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May 2005
Indie Game Monthly Round-Up
(by
The Illustrious Panel - TIP) |
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Mystic Blades
(May 1)
Download Now!
by Vermillion Entertainment
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On the one hand, it's a fighting game
on your PC! And it looks rather good - no Soul Calibur for sure (and the
final boss is. well, yech looking, but really unique and interesting),
but nice. The other hand, the one that is intimately practiced in
tapping LP, LP, F, LK, HP, says something is lacking here, and that's a
solid fighting engine. The combat is utterly simplistic with only two
special moves per character, and "supermoves" that are virtually pure
chance. This game could be so much more than it is with some very simple
design work, but as it is, there's just hardly any game to it. - MH |
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| This great looking 3D fighting game has all the requisites: unlockable
characters and art, gamepad support, and two player action. However, the
visuals outstrip the gameplay: No throws, only two special moves per
character, too much emphasis on “devine powers�. The block system is a
high-low (back blocks, SF style) but I generally did better with nonstop
jumping attacks. Some very neat looking huge opponents, especially the
Hydra. - SR |
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| Well, this fighter has good intentions, but some really serious issues.
Visually, it's in a league just shy of Soul Calibur. The models,
backgrounds and textures look great, however the animations are horrid
collections of linear motions. The controls... well... I'm pretty sure
Rise of the Robots played better than this. Nearly every attack is an
instant, and when you push the difficulty past "Easiest", you get smoked
by the AI. The game even has an extras system where you earn points by
playing the game to unlock hidden characters, an art/concept gallery,
and profiles. Really, compared to a modern fighter, this game does
everything right, except the most important part. The game.- MK |
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Asea
(May 11)
by
KraiSoft |
This offers at least a little twist
on matching 3 items - there's a little boat that's trying to motor
across the board collecting items, so you need to clear room for it. But
oddly, when you have cleared a path, you could keep on making matches,
but since new lilies appear randomly each time you make a match, and
there's no time limit, it's actually better to just sit and watch the
boat go than to make more matches. I don't really like games to
encourage me to sit still and not touch anything. It's the reason I don'
t like antique shops (okay, not the only reason). - MH |
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| In this game you need to clear a path for a tiny ship by matching three
lilies of the same color. Of course, as soon as you do, three more will
spawn in random places possibly blocking the path again – this can be very
frustrating. Slow un-skippable boat movement and skipping music problems add
to an overall uninspiring experience. Due to needing to guess which way a
free lily will drift I didn’t find puzzle mode any more agreeable. - SR |
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| Another match 3 variation. In this one, you make matches by swapping
any flower with any other flower or a blank space, such that it makes a
match of 3+. Unfortunately, this wasn't too clear from the
instructional images. After I got it, things flowed well. You make
your matches to open up spaces so that a little boat can get elsewhere
on the map. The little boat moves around the map picking up artifacts
or making deliveries along the shore. Once you collect enough
artifacts, the exit lights up and the boat goes there. There are some
fun little details in the game, like penguins that move when you mouse
over them, and as previously mentioned, the deliveries. Though it uses
the same mechanics, it at least adds some sense of depth to game. Nice.- MK |
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Titan Assault
(May 15)
by GoldBolt Software |
| The most glaring problem with this
game is that it is very sensitive about left clicks - if you move the
slightest bit when clicking, it thinks you're trying to draw a selection
box, and so your click doesn't count. But the game is just so satisfying
- that's the word for it. Huge explosions all over the place, tons of
bullets and missiles everywhere, total devastation. The control scheme
is not intuitive (especially CTRL-G for autopilot?), but once I learned
it, and got over some other initial comprehension issues, I was just
having too much fun. I ended up playing to level 52 in one sitting! -
MH |
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| Titan Assault pits you up against a generic alien invader in a series of
mini RTS battles. Having your units attack the enemy is a sure way to lose.
Instead, you need to carefully take them in one-by-one so you can hand
maneuver them in battle. One tank can take out an entire base using this
monotonous method. Another problem is letting the player save and load
anytime for free, but charging them 2000 credits to “restart� a level. Huh?
Maybe I’m just playing it wrong and should try easy, I dunno. - SR |
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| Here we have a simplified RTS. The missions seem to be about killing
beacons and enemy units. A slight twist here, you can purchase units
whenever you want, and they come as reinforcements after a short period
of time. I think it's a neat variation, versus the usual building of
structures to make your desired units. However, there isn't much
to build towards. - MK |
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Jig Words
(May 12)
Download Now!
by
HipSoft
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| I don't know, am I just a sucker for
word games? Let me get the same complaint as always out of the way: the
dictionary has got some problems (SATE is a word, people). It's not
terrible, but I hit problems several times like that. A nice semi-online
combat mode adds fun to this game (you don't actually play against
people, you play against how people played recently, like ghost racing
in racing games). All in all, solid polished word-game fun, though the
Jig part is utterly meaningless - after a few levels I'd realize I
hadn't even looked at the picture at all. Should've called it Words
Words. - MH |
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| This is a word game with gameplay similar to TextTwist with a few additions:
A bonus round that adds a timer and more tiles, a pseudo multiplayer mode
where you race ghosts of other players, and a way to import custom pictures
into the game. The “multiplayer� mode isn’t much fun because you’re not
actually playing with people live - it might as well be random names with
AI. It’s a good game but doesn’t really stand out in the sea of word
games. - SR |
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| I'd like to see more match 3 and word games that use their mechanic for
achieving some other goal. Dungeon Scroll for example, uses a word game
to fight monsters in a simplified RPG. This one is almost that, as it
has you assembling a jigsaw puzzle by finding words. Unfortunately, the
assembling is merely just a cover for a fixed number of words you need
to find to win. The game includes a nice library of photos that are
your puzzles, and claims to support custom pictures. Neat. - MK |
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Gunstorm
(April 29)
by Cornutopia
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| For a game called Gunstorm, there is
a remarkable shortage of guns in this game: enemies shoot green dots,
you shoot purple dots, and you can upgrade to lasers. That's it. Two for
you, one for them. That trend continues in other aspects of the game -
there's just not much going on. It feels more like a quickie college
project than a full-fledged game. One other note: most games like this
that control via mouse do so by always pointing your ship at a cursor
onscreen. This game instead uses horizontal mouse movement to directly
rotate your ship. I just wanted to go on record saying the cursor thing
is WAY easier to manage.- MH |
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| This game wins the award for weirdest default controls. After completely
remapping them they worked very well in this asteroids-type game. You spin
around shooting rocks and enemy space craft until you’re blown away. Unless
you’re a huge asteroids fan you’re probably going to get a little bored -
there isn’t really a compelling enough reward system in place. - SR |
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| Here we have a souped up Asteroids. The loading screen is rather fun,
with it's "Stand by, human" note. The boss music is suspiciously
happy. It's an odd complaint, I know... but I found myself questioning
if this was really a serious battle or not. The controls, I'm not too
happy with. The scheme in Zzed is probably my favorite for this sort of
game, but the "move the mouse and you rotate" scheme of this, I don't
like at all. It's tough to aim, not quite frustrating, but it's close. - MK |
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Star Defender 2
(April 25)
Download Now!
by Awem
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| Not much to say here - another Space
Invaders/Galaga clone. Nothing new to offer at all, but it's got nice
graphics and it plays smoothly. - MH |
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| I’ve reviewed five or six very similar Galaga-style shooters in recent
months and this one follows the formula without changing much. Ten waves,
boss. The art and sound are very good, no complaints there. Gripes: Mouse
not clipped to screen, very laggy mouse input in general for me. Just not
enough new here. - SR |
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| A pretty standard single screen shmup. To it's credit, it has some
really nice graphics. I found the demo quite easy, which could be a
good thing. Your fire rate is slow, which is probably my only
complaint, but there are power ups that temporarily enhance that, so
it's clearly by design. You get 2 types of missiles to choose from, a
straight shot and a homing missile. Big boss at the end took maybe a
few more hits to beat than I would have liked. Amazingly, I think I
actually didn't get bored during the whole 5-10 minutes or so it took to
beat the demo. Nice. - MK |
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Sunny Ball
(April 30)
Download Now!
by Reflected Games |
A real run of the mill Breakout game.
Cute pictures to break, and a lot of tedium involved in breaking them
(come on, I tried to tell you guys to adopt the Graviton feature from
BreakQuest
already!). The difficulty in this game is quite high, which is a nice
change from most Breakout games, but it is quite common to get your
paddle shrunk down so small that you have virtually no control over
where the ball goes anymore. - MH |
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| Expect a string of expletives to come out of your mouth while playing this
über cheerfully themed ball-breaker. Why? Because it’s hard! A lot of the
difficulty comes from the fact that good and bad power-ups are similar
looking; making accurate split-second decisions is key. This, plus other
layered mini-games (slot machine, collecting letters) really kept things
interesting. Oh, and it uses some kind of SVG technology to put basic
vector pictures over blocks which is kind of neat. - SR |
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| A very average Breakout/Arkanoid clone. The game seems very happy, and
with a name like Sunny Ball, that shouldn't be a surprise. Comparing it
to the other games in the "genre", it does have an end of level tile
clearing effect like in Bricks of Camelot (rain), but only when you're
down to 1 tile, which seems almost as bad as not having it at all. Yeah
sorry. You have too much competition here to stand out Sunny. - MK |
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Tots 'n' Togs
(May 16)
by Handy Entertainment
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| Ah, in classic Alawar style, bad
English makes everything more amusing! Unfortunately, with an in-depth
business sim, it also makes things much much harder. I found this game
tremendously hard to follow with a really whacked system for assigning
your inventory. I did terribly, but I didn't really see a lot of options
I could've exploited to get around my failures. I really liked the style
and it seemed like it was going to be great at first, but the more I
played, the less sense it all made. - MH |
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| This game simulates managing a clothes boutique. I like the unique theme,
but let’s face it, I have no sense of fashion and had a hard time
understanding how to make cash in this game. The pixeled graphics are good,
but the game window is so tiny I really had to squint to see them. There is
an element of Lemonade Stand here in the way that you can find out “what’s
hot� and put them on the rack. Alas, I went bankrupt. - SR |
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| A sim/tycoon game without the words sim, tycoon or manager in it's
name. This one's about running a clothing store. Being the
unfashionable geek I am, I was quite confident I'd fail at this game.
However, I've learned some important lessons. Those being: people love
sales, a janitor can't fix a moth problem, and people love cheap green
shirts. I was barely able to keep my store open, and beyond the stock
of clothes, my store barely changed from when it opened (i.e. no profit
to buy cool store upgrades with). I better brush up on my
fashionability in case they make a sequel. - MK |
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Geom
(May 4)
Download
Now!
by Indiepath
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| Strikingly similar to Revolved, which
we reviewed previously. This similarity allows me to more clearly
understand the flaws in this game - Revolved offers much more enticement
to create combos, its simple regular grid makes it easier to pay
attention to what you're doing, and it offers far more 'eye candy' to
reward success. Geom looks better in a basic sense, much more clean, but
lacks fireworks. Where both games fail is that your choices always only
affect a tiny section of the field, so you never have the feeling of
great success. Also, like Revolved, I found my best success in this game
(most notably in Unlimited Mode!) came from flailing on the buttons
completely at random. I routinely racked up 10x combos easily that way.
More cerebral play was less effective by a wide margin. - MH |
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| This is a color matcher that involves a lot of rotating. The whole
experience works pretty well and the rotation is very intuitive. I guess my
only complaint is the way the rules and bonuses are set up just doesn’t make
for especially thrilling gameplay. - SR |
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| I usually don't like these spinny square matching games, but I have to
give this one a few points for doing more than just squares. It
actually does triangles and hexagons too, wow! And composes interesting
playfield shapes out of them. Glad to see someone ditched the grid of
just boxes as a game. - MK |
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Beads
(May 5)
by Goblinz
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No sir, I did not like Beads. It's
well made, but it's not fun, nor does it make any sense! I mean, the
rules (once you figure them out from the weird explanations) work and
all, but they just made me wonder WHY the rules were what they were, and
WHY was I dropping heads into pipes, and WHY did they merge to form
superheads, and WHY do they disappear when adjacent in sets of 3? But
moreover, I was wondering. WHY put me through such an insanely confusing
set of menus?! - MH |
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| This color popper has some distinctive properties – you can only stack
colors horizontally and you have to deal with curvy pipes. For me at least,
something about the uniqueness of the game just didn’t work. My brain
didn’t want to deal with the idea of piling garbage up on one side to push
the beads around to the other side. Unable to stack like-colored beads was
frustrating. Had problems with the uninstaller. - SR |
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| This one's a neat matching puzzle idea. It uses U shaped tubes that
circle pieces around, or simple tall ones you fill up. Unfortunately,
though I like the idea, I had a hard time staying interested. It's not
that it's bad, but maybe there's something about exploding fuzzy
critters that's just a bit more interesting. - MK |
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Chuzzle
(May 16)
Download Now!
by Raptisoft
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Beautiful and fun-looking 70's style
in this utterly standard match-3 game. Score an extra point for the
trophy room, which kept me playing a couple times just to earn that
Speed trophy. Awards like that are always a great idea. I'm really tired
of matching colors, no matter how shiny they are. - MH |
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| Another match three!? In this game you can make cute little fuzzy
creatures explode by sliding rows and columns of them not unlike a Rubik’s
cube. This very polished offering has a lot going for it; the main game
doesn’t require a time limit – if you’re stuck, you can always get a tip,
but this causes you to lose progress towards the next level. While not
astonishingly unique it’s certainly top notch and will put you in the ‘zone’
in no time. Nice to see a color-blind mode option. - SR |
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| A while back in a discussion about how a successful casual game needs
bright and colorful graphics, I made a joke that the secret style of
success then must be the 70's. Given how quickly Chuzzle has become a
top download on various portals, I'm starting to wonder. This game
oozes with a 70s'ish style, mixed with these cute and fuzzy Chuzzle
things. Moving the Chuzzles around with their fur flowing with the
motion looks great. The groovy soundtrack in classic/mind bender modes
is a sort of disco/techno/chiptune thing... very hip. And a really
bizarre parallel, the Chuzzles saying what sounds like "B" when you
match them, and to the beat of the music you hear chanting B's as well.
Very trippy. I think this song is giving me Katamari flashbacks. Even
though I'm not a big fan of match 3's, I continue to be impressed by
what some developers do with them. - MK |
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Office Life
(May 29)
by Injoy Games
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| You know the phrase "Jack of all
trades, master of none"? This game is jacked up. The basic theme and
idea is clever and fun, but the minigames themselves are neither. The
biggest pain is the randomness. It even says when you go to pick a lock
"some locks may be impossible", which is in itself lame, but made much
worse by the fact that even if you get an impossible lock, it still
costs you 50 points to fail! This randomness hits you in other places as
well, most notably in the word-making game, where I ended up with 3 Q's
in close proximity and no U's (and it has an awful dictionary). Lastly,
each minigame got very tiresome by the 3rd round - they would've all
been more enjoyable if you only played one round at a time. - MH |
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| This is a collection of mini-games nicely tied together with an office
theme. The variety of is pretty amazing but they are pretty bare-bones.
For instance, there is a nice looking blackjack, but no splitting or
doubling down. Individually the games are all pretty average but all of ‘em
together make this package an above-average offering. Wish I could skip the
ones I don’t like, I gave up on the third mini-putt level. - SR |
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| This one's a good collection of office themed minigames. When you
begin, you start in your cubicle. From the cubicle you have a personal
white board you can write on. For fun, I left some insulting notes to
myself to motivate me. There's also your computer monitor which shows
fun e-mail messages on it, and has a nifty screen saver. To actually
play the minigames, you either steal or earn productivity points. By
steal, you "hack" your co-workers cubicles. When you have enough
points, you go see the boss, then play some games. Some of the games
include sorting/shredding faxes, keeping an idea, testing new
"ergonomic" keyboard designs, and mini golfing in the office. Many of
the games are fast reacting click on something or avoid something, with
the odd passive game. There's a lot here to do. Fun game. - MK |
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Black
Knight
(April 30)
Play it Online!
by Arcade Town
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| Since the game is free, you really
have no excuse not to play it. It's fun as a time-waster in the office.
It's not a great game by any stretch of the imagination - I was
struggling to avoid quitting out of boredom long before I reached the
limit of my peasant-smashing skill - but for what it is, a free webgame
you can hop into and zone out, it is very good. There's no depth
whatsoever, but it's strangely addicting for a while. And hey, hooray
for one-button games! So even though I don't rate this very highly, I do
recommend you play it. Did I mention it's free? - MH |
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| In this free flash game you get to wack the hell out of peasants. There is
just something fun about knocking everything down. The cartoon-like
graphics and sounds work very well, worth the download. - SR |
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| Here's a game designed to feed everyone's deep burning desire to club
people for money. Short of the menu's, it's a one button game. It's
not too difficult to play, but you have a gold quota to meet by the end
of each level. It's a well produced game too, with solid 2D animation
and quality audio. Nice. - MK |
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Witch's Yarn
(May 5)
by Mousechief
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| Let's get this out of the way: I am
offended by the fact that this game has a patented element. Software
patents MUST DIE. It's a very unique game though. One real problem I
felt with it is that there's really not much way to know what to choose,
it's almost random - you just have to try stuff and see what it will do.
I admire that it's really something different (I don't admire that that
difference was patented), though in the end it's not the kind of game
for me (or maybe it's just not the kind of story for me - I could
definitely see this game appealing more to women than most games). -
MH |
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| I wouldn’t really call this an adventure game. Actually I don’t think I
would call this a game. It’s more an e-book with extras like still pictures
and sound effects. If you’re looking for a pseudo interactive story about a
witch and her smart-mouthed mushroom this could be just the ticket,
otherwise, if you’re like me and looking for something more then repeated
clicking to show more story text, you’ll be disappointed. - SR |
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| I can't say I've played many interactive fiction games, so I have to
give points for the unique take on the interface and the story. The
interface is a really simplified movie director's point of view.
Essentially you play a scene, and you cue what event should play next,
and based on that event choice, new events unlock. You can actually
lose, as there's a path that actually makes your character extremely
depressed, versus just normal depressed. The story is an interesting
one, about a mother and her magical talking mushroom who opens a yarn
store. You deal with a bunch of interesting people including a mobster
guy offering machine gun insurance. Nice. - MK |
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The
Illustrious Panel for this month:
MH- Mike Hommel -
Hamumu
Mike Hommel is known for his hilarious and bizarre games. Though
his site claims that all his games are just 'dumb fun' you'll find that
they are some of the more interesting games around, and will eat hours
away from your life without you realizing where they all went.
SR - Seth Robinson -
Robinson Technologies
Seth has spent the last fourteen years making odd games, including
designing and programming many independent titles such as the BBS hit
Legend Of The Red Dragon, the multiplayer Flash based web game Funeral
Quest, IGF finalists Teenage Lawnmower and Dungeon Scroll and the cult
classic RPG Dink Smallwood.
MK - Mike Kasprzak - Sykhronics
Coming from a game console background, Mike's responsible for bringing
to the market such oddities as Secret Agent Barbie for Gameboy Advance,
The Emperor's New Groove for Gameboy Color, and several other top girl
branded games (not that he's bragging). In indie land, he seeks
redemption. Mike's best known for his "cute but not girly" hamster
blasting game, PuffBOMB. |
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games slip through the cracks because we just don't know they exist.
If you are a developer, ensure this doesn't happen by
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