GZStorm have made a bit of a reputation for themselves as class clowns, with productions such as Vidiot Game and the legendary Shut Up And Jam: Gaiden. You’d be excused for thinking their latest $1 outing on both XBLIG and PC to be another weird, wacky and whimsical exercise in demented comedy. Well, the weird part is right, but The 4th Wall isn’t wacky, or comedic. Not even close.

Not even the developer can firmly classify The 4th Wall, although they kinda settled on describing it an as an ‘Abstract Horror Puzzler’. The best description possible, I think. It’s a first-person, abstract, minimalist horror/puzzling and not much else. There’s no intro, no setup, no story, but I think that works to its advantage. I don’t think they could cram any plot into the ridiculously small XBLIG file-size anyway – the game weighs in at a hair over 2 megabytes.

You begin on a large, flat plane. A wall of solid white to your left, a hissing wall of static to your right, and what might be a wall of darkness in front of you. Above, dangles a strange white… cord of some description. Beyond that, you know nothing. You navigate in traditional first-person fashion, although your interaction with the environment is largely limited to moving around and bumping into things. At first, nothing happens, but you might spot something moving, or a faint cue in the patterns on the floor, and you follow it.

Everything changes. The environment is ripped away from you and replaced with something else. You find yourself floating in endless black space with gazing eyeballs looking back at you, and the only escape being a solid pool of light in the far distance, which you travel towards… and fall into, and down, back onto the ground, and it all goes black. And then you’re back again, but there’s an outline of a body on the floor, and what looks like blood dripping from the slightly reddened cord above you. And then you notice something else, just moving in the corner of your vision.

And that’s the essence of The 4th Wall. There’s plenty more things to find, and interesting ends for your character to meet, and a strange sense of progression as your successes – or deaths, even – seem to add up. There’s shades of LSD: Dream Emulator here, although with a more nightmarish edge to it. It’s an experience, really – not so much a game, and more an exercise in exploring a hostile, abstract environment. There’s some light puzzle elements, but it can largely be boiled down to trial and error and a dash of intuition.

Due to the ridiculously small file-size, we’re not dealing with graphical or audio nirvana here, but the clanking footstep sounds, the odd, scattered audio cues and the overpowering hiss of the static wall are all it really needs. While there’s a few familiar elements of other things here – LSD or Yume Nikki, perhaps – this is a unique experience, and that by itself is worthy of a look.

Being as weird, experimental and as cheap as it is, it doesn’t seem fair to give The 4th Wall a numerical score. What I can do is recommend you at least try out the demo for PC or 360, and if the strange, oppressive atmosphere catches your attention at all, throw a buck at the developers. The quick-developed prototype version of the The 4th Wall is also available to download from GZStorm’s site too, and completely free, but they highly recommend that you play the newer version first.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – XBLIG/PC Mini-Review – ‘The 4th Wall’

Freedom Planet by GalaxyTrail isn’t officially a Sonic fan-game. Sure, there’s Hedgehog-like characters and they occasionally run fast, but there’s no Sonic here, no Robotnik and no rings. There are health bars, melee attacks, and interesting character abilities like a Sparkster-esque chargable air-dash. Frequent boss battles, too, to the tune of several per level. There’s also a bouncy soundtrack and a lot of pretty intricate platforming. Not convinced? Here’s some gameplay footage:

The playable demo currently contains one stage (split into several acts), although it’s pretty long and has multiple boss encounters. As a full sixth of the final game, it’s definitely enough to give you an idea of how the game is shaping up. It definitely went and put the game on my radar. As an additional challenge, there’s a time-attack goal time of 6 minutes and 15 seconds to complete the level – if you can beat it, it unlocks a second character to play as.

From what I’ve played so far, I’m really rather pleased with how this is shaping up. It’s classic 16-bit platforming with nice chunky sprites, bounding along at 60fps solid with bright and colourful environments and an upbeat soundtrack. It sounds like the game is aiming to be a commercial release (hence the important ‘not actually a Sonic game’ deal). If they can keep up this level of quality for the rest of the levels, I reckon it might just be worth a few bucks. You can grab the demo for Windows PCs on the game’s IndieDB page here.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Like Sonic? You Should Try The ‘Freedom Planet’ Demo

Having been a gamer since the early 80s, I can often look at something and tell you in fairly clear terms that it’s X + Y, or has design elements clearly owing to Z. I can’t do that with Arcane Kids’ student project Zineth. I honestly haven’t played anything like this, and describing it is going to be tricky. Even better is that it’s free, and you can experience the indescribable oddness of it all for yourself.

The only point of reference I can reach for here is Jet Set Radio on the Dreamcast/XBox, and only then because it’s a game about skating that has rail-grinding and wall-riding. Beyond that similarity, this is something completely unique. The game drops you right into the thick of things without so much as a readme file or a manual, and the only guidance you’re given at first is that you might want to plug in an Xbox 360 controller – the default secondary gaming device, these days – for optimal control.

Fortunately there’s an in-game tutorial, although it begins with one of the most unique startup sequences ever – you need to configure your cellphone. The one in-game, that is. In addition to skating around an enormous technicolor abstract desert/obstacle course, you’re going to be fiddling with your phone, playing games on it, tweeting and reading emails pertaining to the scrawled, hand-drawn magazine that you(?) are producing. Or at least collating and delivering.

The whole thing feels like a postmodern dream. All the chaos and noise and lights of modern life crammed into one place, and wrapped around a gameplay framework emphasising movement, freedom and ridiculous speed. The skating itself is remarkably detailed, with there being gravity control (helpful for speed downhill), wall-riding that lets you leap higher and higher, and even some time manipulation.

You leave an impressively long trail behind you as you skate, and at any point you can rewind up to the furthest existing end-point of that line. You can even fast-forward back through it if you really want to pinpoint when you want to return to. A handy feature, given how ridiculously fast the game is and how easy it is to miss a jump. You can also help steer landings by holding the jump button in mid-air, locking you to a slight sideways strafe instead of pivoting.

But really, put half an hour into this, and none of that will even cross your mind. What rules the experience here is scale and speed. The environment is utterly massive and wildly imaginative. While there is an invisible boundary around the crazy abstract desert cityscape (well worth crossing just to see what happens), it requires some effort just to reach it.Impossible structures tower high into the sky, leaning in improbable directions, and the rolling dunes provide ample opportunity to build up speed. Whatever the standard unit of measure here, 450-500 X per Y is really, really fast.

There are missions, characters and goals here. But I’ll let you explore and find those on your own. Zineth was only intended as a proof of concept, and never really meant to be a full experience for all of us to download and enjoy. I’m so very glad that they went further than that, though. This is something delightfully different and clever, and well worth your time if you’ve got a gamepad to hand. You can grab Zineth for Windows & Mac PCs here.

Me? I’m going to be playing more of this. Right now.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Freeware Game Pick – ‘Zineth’

Probably my favourite shmup through the entire PS1 era was Einhander, by Square. A slower, more tactical take on the side-scrolling shooter, it had limited ammo, weapons that you could pivot around your ship, bosses that actually started out at full power and were weakened over time (instead of just getting angrier and shootier) and a really cool grungy sci-fi aesthetic. Heaven Variant by Zanrai Interactive looks to be the second coming of this classic shooter. Here’s the latest gameplay video, showing off the impressively large arsenal:

Now that’s some slick production values. Heaven Variant is built on the UDK engine, which is clearly a flexible piece of kit, given how well it seems to be handling side-scrolling shooting. The high production values are all the more surprising when you consider that Zanrai Interactive are a three-man team. One artist, one coder, one modeller. To think that a tiny studio using a freely available engine can rival the might of Square? Well, we’re back at ‘golden age of indie gaming’ again, aren’t we?

Maybe I’m just a sucker for wildly impractical sci-fi weaponry, but I dig any starfighter design that takes a sword to a laser and missile fight. There’s no real ETA on when this one will be out, but I’ll be keeping my ear to the ground in a most un-hawklike (they don’t do the ear-to-ground thing, do they?) way right up until it launches. You can follow the development on the official dev-blog here, too.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Heaven Variant’ Teaser Has Great Music, Tons Of Guns, All The Explosions

Now here’s a surprisingly nice piece of news. Stealthy demolition game Dynamite Jack has already been a reasonable success on PC and iPads, but is now making the jump to Apple’s smaller, even more handheld device. It’s not going to be a separate release, but rather a Universal upgrade to the existing iPad edition. While that’s nice news in of itself, here’s something nicer: For 48 hours after the launch of the updated build (Happening tomorrow, 9th of August), any existing owners will get a copy of the PC version completely free, both in DRM-free and Steam formats. Here’s the official blurb, straight from the developer’s mouth:

So here’s the special launch promotion: for 48 hours following the launch, I’m going to have a big link in the “Community Maps” section to a page where all iOS players can get a code to download Dynamite Jack DRM-Free for Win/Mac/Linux AND get a Steam code for Win/Mac.  I always get a handful of emails from people saying “I bought it on the iPad, can I get it on the PC free?”, so I figure, hey, this is a great way to sort that

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘Dynamite Jack’ Coming To iPhone Tomorrow – Buy On iOS, Get A PC Copy Free

We’ve finally hit the point where XBLIG games are jumping ship to PC before they’ve even come to XBLIG. They Bleed Pixels by Spooky Squid Games has long been one of the most eagerly awaited releases on Microsoft’s beleaguered indie development platform, but it looks like it’s going to be hitting our big desktop boxes before then. Check the spooooooooooky announcement trailer OF DEATH:

And here’s another (older) trailer, showing more of the gameplay and featuring a bunch of guest levels by other indie developers. Also, Ponycorns and an apology for the game running late.

Doubly amusing: The game has since missed the second release window they put forward in that trailer. Oops? Either way, the game looks great. A mixture of hardcore spike-dodging platforming and a vaguely Devil May Cry-esque combo system, all wrapped in slightly tongue-in-cheek Lovecraftian horror stylings. Just look at that little girl’s gleeful smile as she grows mystical blood-spikes instead of hands.

Looks like they’ve dropped the XBLIG release plans entirely, but given the pitiful sales figures on there for anything that isn’t Avatar Minecraft Zombiefest 2012 these days, I’m not surprised. No fixed date on this one (probably for the best), but with an official Steam Windows/PC release window worked out, their vague guesstimate of ‘soon’ should probably be accurate enough for now. Keep an eye on the official site and (of course) IGM for more details as they surface, writhing unfathomably from the blasphemous, tenebrous depths.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Eldritchly Gibbous Platformer ‘They Bleed Pixels’ Announced For Steam

This morning, I awoke to discover that there was no coffee left. Fortunately, Summerland by LionGames seems to have had a similar brain-stimulating effect. A bright, simple and happy puzzle-platformer made in Game Maker, it’s up to Wobbly Pink Thing/Fish duo Gum & Fitz to pick up all the gems (ALL OF THEM), kill all the enemies and foil the nefarious plans of the villainous Kincloud, who presumably wants to rain on people’s parades all day long.

Each level is effectively divided into two halves – above and below water. Gum (the pink wibbly thing) can jump one square high and defeat enemies by bouncing on them. Fitz (a fish) can do that most fishy of things: Swim. And never shall the two meet – it’s a star-crossed friendship for sure. The levels are packed full of buttons above and below water, though, which cause things to happen in the other side of the playfield, so you need to continually alternate control between the two characters to progress.

Cute, charming, bright and bouncy feel like the right words to describe the look and feel of this one. While all of the environmental tilesets (of which there are several) are all summer-themed, they’re broadly varied. There’s no ice levels here, but there are beach, town, ruins and cave stages, all with their own music and enemy sets. The sprites are clean and clear, and while they feel familiar, I’m fairly sure that everything on show here is 100% original content. The music is pure MIDI-ish summer jingles that, again, feel immediately familiar (Banjo Kazooie leapt to mind a couple of times), but likewise all seem to be new compositions. Or at least ones I’ve not heard before.

It’s a pretty low-pressure game. While you can die, the only penalty for doing so is missing out on the golden shell reward that you’re handed for completing a level without any mistakes. The deceased character immediately respawns and the level continues. Good, because it’s actually quite easy to die, especially if you’re not paying full attention to both sides of the screen. The platforming is simple and doesn’t require too much precision, but there’s still enough obstacles scattered around to make that golden completion target a tricky goal.

The level design is particularly nice. Like any decent puzzle game, it gradually layers new gameplay elements on. No real new abilities for the characters themselves, but an expanding range of block and enemy types. Early on you discover a cave-themed level where the underwater section is completely pitch black. It’s technically navigable by trial and error (mostly error – it’s lined with spikes), but the correct solution is to find the light switch in the top half and have Gum stand on it. Fitz also has to kill all the enemies in his half of the screen, but has to rely on luring them under harpoon traps and pressing the button to trigger them.

It’s not a huge game, it’s not massively deep, but it’s fun and characterful. Sometimes, all you need is a bit of (virtual) summer sun to help kick-start those reluctant brain-meats into gear. Summerland is free, and available for Windows PCs. You can download it now from the YoYo Games Sandbox, and it comes in both English and Italian flavours.  Handy for the person who just read all the way to the end of this article without knowing English.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Freeware Game Pick – ‘Summerland’

It seems that game journalists turning developer is a bit of a thing these days. Between indie blog guru Derek Yu making XBLA mega-hit Spelunky, the editor of PC Gamer UK producing Gunpoint and Rock, Paper, Shotgun editor Jim Rossignol developing Sir, You Are Being Hunted, it seems like it’s just getting easier and easier to sit down, assemble a team and put together something worth playing. With a history of picking apart other people’s games for a living, it might help direct development, too, but that’s an article for another time.

Sir, You Are Being Hunted isn’t Big Robot’s first game, but it’s their first major commercial release. Described as a very British take on the STALKER series, it puts you in the shoes of a squishy, regular human out on the rolling British moors. As the title suggests, you’re being hunted by respectable, gentlemanly killer robots and their equally deadly robot hounds. There’s even a few surly robot poachers lurking in the long grass, looking for an easy kill or a chance to stir up trouble with the groundskeepers. Your goal is simple – survival – but it doesn’t look like it’s going to be easy. Here’s our first look at it in action:

Being born and bred in rainy, fog-bound old Blighty, I can safely say that those are the most British environments I’ve ever seen a machine generate. They’ve absolutely nailed the look of it all – the hedgerows, the crumbling old masonry and the slightly-too-steep hills hidden beneath thick wild grass. The game is due sometime next year, although I wouldn’t be surprised to see some kind of semi-public early build before then.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Witness The Dawn of Tweedpunk In ‘Sir, You Are Being Hunted’s First Trailer

Let it never be said that Trendy Entertainment slack off on post-release support. Dungeon Defenders is probably the most patched game I know of, outside of Team Fortress 2. The wildly popular third-person hack n’ slash lootfest/tower-defense blend is revving up for another big DLC push, and this time it’s free. Well, at least at first.

Due for release this Wednesday (August 8th), the Jester DLC pack is set to add yet another playable character class to the game – the titular Jester – an unusually quirky sort who can wield any weapon type in the game as well as carrying a backup, making her a melee/ranged combat wild-card. Rather than placing towers, the Jester drops gifts of varying sizes onto the battlefield. Once opened, these gifts might contain anti-enemy area effects, buffs for teammates, or even budget-priced turrets which deploy on the spot. Her secondary ability to pick up and re-deploy towers is especially helpful in this latter case.

In addition to the Jester, there’s a new chess-themed map being added – the Etherian Gameland, pictured above – and completing it will likely unlock The Fool, an alternate male character model for the Jester class. On top of all this will be four new unique weapons. This bundle will be free for all existing players to grab for two weeks. After that, anyone who missed it will have to pay $4 or equivalent. As with all previous Dungeon Defenders DLC, it won’t split the community – you can play freely on maps that you don’t own, so long as they’re being hosted by a player online that does own them.

You can read more about the Jester pack on the Dungeon Defenders Wiki here. In addition to this DLC rolling out, we’ll be taking a second look at Dungeon Defenders later this week. The game is almost unrecognisable when compared to its humble UDK showcase and iOS origins, and can honestly be considered a very different game to when it was first released. We do live in the internet age, so it wouldn’t be fair to let old reviews still stand when the game has changed so much, would it?

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – A Smile Doesn’t Cost A Thing – Free ‘Dungeon Defenders’ Jester DLC Due August 8th

Slightly hazy, slightly dreamlike, In Ruins by Tom ‘NullPointer’ Betts is more a tech-demo than a game, although there’s some mild scavenger hunt elements to be enjoyed as you wander through a maze of crumbling platforms, plateaus, towers and hallways. Your ultimate goal, if it can be called as such, is to reach enough of the glowing white pillars scattered around the island landscape, boosting your ability to jump until you’re agile enough to reach the glowing tower at the centre of it all.

While not directly related to it, this also acts as a partial showcase of the terrain generation code being used in Big Robot’s upcoming Sir, You Are Being Hunted. A fine testament it is – the environments might be occasionally convoluted in their layout, but the mixture of crumbling old stonework, moss growing on ancient walls and scattered, lush greenery is heady stuff, and enjoyable to explore and see. There’s some relaxing music, and the accelerated day/night cycle doesn’t feel rushed, even though day and night pass in mere minutes.

Personally, I can’t help but  think that this would make a fantastic starting point for a modern remake of The Sentinel. The towers, the looming lighthouse, the trees and glowing platforms. It strikes me that it would be a wonderful environment to play that bizarre take on hide-and-seek in. Either way, it’s strong testament to the power and flexibility of Unity as a game engine. After completing a single tour of the island (ending upon reaching the central tower), you unlock the option to customize the world generation parameters, although the default settings work out nicely enough.

In Ruins is free to download for Windows & Mac PCs, and weighs in at about 100mb. Well worth the bandwidth if you can see any value in exploring a randomly generated world for the sake of exploration and spectacle itself.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – ‘In Ruins’ Is A Lovely Bit Of Procedurally Generated Sight-Seeing