You may be noticing some changes at Game Tunnel lately, and that the monthly round-up looks a bit different. Don't be alarmed! Game Tunnel is under new management and while we have some changes planned, the quality coverage of off the beaten path games will continue unmolested. So we are proud to present our first February Independent Video Game round-up as the new owners of Game Tunnel. Normally we'd have 10 games, but hey - when taking on a site like this sometimes things are a little slower at first. Be prepared for next month's coverage of the Game Developer's Conference 2009!

Crayon Physics Deluxe

Games that require something more than shooting apart everything in front of you have recently taken a backseat to their more brainless cousins. In Crayon Physics, the game encourages you to figure out your own solutions to problems, whatever way you choose.

The objectives of the levels in Crayon Physics are relatively simple: get the red ball to the star. The way you clear each level, though, is up to you. You draw whatever is necessary to get the ball from point A to point B, whether it’s just propelling it forward or acting as a bridge. But, everything you draw is bound by the laws of physics, namely gravity. This encourages thoughtful gameplay, and requires quite a bit of experimentation.

The concept is pulled off beautifully, and is an absolute blast to play. Everything is there as an opportunity for the player. As the game states, it’s not about finding the ‘best’ solution; it’s about finding the most awesome one.

Read the full review...

Emerald City Confidential

Point-and-click adventures are near extinction, and games like Emerald City Confidential are a last light of hope for the genre.

The setting is Oz (from the books/movie), but it’s in the future and things are a bit darker. It’s the Emerald City set in a 1940’s film noir, and there’s shady business going down in the city’s underbelly. Enter Petra, a private eye who’s given what appears to be a typical missing-person case. It’s not that simple, however, and she’s soon thrown into the dark criminal web of Oz.

The narrative is wonderfully written, the characters are unique, and the backgrounds are all hand-drawn and gorgeous. There’s plenty of exploring and information gathering, and the pacing makes progressing through the plot via talking/trial-and-error exciting.

Read the full review...

Eternal Eden

Hailing from developer Blossomsoft, Eternal Eden is a modern, yet decidedly old-school RPG that is similar to the kingpins of the genre, but with a few twists that set it apart.

The story is of typical RPG nature, where the heroes are burdened with the task to save the world from a great evil. They journey to many lands, meet new comrades and enemies, there’s magic and swordplay, so on and so forth. There are some twists in there, but it stays mostly within that formula. Nothing majorly different, but don’t overlook it because it doesn’t blaze new territory: it has plenty to offer.

Nice (old-school) 2D graphics and traditional, spot-on gameplay are the draws here. Nostalgia will grab fans of the classics, but new-school gamers will be satisfied as well. Everything Eternal Eden does, while not necessarily unique, is polished and well-planned.

Read the full review...

Ragdoll Cannon

Ragdoll Cannon is a quirky (and infectious) game created by the team JV-CROW. Your goal is to get the ragdolls to the objective: a box, a ball, a brick, or something else labeled “here.” You hurl the little floppy men around the stage by shooting them out of the stationary cannon at the bottom left of the screen, human cannonball style. Physics play a large role in getting your cannon fodder to their goal, the likes of whom you’ll use to bash through the environment. I’m not ashamed to admit that I found sick pleasure in firing the ragdolls at whatever I could, watching the bodies pile up, and chuckling as their interactive environment fall into chaos, even if I ended up having to restart the level.

Be careful where you fire, though—oftentimes, the obstacles will work against you and you’ll shoot your goal (which isn’t tied down) down a bottomless pit or into oblivion somewhere offscreen, which means stages will usually take more than one go. Sometimes, the goal is hidden—as in, you have to guess where it is, or where a portal that will teleport the ragman to its location. And this can feel like a cop-out, kind of like they just wanted to screw with your head. The game is a pick-up and play game, and it has significant replay value (beat your score—which becomes an obsession), all on top of the fact that there are tons of levels: 170, to be exact.

Zatikon

If you're a big fan of tile-based strategy games without any realtime twitchiness to get in the way, then you'll want to check out Zatikon from Gabe Jones and well known independent publisher, Chronic Logic. Zatikon features both single and multi-player turn based play where the ultimate goal is the destruction of your enemies.

The game's strategy begins before the match even starts. You have a pool of 1000 points to work with for constructing your team. Therefore, each unit in the game has an associated point value which indicates its effectiveness. The advantage of this type of ranking system is that it prevents an experienced player from creating a super-army, even if they have spent the time and money to unlock some of the higher units.

If you can get past the visuals, you're in for a treat with Zatikon. Although there is no ingame tutorial, the gameplay makes things fairly easy to pickup, but hard to put down; especially with some wins under your belt. The wide diversity of the units in the game also provide for interesting challenges in both army construction and developing strategies against. For strategy fans this game is a buy, and maybe Chronic Logic will get the message that it could make an even bigger splash with just a bit of TLC on the visuals.

Read the full review...

Ten Ton Ninja

When I first saw T.T.N., I thought the main character was just a bizarre emoticon. As I got into the game, I realized…that it was pretty much exactly as I thought: a ninja smiley face, swinging around on a chain, and not a whole lot else.

That being said, T.T.N. is a fun concept. The portly hero swings around on a few stationary pegs, moving around with his momentum alone. You pass the levels by getting all of the gems on the stage within the time limit and avoiding the enemies (which clip your grappling line or cause a time penalty). Nothing complicated.

However, I never got the hang of actually controlling the ninja—the swinging never felt very smooth, and it was hard to get the timing right, especially when things got hairy. And the combat more or less amounted to flinging yourself randomly at enemies and praying that you landed on them. It seemed like half of the time I didn’t actually kill them using skill, but just got lucky.

T.T.N. is fun once you get the hang of it, even if it’s a little unpolished. But there’s a level editor, which was fun to play around with (screen full of exploding boxes? Awesome) and, it’s free—which is always a bonus.

Air Bandits

Air Bandits, from developer Insofta Games, is a side-scrolling airplane-shooter. In other words, it’s a clash of two genres that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to work together. But Air Bandits manages to keep it together and be entertaining.

You control your aircraft with the mouse, clicking to shoot and drop bombs. Navigation is adequate, but seems to be clunky at times, especially since you often find yourself shooting at targets on the ground. A fun hook in the game is that the environment is destructible, allowing you to blast through obstacles rather than pilot yourself over them.

In short, if you’re looking for something that’s a little different, and you can overlook a few hiccups in gameplay, go ahead and give Air Bandits a try.

Saturn Fighter Wing - Red Zone

The biggest problem with Saturn Fighter Wing is that it’s repetitive. The ideal game regularly throws something new at the player and challenges said player to think about the game at hand. Unfortunately, Saturn Fighter Wing just doesn’t throw much of anything different at you, just a lot of the same.

Saturn Fighter Wing gameplay is pretty simple: fly around and collect all of the red and green gems while avoiding enemy fire. Collect all of the gems, and advance to the next level. Repeat. The controls are usually pretty tight, but sometimes you find yourself circling around a single gem because the ship’s turning radius tends to be annoyingly large.

The graphics, however, are very impressive. This still doesn’t make up for the game’s flaws, but it gives this dark cloud a silver lining, at least. If the game had more to it, a gameplay hook of some sort, it would be much more fun. As is, it just feels lacking.