Game Tunnel is proud to publish the January Independent Video Game round-up, the latest in our long-running Famitsu-styled panels that review all the latest Indie PC games. The 10 games reviewed for December include Defense Grid: The Awakening from Hidden Path, cloudphobia from Marsbound and Hacker Evolution: Untold from Exosyphen Studios. Read reviews from each of the panelists on all 10 games in the January Indie game round-up.

Michael Scarpelli: 10

Defense Grid is pretty much the apex of the tower defense genre. There might be games out there that have more clever gameplay hooks or better storylines… but I wager you'll be exceedingly hard pressed to find a game that is the total package quite like Defense Grid.

The graphics are superb, detailed and smooth even at the closest levels of zoom and distinct even when zoomed out to the farthest point. The sound is top notch, with quality voice acting and music. Each level consists of several playable modes, and the Steam tie-in means that there are a ton of awards to attempt to unlock over time.

The Tower Defense play is for the most part traditional. There are levels where your enemies will follow a single trail, and your job is only to place turrets on the side of the action. There are also levels where enemies can follow a direct route that you must use your towers to shape into a more deadly gamut. The goal on each level is protect your energy spheres, which the alien forces are attempting to abscond with. The twist is that the spheres will return to their home much slower than enemies will move, so just because you save a sphere from one enemy doesn't mean it's safe, as something else might just pick up the energy hand-off an run with it.

Bunches of enemies, a healthy number of turrets, all with three levels of upgrade, varied terrain and superb presentation. I couldn't stop playing this one.

Pany Haritatos: 8

I really enjoy tower defense games, and I must admit I was really skeptical when I first fired up Defense Grid. What could it possibly offer that I couldn't get for free elsewhere in the plethora of Flash TD games out there?

Apparently, quite a lot. Defense Grid successfully combines almost all of my favorite TD features in one well rounded package, along with adding a few new fun additions, like some sexy 3D graphics and line-of-sight restrictions.

The game is fairly long. It took me a few days of solid gaming to get through the campaign, but once I started, I couldn't stop. The game is well polished, features excellent graphics, music and sound effects, and the gameplay is addictive. If you like TD games, Defense Grid is definitely worth a look.

Coby Utter: 9

It's hard to call Defense Grid a tower defense game because it so much better than everything you've likely come to expect from the genre. Defense Grid is superior to virtually every other tower defense game on the market and if you are not careful, all of your spare time will vaporize.

Across the board, Defense Grid does about everything correct. There are multiple tower types, with multiple upgrades available, and the resource management is always tight, forcing the player to think carefully about when and where to place new towers. Defense Grid is pretty difficult, but the challenge seems to scale well to your progress in the game. The enemies are numerous and varied, often times requiring a well planned defense up front and then on-the-fly building as the waves start to get to your cores.

As far as gameplay is concerned, Defense Grid does not revolutionize the tower defense genre, but is solid in every aspect with a few interesting twists. However, the presentation for Defense Grid is top-notch. It's in full 3D with tons of flashy effects, great looking models with smooth animations, and terrific level design. The sheer beauty of sitting back and watching all of the incoming enemies being torn apart by your meticulous defense system is terrific entertainment.

Russ Carroll: 9

Defense Grid doesn't do anything new really. It is a tower defense game and it plays very much like most tower defense games. Sure it has its own unique twists on the formula, but at the end of the day it's a tower defense game.

For all that, it's one of the best tower defense games I've played. With gorgeous visuals, solid voice work and a story to move things along, the production values are high. So is the quality of the level design, which makes the entire package nearly impossible to put down. It feels like the tower defense game that Blizzard would make if they made one. I mean intentionally. It the perfection of so much in the genre that it really stands apart while being similar.

Defense Grid is so fun to play I just couldn't score it less than a 9. Though it really isn't innovative in anything beyond its presentation, I was absolutely riveted to it.

Michael Scarpelli: 9

Take note, adventure game makers, Bingwood has done it right. What have they done right? They realized it was not broke, and they did not attempt to fix it.

Most of the adventure games I see these days try in some way or another to take a spin on the classic Sierra/LucasArts style of adventure game interface. Almost invariably, there is something annoying about that setup. Adventure games were KING in gaming for a long time, so there was a lot of thought put into their interfaces. They work.

Bingwood is a very clear and unabashed homage to The Secret of Monkey Island. It succeed because it manages to reference and mimic the style of the original with a fresh and engaging story and a consistent, clean presentation. The interface is laid out nice and neat and easy to work with. The voice acting (done, I think, by only one guy) is solid and amusing. The sound and graphics are both slight updates to the classic look and sound of games from back in the day, which I love, but I'm an oft-proclaimed fan of pixel games.

Classic adventure gaming done right.

Pany Haritatos: 8

Bingwood is an exceptionally well executed adventure game reminiscent of the golden area of adventure gaming. The graphics are great. The music is exceptional and is only surpassed by better voiceover work. The writing is genuinely funny and the story is compelling enough to keep you moving through some sometimes obscure puzzles. The user interface really impressed me with mouse-wheel support for the inventory screen, and the very handy map for faster travel across the world. The only real gripe I have is that it's quite possible to miss an item in a scene and be stuck walking around for hours with no clue what to do next. Some scenes are fairly detailed so it happened to me a few times. It's the only blemish on an otherwise great game. A top quality adventure game, Bingwood is very easy to recommend.

Coby Utter: 6

Ghe Tales of Bingwood is a new series of adventure games that is being release episodically. The series draws heavily upon inspiration from the classic LucasArts adventure games in regards to everything from look, sound, plot structure, and puzzles. This is both a good and bad thing; good, because those LucasArts games were great, but bad in that over the last 15 years you would have expected the genre to evolve in some facet. Unfortunately, Bingwood brings very little innovation to the table.

The audiovisual experience in Bingwood is retro-adventure, with lots of good looking pixel art, and catchy lo-fi sound. The interface is solid (which can be a game killer in point and click adventures) and from a technical perspective, Bingwood has few faults. The things that really make or break and adventure game however, are not represented so well. The narrative is centered on rescuing a princess, with plenty of bizarre tangents thrown in. Sadly, the story is far from gripping and by the end of Chapter 1, I wasn't looking forward to learning the conclusion in the next episodes. Additionally, the missions get repetitive fast – perhaps Tom should be known as Tom the collector/fetcher extraordinaire. Overall, there is a lot of potential in the series and hopefully the next episode can fix some of the unfortunate repetitive tendencies of the first episode.

Russ Carroll: 8

Bingwood is a really good throw-back adventure game complete with 640 x 480 palletized graphics. The game is entirely voiced, and well-voiced at that! The lines are for the most part worth listening to, though it obviously takes a lot longer to listen to read.

However, if speed is your game you're probably going to struggle here. Like most adventure games there are tons of head-scratching moments of total frustration as you try to figure out just what the game wants you to do, but unlike some adventure games, you'll actually want to keep playing Bingwood. The consistent classic feel to the game makes it an enjoyable romp, just beware that you'll probably be searching for a walk-through before all is said and done.

Michael Scarpelli: 7

Cloudphobia started as an 8, and I took it down a notch as I wrote the review because I realized I can't keep defending shooters for being stupidly difficult because that's how shooters are. Cloudphobia is beyond stupidly difficult. It is punishing.

The game looks fantastic, with great unit details and excellent atmospheric background that recall the Panzer Dragoon series and a solid sense of speed and movement. The sound is great as well. The story is… well… its really too esoteric to be deciphered. Remember how you felt watching those last few episodes of Evangelion? It's like that.

The gameplay is broken up across six stages. Each stage is handled solo and does not need to be unlocked, which is great, otherwise I'd never have played any of the levels past level 1. There are built in cheats, too. This is great, otherwise I'd never have beaten a single level.

As you fly through each level in your flying mech unit, you can either use a model equipped with a sort of laser blade, or a standard sort of laser rifle. The choice between these two units will drastically change your combat strategies. You have a series of 8 missile volleys you can fire off during a level as well. Behind you, ever present and unseen, is the Mothership. Each time you let an enemy escape off-screen, it will damage the Mothership. Too much damage, and you lose. You also have your own health… that runs out and you lose. Each level also has a time-limit. Let that run out and you lose. The levels are designed so that unless you use your turbo boost to glide through the level, you WILL run out of time. So, you need to boost your way through each level when you can, trying to avoid getting nailed or letting too many enemy units escape.

It's very well done and very, very, very wickedly hard. Good fun with the cheats on, but playing with cheats enabled always ends up being a hollow experience in the end.

Pany Haritatos: 6

I hate Cloudphobia for being so hard because I really liked everything else in the game. The anime-style graphics are great. The audio is excellent. The presentation across the board is top notch, but it is impossible to like a game that demands such a high level of mastery so early in the game. Despite my best efforts I could not get farther than the second level. Perhaps I missed some vital strategic element to the game, but no matter what tactics I used I didn't seem to get any further. The game has selectable characters, and a really fun mechanic where you can speed up your character, and thus the speed that enemies come at you, which creates this tactical trade off between taking damage or moving fast enough to finish the level in time. I never mastered that tactical trade off, though, which is why I couldn't get anywhere in the game. If you're a die-hard shooter fan, you probably would love Cloudphobia, but it was too brutal for me.

Coby Utter: 8

With beautiful illustrations, smooth character animations, and plenty of explosions, Cloudphobia is both gorgeous and exciting. The game plays as a side-scrolling shooter with Mech based fighting. You have a few different attacks at your disposal, including a short range blade attack, a weak rifle attack, and of course, tracking missiles. The gameplay has some interesting twists on the shooter mechanics. The most unique one is the mothership factor. You'll notice at the top of the screen, not one life bar, but two. One is for your Mech and the other is for the mothership. As you play through the game, any enemies that you fail to destroy will proceed to attack the mothership. If the mothership's life reaches 0, it's game over. This makes every level much more intense and increases the difficulty of the game as a whole. Cloudphobia is not without faults; it has a suspect translation and isn't very long, but it is a fantastically fun action game.

Russ Carroll: 8

I really enjoyed my time with cloudphobia. It's a sort of anime-based shooter where you play as one of two different robots. One fires lasers the other has a sword. I preferred the later, perhaps because it reminded me of Lords of Thunder.

The game is absolutely beautiful with backgrounds that are in 3D and zoom all around the character as you play to give the sense of you moving around in free space despite the fact that you are moving in a 2D plane. There are cut scenes providing a bit of story, but I really couldn't tell what it was despite playing every level.

The game is brutally difficult, but gives you infinite whatever you want as an easy way out. The play is a balancing act. You have to reach the end boss before the time is up or you can't fight it. You do this by using your booster rockets. However, when you go fast you not only increase the likelihood of being hit, you also are more likely to let enemies by you. Enemies that pass you count damage against your mother ship.

Trying to make the right balance while effectively destroying and dodging is amazingly difficult, which gives a lot of play to the otherwise short 5 levels of the game.

Michael Scarpelli: 7

The simplicity of Buccaneer is both its biggest asset and its greatest flaw. This is basically pirating arcade-style. You pilot your galleon around the seas and unload the long nines on various foes. That's pretty much it.

The game is fun because there's basically no barrier to entry. Standard WASD movement will control your ship and left-click and right-click will fire your port or starboard cannon volleys. You take quick missions to advance, with goals such as "explore this region”, "sink these ships”, "recover these items” or "destroy this landmark”. The quicker the level is completed, the higher your infamy score is. The higher your infamy, the happier your scurvy crew is. Gold awarded each level is used to purchase upgrades to your ship and eventually new ships, once you've found the plans.

The problem with this is that the experience doesn't get much deeper. Your controls here limit the level of your immersion. Your first break will come when you realize you can simply sail your ship backwards, like you were in a giant floating sedan. Combat will eventually just devolve into going side to side with another ship and just firing away, because your cannons are bigger and your hull is stronger.

The fact that the game looks and sounds great and is so easy to play saves it, though, as those elements distract from how shallow these waters really are.

Pany Haritatos: n/s

I couldn't get this game to run for more than 2-3 minutes without crashing, even after hitting up the troubleshooting section of the developer's website. It's too bad... Looked like it was right up my alley.

Coby Utter: n/s

Unfortunately, I was unable to get Buccaneer to run properly on my machines.

Russ Carroll: 7

Buccaneer is really beautiful. It's a testament to what the Torque engine can do these days.

There are wonderful touches under the glimmering water of wreckages and sharks swimming. There are seagulls flying about and each island is covered with tons of individual trees and vegetation that really provide a level of visual detail that is just fantastic.

Then there is the voice work, which is just awful and corny.

The mash-up of the two provides an uneven base that marks the game well. The game play has some enjoyable bits, but it often drags, and the ship to ship combat feels rather clunky (t the least it takes some getting used to). The setting is fun and the visuals make it worth the trip, but it wasn't as long a trip as I might have taken if it were a bit more enjoyable.

Michael Scarpelli: 6

QWAK harkens back to the golden olden days of Bubble Bobble. But way harder.

For me, it was hard to jive the all-encompassing cute of QWAK with the level of difficulty it presents to the gamer. The game is filled with bright colors and cutesy characters and has the feel of a children's game, but would probably send any child to bed crying because they suck so much.

Your goal is to hop around, shooting eggs at enemies, collecting fruit and potions and keys and unlocking chests and gates to find the exit to the level. Each level is a limited single screen, but there's a lot crammed into each screen. There are lots of items and unlockables to deal with. However, much of the game's difficulty is derived from the time limit in each level. You're allowed maybe a couple minutes on each level (probably less, there's no visible timer) and then the ominous music begins and spiked balls begin to fall from the ceiling and you need to get the heck out.

I feel as if I would have enjoyed QWAK if there were a more visible timer, or a longer level limit. However, it bears mentioning that I played it solo… and I think the two-player experience would likely mitigate much of what I'm complaining about here.

Pany Haritatos: 6

Qwak is a part-puzzler action platformer with very cute retro graphics. Don't let the cuteness lull you into a false sense of security, though. This game is hard. Brutally so.

As an example, if you take too long on any level it starts throwing massive spikes at you. Giant virtually impossible to avoid spikes. The levels are compact explosions of moving shapes and colors. And because you want to avoid the looming spike storm of doom, you're going to be navigating them quickly hoping to conserve your finite supply of eggs (which are critical to your progression in the game). It's a hard game that I'm sure could easily garner a following with a certain type of gamer. It was too frenetic for my taste, though, making me far too anxious to actually enjoy the game. If it was a little less challenging, I'm sure I would have enjoyed the game a lot more, but it felt too much like the developer wanted to just punish me for playing his game.

Coby Utter: 7

At first glance, QWAK may seem like a game solely targeted at children and may lead one to think that the game is designed to be easy. That would be a poor assumption; QWAK's quick paced gameplay will make even the nimblest fingers cringe in the later levels. I've seen and heard a lot about QWAK (the original game and various ports have been around for a while) but this was my first opportunity to play through the game. The most succinct way to describe the gameplay is: fast arcade action involving running, jumping, collecting, and egg tossing. In each level you must collect a certain number of keys to advance. There are various other items you can collect to replenish your egg stock (you're a duck, so eggs for a weapon fit!), as well as obtain temporary abilities. Of course, the levels are also crawling with enemies and that's where you will need to be nimble and quick to avoid them and knock them out with ricocheting eggs. The game has a retro inspired feel throughout, and while the presentation is functional, it doesn't have anything special that is memorable. Following suit, the game's biggest problem overall is being forgettable. I had fun for a while, but eventually I was ready to move on, and I didn't come back.

Russ Carroll: 7

Qwak is really deceptive. Looking at it you think, happy go lucky Bubble Bobble clone. While the game certainly looks bright and fun, it belies the games true nature. Qwak is hard.

Once you get going you'll find you need precision and care to play, but the screen is really busy, which left me sometimes losing track of where I was. I also would have loved to have had a mode where I can turn off those blasted spike balls (which appear after about 20 seconds on every level) and go at my own pace!

There is 2-player co-op and lots to do in the game, and it has a wonderful charm to it that can't be denied. I was surprised at how much more I enjoyed it than I thought I might, and with a couple of changes I think I would have enjoyed it even more!

Michael Scarpelli: 6

It's exceedingly difficult to separate a review of Hacker Evolution from what I can only call its predecessor, Uplink. The developers should take heart, though, as you've most likely noticed that my reviews tend to be pretty referential.

The central concept behind each game is that you are a hacker and, through an interface that is at times very authentic and other times dumbed down for gaming purposes, you hack into things. Your goal is to break your way into various systems to steal files, locate new servers, snag funds and generally cause mischief. Along the way, you must be careful to cover your tracks and try whenever you can to make yourself difficult to locate.

Hacker Evolution does a good job replicating the command-line hacking experience, but just isn't as playable as the original Uplink. The problem with Hacker Evolution is entirely one of interface. The command-line is text centric and dense and the game only devotes about one-third of the screen to it. The rest is a largely unused server-map, a fairly necessary statistics screen and a most of the time unneeded message window.

The problem with the command line being so small and the interface being so static is that it would make much more sense to devote the entire screen at once to a single task. Uplink let you focus on the map, the code, your stats and other items. When you didn't need them, they were hidden. Being forced to constantly scroll back and forth ore repeat commands in Hacker Evolution's tiny console window just plain makes the game sort of a hassle to play, despite the otherwise solid nature of the gameplay.

Pany Haritatos: 6

Hacker Evolution made a bad first impression. The unwieldy tutorial combined with the relatively cramped interface made for a frustrating start with a lot of tiresome scrolling. The music in the game is awesome and the graphics are about as pretty as they can be given the context, but the game failed to establish any sort of cohesive aesthetic with its odd story based elements and mediocre writing.

It seems to be very similar to Introversion's Uplink from back in the day. Probably the biggest difference between the two is that Uplink made me feel like a slick hacker. In Hacker Evolution I felt more like I was being forced to do sysadmin work, which is something that I loathe. With a better interface, the game would have been more fun. It never quite transcended the feeling that it was 2:00 AM and I needed to get a machine on the network working remotely before the start of the business day tomorrow.

Coby Utter: 8

When I started playing Hacker, my first impression was fairly negative. All of the input is handled through a command line style console, and there is a flood of information on what to do. I actually failed the tutorial mission. This was probably due to my unfamiliarity with hacking – which is what the game is all about. Terms like �"bounced links' and �"trace level' were out of my league. Because of this, the game is pretty overwhelming at first. However, after spending some more time with it, the game flow, mechanics, and jargon all started to click and the experience became much more enjoyable.

Hacker does a terrific job with immersion. The graphics, audio, gameplay, and feedback mechanics are all seamlessly woven into a tight experience. After I understood all of the basic commands and developed the proper mindset to play the game, I lost a few hours, which is always a great thing in a game. For hacking game fans, this one is likely to be a hit, and hopefully those unfamiliar with the genre will give the beginning enough time to settle in and make sense.

Russ Carroll: 5

Hacker Evolution is exactly what you might think it is. It's a hacker game. It really feels like you are hacking when playing it, and that is for both better and for worse.

The good is that you have to learn commands and use them intelligently in order to bypass security and access computers and networks you shouldn't be on.

The bad is that it feels like work. At least it feels like my work.

The game is played mostly by typing commands, reminiscent of DOS commands. It reminds me of scripting at work or using terminal to modify file properties on my Mac. The payoff of succeeding didn't excite me any more than making some piece of code do what I want to. Actually it was probably a little less rewarding than that. Still I give it points for being original and different, even if it felt more like work than a game.

Michael Scarpelli: 7

GGrey Matter is a fun bit of Flash that takes the standard idea of an arcade shooter and modifies it a bit. Instead of shooting weapons at your enemies, you are shooting yourself. You move around the board and try and collide with enemies. You can move slowly, regular speed or hit your boost button, and you will rocket ahead in the direction of your movement and strike any enemy in your path. When you hit an enemy, you will begin a chain. That chain will follow you around as you move, when you hit another enemy, if it's the same type as the first, the chain continues. Hit a third enemy and you'll create a triangle zone and any enemy within it is destroyed.

The tricky bit is that you can't hit just anywhere on your enemies. They all have a flesh-toned "brain” area that must be hit in order to cause any actual damage. Hit any area that flashes black and white and it's curtains for you.

Between levels you can use points scored to purchase upgrades to your boost ability, as well as a shield, extra lives and an "option” powerup which creates little orbiters that will also hit enemies.

It's a fun and fresh take on shooters and it's totally free so… get to it.

Pany Haritatos: 7

Grey Matter is a fun little game that's about avoiding bullets and taking advantage of your enemies' weaknesses. The game starts a little slow, but after the first few levels, the enemies get tougher and you're forced to get smart about your tactics. By the time you get to the end boss, you're dealing with a host of unique enemies each with their own particular strategies. The difficulty in the game is pretty much spot on but it does take a few dedicated tries to really get into a groove. Once you're there, it'll be over pretty quick, probably just around the time that you start feeling like you've really mastered the controls. It's cheap (as in free), fun, and it has great music and decent graphics so it's perfect for some bite-sized fun.

Coby Utter: 6

Grey Matter is aptly described by its developer as an �"anti-shooter'. This is the most concise way to describe the game and it fits perfectly. The game plays as a typical shooter, save for one major change: you don't fire at all. The enemies still come in waves, blazing away at you, but your only offense is to ram into them while avoiding the incoming projectiles. It's a pretty clever twist (I'm not sure if it's original) and leads to some interesting gameplay. There are a wide variety of enemies with distinct movement and attacks and the game can be really entertaining for a half hour. That's about the extent of its staying power, however, which renders the game a brief and fun diversion, but nothing substantial enough to garner more praise or more play time.

Russ Carroll: 5

Grey Matter is a strategic enemy ramming game. Running into an enemy kills the enemy (well most enemies) and that starts a chain. The goal is to run into three of the same enemy type, which turns your chain into a triangle. The triangle destroys everything that is enclosed inside it when it is formed.

The concept is interesting, but I fought mightily with the play control. I didn't have an Xbox controller to play the game and that may really be a better experience. I found the keyboard controls far to imprecise to really get into Grey Matter. Due to moving too quickly, I often ran into enemies I didn't mean to run into ending some chains, and accidentally starting others. With more control and better level ramping/progression I might have gotten into it a bit more.

Michael Scarpelli: 6

SpringWorld is an amusing tech concept turned into a reasonably amusing title. The game is pretty much a technical demo dressed up as a sort of stunt-racing title. You either drive around a car, or pilot around a ship that is loaded and ready for wacky physics crazy time.

The game's high point is taking a rocket-propelled car, smashing it into an obstacle, and then seeing how that changes the way the car will control. The way you can destroy your vehicle is pretty varied, and can make things pretty amusing to watch. The game is very precise in how it destroys your vehicle and pretty unforgiving with it. Though, the condition of your car doesn't matter for the speed trophies. This same destruction system, though, also makes the game a bit touchy and pretty difficulty to play.

It only take a few times having to redo a level searching for an elusive trophy so you can advance into the later levels to spike a pretty high degree of frustration. So, while the game made for a pretty fun time at the start for me, once I had to really dig into being accurate with my movement, I found the game to be too exacting, and I tired of it pretty quickly.

Pany Haritatos: 5

Springworld is a physics game with essentially two different types of levels. Sometimes you're bounding around in a car and sometimes you're bounding around in a rocket. Typically speaking, you are racing through the level as fast as possible trying to take as little damage as possible. What Springworld brings to the table is a unique location-based damage model. It's really cool the first few times you over correct a turn or jump and lose a chunk of your car. Unfortunately, as the difficulty ramps up (which is does insanely quickly), these small collisions require a time consuming repair that makes it almost impossible to complete the levels quick enough. After about 20 levels I found it impossible to score higher than a bronze, which made it impossible to progress further in the game. My only option was to replay older levels over and over until the right combination of grind, luck and patience scored me more medals. Needless to say, this got old after awhile and I gave up. The game has some fun new ideas, but it was too hard and too quirky to win me over.

Coby Utter: 8

This was the mystery title of the month - I had never heard of it nor had any idea what it was about. Spring World Challenge ended up being a good surprise and has a lot of fun packed into it. The game is comprised of several independent challenges (which you must unlock) that put you in control of a variety of vehicles (and sometimes under different constraints.) The challenges mostly focus on a race against the clock, where you are required to reach so many checkpoints before the timer elapses.

The unique part about SWC is that all of your vehicles are fully destructible and are all controlled based on a solid physics engine. The partial destruction of your vehicle can result in steering difficulty, or even the complete loss of a thruster. This factor is central to the game's fun factor and adds a zany outcome to all sorts of different input. There are several difficult challenges that are frustrating to complete (like most physics based games), but the developer of SWC doesn't base unlocking future challenges solely on completing previous challenges. Instead, there are numerous trophies that you can win, so you can replay previous levels to try and achieve different trophies to progress. The gameplay feels slightly unrefined and a bit of polish time could have tightened the feel. Other than that, the biggest issue is playtime length – the game is fun while it lasts, but it doesn't last long.

Russ Carroll: 5

SpringWorld Challenge looks kind of reminiscent of Jelly Car on the Xbox and iPhone, but it plays more like Motorama, Thrust and other physics-based games. The aesthetic is great and at times the game play is pretty fun.

I liked beating up my vehicles as I tried to get them to the finish line. What I didn't enjoy were the controls. Physics-based games tend to be challenging anyway, but SpringWorld challenge took that one notch further and made the controls really difficult. You can do a wide range of things by having thrusters on all sides of your vehicle, but the precision needed to play that way took away a lot from the experience for me.

Michael Scarpelli: 6

MiniOne Racing is fun, but awkward. The actual racing component of the game is a middle of the road sort of Mario Kart wannabe. You and three other racers motor through various wacky landscapes vying for first place. There are three racing classes: 50cc, 100cc and 150cc.

Racing itself is pretty tame. You control with the arrow keys, and there's virtually no nuance to your movements. There are only a couple of power-ups, too. There's a speed boost, a Random Master power-up (the Random Master is selected, yup, randomly and they give a shock to any driver that gets near them), you can levitate your opponents and mess with their controls, drop mines, become invisible (to yourself as well, which is a hassle sometimes) or snag a power-down that reduces you screen visibility to a smaller area. When you don't have a power-up, your action button will fire a small cannon at enemies. The thing that gets me about the racing is that it feels very inconsistent. The effects of things like the Random Master and the cannon for your vehicle don't feel like the always work the same way and sometimes it seems that when you get hit, it disrupts your movement far more than for other racers.

The game's best parts are its Balance and Jump modes. In balance, you must drive along a convoluted pathway, trying to stay on the road and get the lowest time to finish. In Jump you, you guessed it, try and jump the farthest.

Scores for all of these items are uploaded and visible on-line, which is a fun touch. There are a decent number of things to unlock as well. The look and feel of the game is great fun… the real shame is that the actual racing that constitutes the game's core is not.

Pany Haritatos: 6

MiniOne is a decent racing experience, but all the individual pieces don't come together well enough to make it more than a fun distraction. My favorite part of this game was the great graphics. Both the levels and the racing cars are both excellently done. My least favorite part was the power ups. They are almost entirely useless which is sad because it was a missed opportunity to give the gameplay some much needed depth. The game has a few different modes outside of racing, my favorite of which was the "equilibrium" mode which challenges you to cross a tiny level with treacherous turns within a certain amount of time. I wish there had been more of these types of levels. Outside of equilibrium, the game got boring fairly quickly. Even though the later level designs do get a bit more interesting, I still couldn't help wishing I was playing Mario Kart. It's decent, but without taking any risks, MiniOne ultimately fails to create a lasting impression.

Coby Utter: 6

If Mini-One Racing is geared solely for children, then this review is a bit skewed and I'd score it higher. However, I didn't get that feeling and the game left me bittersweet about the whole experience. At its core, Mini-One is a very simple cart-style racing game. It has a vibrant presentation and a consistent feel throughout the UI, tracks, and characters. There is also a lot of variety present in the tracks, vehicles, and play modes. The game features multi-player racing, but I was unable to utilize this feature for the review, so I'm focusing solely on the single player experience.

While the presentation is good in most respects, the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. The power-ups, firing mechanic, and controls all worked well enough, but the camera is likely to leave you so frustrated that the other mechanics will have no redeeming value. There are two camera views you can switch between: one is a first person view and the default is a third person view. The default view is more overhead than it is third person, however, and the forward viewing distance feels extremely cramped on every single track. Because of this, I had to use the first person view, which is great for seeing ahead of you, but terrible for seeing to the side or behind you. Couple this with large environmental objects that often obscure a majority of the gameplay (some are slightly transparent, but help the overall cause little) and just seeing where you are going is a major headache and kills a lot of the fun. Mini-one also lacks any feeling of speed whatsoever. Even at the fastest level (200 cc), the game hardly feels like racing. The lack of cart-cart collision also has an odd feeling to it. There is a decent game hidden beneath some of these mistakes, but then again, maybe I'm not the target audience.

Russ Carroll: 6

So first off, I'm a Mario Kart fanatic. I love the recent versions of the game and cannot get enough of it. Due to that, I compare any kart-like racing game to it, which is a hard comparison, I mean what really measures up?

MiniOne Racing unfortunately doesn't, though it's a fun PC diversion with a bright palette and having cannons on the cars is definitely a plus.

On the downside, the over-the-shoulder camera had serious draw distance issues which along with a spotty frame-rate left me queasy. I didn't find the racing all that inspiring either, it was hard to feel like you were really succeeding, and driving through the other vehicles takes away from the fun of bouncing karts around. It's another fun feeling game from frogames that just didn't quite capture the magic, but I feel like it was close.

Michael Scarpelli: 2

Wow. So… The You Testament. Yeah.

It's hard to talk about this game and not talk about Mat Dickie, the lone entity behind MDickie, and the man that brought us The You Testament. His games are from the ground up created by him, and him alone. This is impressive. Even if the games are bad, it's not easy to rock it solo. However, this is not an abnormal thing. Many indie games are labors of love from very small development teams. I believe the sweeping medieval RPG Mount and Blade was the product of a two-person team.

The reason I'm spending so much time on this is that Mat clearly feels that the You Testament is his parting gift to the gaming world, and that he himself was ushering in a new era of game artistry and I really have to disagree. The You Testament is a fantastic idea—play as a lost apostle following in the steps of Jesus, learning from him and taking your own path through the times he lived in. Regardless of your faith, it's an interesting approach, and could be educational (or spiritual) if executed properly.

The problem is the execution, though. The game plays like something created by someone that hasn't paid attention to any lesson learned about game design in the last ten years. Camera control is wild and unwieldy, which becomes a hideous problem when you realize that your movement control is relative to the camera position. Animation is stilted and awkward. The music is droning and repetitive. The AI is laughably random, as demonstrated through these I-swear-to-you-quoted-as-they-happened snippets from an IM conversation I had with Pany as I was playing the game. These didn't occur as consecutively as they appear here, but you'll get the idea.

• "Why are there midgets everywhere?"
• "And why, on every screen, are people either A) Standing or B) Fighting?”
• "A Roman guard just made me sit down... because it's dark out. So... now I am watching myself sit. Time is not speeding up. I am just sitting... and a guy with a sword is next to me. *laughs* See, now it's daylight. So everyone stands up... and now they are punching each other.”
• "So... I just walked up to a Roman soldier, and accidentally used the take action, which takes his dagger. Then he tells me to give it back... so I do. Then I hug him, which is what I was trying to do in the first place. So, then we're done hugging, and a new soldier walks up, announces he's friends with the other guy and tells me that if I fight him, I fight both of them, and then he kicks me. So, I move out of the way, and he just starts wailing on anyone within range.”
• "This game is the comedy smash of the YEAR.”

Pany Haritatos: 2

The You Testament is a concept is so risky, so intriguing, so potentially faux pas that it really could only be tackled by an indie. If you were alive during the time that Jesus Christ walked the earth, what would you do? Would you become a disciple? Would you forge your own path? This is the premise behind the You Testament, and as a concept, I can't remember the last time I was this excited to explore a game's potential.

Unfortunately, the execution of the You Testament is intolerable. Here's the lightning round of the biggest problems I have with the game: frustrating controls, annoying camera, creepy facial animations, silly character animations, unskippable and badly written dialog, sparse and artificial environments, complete lack of a tutorial, the NPCs are total bastards, and the very frequent and very annoying loading screens.

By far, my favorite moment in the game was a particular meeting with Jesus that was so heavily laden with homosexual tension that I thought we were seconds away from getting a hotel room together. The worst moment in the game was Jesus literally saying "The force is strong with you" during one of our conversations. Ugh.

The You Testament really is a fascinating concept. It's too bad the execution was so horrible, because the concept deserves a solid implementation.

Coby Utter: 5

While The You Testament succeeds at being provocative, it fails at being fun. It's an eccentric mix of odd design choices and faulty technical execution. It can be humorous at times, only to fall flat on its face moments later. In Testament, you are a newly converted disciple of Jesus and must follow him to various sites.

Conveniently, almost every action you make ends in a brawl and even more conveniently, there are always plenty of weapons haphazardly lying around. Despite the frequent opportunities for combat, the system is pretty meager. The game does get interesting once Jesus starts teaching you special abilities that you can access through meditation, as most of these abilities are way over the top. It makes the game interesting at least. I believe that there is an overarching narrative for the game, but I didn't finish the game and couldn't follow much of what was going on to make any sense of it all. In fact, I'm not sure what the goal of the game is…but I do know that the most important ingredient, fun, was left out of the recipe.

Russ Carroll: 6

The You Testament is truly ambitious. It tackles a topic that most game makers would not dare to touch, and notably it is done as the last game in Mat Dickie's career.

The game certainly wants to make a statement and the game has some interesting pieces to it, but much of it is confusing that you're not exactly sure what statement it is trying to make.

The main focus of the game is following around the Jesus character to different locations on the map. Each location is filled with people and weapons. TYT is build from a combat game engine and it strangely permeates everything. Every place you go to, the people will be fighting. Picking up the weapons that are scattered EVERYWHERE, and battling it out...all the time!

As you follow Jesus you gain more abilities that can be accessed through meditation. The game doesn't do a great job initially of telling you this, which can make the first hour of play more confusing than entertaining, but once you get the hang of it, it all became rather fascinating.

I found the game interesting and unexpectedly compelling, once I figured out what I was doing.