will be out of the game. The sensitivity of the controllers is determined by the tempo of the music too. The genius thing, once again due to the minimalism, is that players can negotiate the rules for themselves. Things are easier with the controller in your pocket for example – no one said you can’t do that.

Languish

This is something quite different, something that strokes our philosophical beards. And you know what? We like it. Languish claims to be a flight sim, but with words and ideas. Really, it’s just about flying around inside your mind (not literally but maybe). You’ll encounter a number of spheres which represent ideas, shooting out words to reflect themselves. Your job is to collect them to create sentences of meaning. If you collect an idea, you’ll need to make it stronger so that it can fight the other ones and come out the winner. Metaphors abound!

The Moonlighters

There’s two core elements to whoop and cheer about regarding The Moonlighters. Firstly is its blend of 1950s Hollywood glam and 1990s JRPG high fantasy. This results in a rather slick action isometric RPG experience. Secondly is the game’s adaptive narrative, and we’re talking above and beyond anything Bastion did here. This is a game that will actually watch what you’re doing via the gameplay and literally adapt what happens around what you decide to do. We’re assured that even though this may sound like something other games have done, the developers have taken it to a new level. On top of this rather promising idea, the game carries the excitement of a heist with it – several of them in fact. You’ll need to select a team, kit them out and make a plan in each heist you attempt.

A Mother’s Inferno

Psychedelia we meet again. And you’re also quite disturbing this time. You may have played A Mother’s Inferno previously, giving that it’s available to download for free. If not, know that it is rather peculiar and definitely worth giving a go. The idea is that you’re a mother going through one of the most hellish scenarios known to motherly kind – the loss of her son. Not by means of death though, he’s just missing on this train and you need to travel through the carts to find him. Expect some crazy stuff to happen on the way.

Pickpocket Junction

Not many games can get away with encouraging criminal activity (at least according to unscrupulous media), but Pickpocket Junction takes it one step further by physically simulating the act of stealing from a person’s pocket. Pitched as part memory, part math, part role-play; the idea of the game is to pick the pockets of other pick pocketers (we’re doing tongue twisters now?) in order to obtain the most valuable loot. The problem is that you don’t know what the pockets contain, unless you have a good memory or strike it lucky. It seems like a good excuse to hone those criminal skills that gamers are so efficient in apparently. That’s right isn’t it, mainstream media?

Prom Week

For many, mostly people with dreams and love in their life, prom week back in high school is a marvellous memory and not a time of disappointment and loneliness. In no way does that reflect our experience, ahem. Given that most likely fact, revisiting said week to organize your love life and other such trivial things should be very inviting. That’s what Prom Week is mostly about. It’s a social interacting sim really, enticing you to feel responsibility and pressures as you shape decisions around the big day.

Scale

What happens when the normally inflexible scale of objects in a world becomes malleable? What concepts emerge? Which concepts fall away? Those are the questions that drive Scale. It’s a first person game that allows the player to change the scale of the objects around them. Coming from the experimental and highly intelligent mind of Steve Swink, Scale has been in development for a couple of years now but nothing much is known about it. Great things are expected though, and that is enough for some. Plus that concept image is very eye catching and we like that.

Songlines

An increasing amount of games in this modern time are allowing players to be creative, whether they know it or not. Indie games, especially, are tapping into this new and exciting capability. One of which is Songlines which caters to player creativity twofold. It’s also one of the few games using the Kinect that actually seems worth a damn. The player flies over a landscape and using gestures they can shape it to their liking. Alongside this, the game’s music will be generated according to the player’s actions, thus the player creates music and a terrain at the same time.

Spelltower

We know how much you hate walls of text but Spelltower features them everywhere. This will never work! Oh wait, yes it will – because it’s a smart little thing and it knows it. There are several different modes to try out in Spelltower but the basic principal is the same. You are given a bunch of letters and with them you have to make words in order to build a score, beat the clock or avoid them piling up to the top of the screen. That’s all there is to it in all honesty – Scrabble with some nice music and none of that awkward family get together nonsense to accompany it. Okay it’s a bit more than that and it’s worth giving a go, it might surprise you.

Tickleplane

With a name like Tickleplane, you can’t go wrong. Wait a minute, we know this – it’s ASDFPLANE! Now renamed to ensure the giggle meter is used, Tickleplane is a great party game, providing you have enough keyboards. Each player has a keyboard and with it they have to “tickle” (or smash) the buttons on it, all of them, to drive their plane. The space bar is used to shoot your enemies and if you start going down in a blazing glory then you need to type ‘repair’ before the big crash. Very funny and should be played by more people.

A Valley Without Wind

Another game that shouldn’t really need an introduction. Arcen Games’ A Valley Without Wind has taken a couple of different forms during development but the one that has emerged from it all is a procedurally generated action adventure that borrows tropes from all over the place and merges them. There’s fully integrated co-op play to so that you and some mates can join forces and take on the forces of evil if you so please. Most distinct is the game’s water color-like art style which has proven divisive. Interesting nonetheless.

Who Took The Apple?

Was it you? Wasn’t us! Who Took The Apple? is a 4 player card game that – get this – is played “backwards in time”. This isn’t a literal time warping, but when compared to the likes of Space Alert and Robo Rally, this is most certainly playing the game backwards. Apparently using a bucket, four beers and a set of cards; players have to use strategic thinking and a focused team communication to compete for the apple.

ZOMBIEPOX

It’s a good job that the zombie disease doesn’t spread as easily as chicken pox, otherwise we’d practically all be zombies by now. ZOMBIEPOX is said to be a 1-4 player game in which the task is to cure or vaccinate the towsfolk that are under their protection from the zombie outbreak. While protecting them from the disease is the aim, it’s not made clear as to whether anything more is required on your part, because you know – zombies will eat and kill you anyway. Though, given that ZOMBIEPOX was originally conceived as game of disease control to stop the spread of misinformation concerning the effects of vaccination, that might not be likely.