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Top 10 Independent Games for December
(by
The Illustrious Panel - TIP) |
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The December Top 10
Independent Games of the month typically gets overshadowed and
forgotten in the midst of the Game of the Year awards, but you
shouldn't miss it! It included several titles being mentioned in
the end of the year awards and a surprise number one that you probably
haven't heard about...any guesses as to the number one game this
month? Nope you're wrong! Read on oh noble non-crowd following
gamer! |
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#
10 |
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BlockHeads Clash
($9.95)
by Outside the Box Software
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Mike Hommel: 5
 Digital valium. Your only attack in this game is a
head butt that takes a solid 2 seconds to fully
execute. It's all so slowww… and the whole game revolves around endless backtracking through nearly
empty corridors. I like the looks, though.
Seth Robinson: 5
 In this game you guide around a robot in 3D banging things with your head. The four player support is ace. What really bothers me is the game timing – mainly the delays before and after bonking; the intolerable time it takes to get up after falling down after walking into a wall. Fun idea but a bit basic and unpolished yet.
Brian Clair: 6
 BlockHeads Clash is an unusual entrant to this month's roundup. The game was done in Macromedia Director (it popped up an error, which is how I know) and your character is indeed a blockhead. Through the use of your cube-shaped skull you can destroy boxes that contain health and energy, and break holes in the floor in order to dispatch enemy blockheads. The presentation here is cel-shaded and fits the theme the developers were going for very well. My only complaint in this area would be the music due to the lack of variety. While BlockHeads Clash is original, it wasn't really something I would personally choose to play. It may be a game better suited to kids, and with a $9.95 price point you don't have much to lose.
Russ Carroll: 6
 Something like a mixture of Gauntlet and Bonk's Adventure, Blockheads has you wandering about trying to find keys, open locks and of course knock out your enemies. This game is one that is much better as a multiplayer (it supports up to 4 people) than it is as a single player adventure. In fact I'd go so far as to say that if you don't play multiplayer you'll probably not find the experience very rewarding at all, whereas if you play multiplayer it can be good bit of fun. I scored
it in the middle based on that fact. Nice cell-shaded graphics, annoying repetitive music and the play feels slightly sluggish are the downsides. Why can't one of the players use the mouse?
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#
9 |
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Tasty Planet
($19.99)
by Dingo Games
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Mike Hommel: 6
An extra minus point – on my computer, there was no text whatsoever. [ed note:
this problem has now been fixed] I emailed for support and got NO
response. That's one of the more egregious minuses a game can have. Aside from that, there's a really
clever idea here which pulls you onward just to see how things get bigger with each level
(unfortunately, some of the later levels really ruin this – going from eating buildings to being pushed
around by a kite is a bit much!). The gameplay itself is boring, though. It's fairly intense
at some points, but every level suffers the same problem – a "dead point' of varying length during
which you have nothing near your own size to eat, you just have to scrounge around for a long time
collecting tidbits. A tighter design of level layouts would really help.
Seth Robinson: 6
This is trying very hard to be a 2D Katamari but doesn't quite do the concept justice. There are glimpses of excitement in the level design but the majority of the game is waiting for enemies to float in from off screen so you can touch them. A few levels break the mold but the majority leave me nonplussed. Nice but could be better.
John Bardinelli: 7
 While I usually don't like the word "tasty" in a game that stars mutant
bacteria, in this case I'll make an exception. Tasty Planet captures the
wacky fun of its inspiration Katamari Damacy in almost every aspect
except one: exploration. The levels are small, linear and relatively
free of things to pick up. You spend most of your time wandering around
looking for the last few objects you need to in order to grab larger
items. It's an ambitious game, though, that really shows off some
artistic talent. Give me more freedom to explore and gather things my
own way and I'll be a happy bacterium.
Russ Carroll: 7
Mmm, yum-yum! First off, the game isn't without flaws. When you fail a level it says you need to go faster, though typically the reason you fail is because you didn't see anything to eat. The graphics aren't perfect and despite levels ranging from the
microscopic to the macrocosmic, the level variety isn't as plentiful as it might be. However, this game is just a lot of fun. You are a little ball of
grey goo, and you must carefully eat your way up the food chain, starting with microscopic organisms, to dirt, to bugs, to dominos, to sea life, to land life,
and eventually to planets! Sort of Katamari-like, but closer to a Katamari/Feeding Frenzy fusion.
Fun with yummy sound effects.
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# 6
(tie) |
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Once Upon a Time
($14.95)
by Waking Games
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Mike Hommel: 7
A well done and original game. It's basically an FPS implementation of a board game, since it has such
relatively complex and tuned rules. The tutorial is terrible and pretty much leaves everything to the
imagination, but I got the hang of it in a bit. Personally, I'd rather just be blowing the other
players up with rockets (the more complex rules would be a lot easier to manage if this were a
board game! And it'd probably be a good one!).
Seth Robinson: 6
A fantasy themed 3D capture the flag where one of the players is the flag. I really like the idea of each of the four characters possessing different skills, refreshingly different. Feels like slick mod of a game rather than a full game itself. With only four arenas the lack of variety and a single player campaign make this a snack, not a meal. Not related to the card game of the same name. Deserted servers made it hard to test right.
John Bardinelli: 7
An interesting and rather bare-bones take on online multiplayer gaming.
It's essentially a game of hunt/chase where three characters hunt the
princess who is trying to collect the items in an arena. The idea is
implemented very well, but the game itself plays pretty thin and there
isn't much to do after a few rounds. Chase the other player, catch them,
win, switch characters, do it again. What's there is done quite well,
but if only there was a bit more. A huge thumbs-up for the storybook
visuals, though.
Russ Carroll: 7
Any other month this might have scored higher, but it is really hard to play this and the somewhat similar Dawnspire in the same month and score this as highly. The graphics feel a lot rougher as does the play control, though the later is really just a function of having to make quick moves in sometimes difficult spaces. Playing as either the hunter or the hunted in a fantasy setting (seems that fantasy settings are this month's theme) is really a great concept. Are you trying to marry the girl or eat her? If you are the girl you are trying to collect
items while avoiding the other players. Each character has specific abilities that make it fun. Worth a look.
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# 6
(tie) |
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Shelled!
(freeware)
by Red Thumb Games
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Mike Hommel: 5
A tolerable, but not particularly good, Scorched Earth style game. I can't find anything to actually
complain about, except maybe the fact that it's 3D, and 2D versions of this stuff are vastly more fun.
Nothing here to really wow you, but probably some fun to be had in multiplayer with your friends.
Seth Robinson: 8
Easily the most fun 3D scorched earth game I've played. Lot of little things make this work: The shell cam, being able to explode a shell at any time, being able to switch weapons while the power meter is building, being able to kill your jets and shoot from the air, nice weapon purchase system. Being free is the icing on the cake. Alt-tab problem, maybe multi-monitor related though.
John Bardinelli:
8
It's nice to see a well-made casually-oriented game appear in the
Worms/Scorched Earth category. You play the part of a flying turtle
shell who must destroy other turtle shells (who have turrets attached to
them, by the way) using... turtle shells. Haven't I read that Dr. Seuss
book before? Shelled! won't win any awards for making sense, but it will
pick up accolades for smart design and great, fun gameplay, especially
in online multiplayer. It's extraordinarily easy to play and the weapons
take almost no time to learn. You can hop right in, thrash some shell,
then hop out whenever you like.
Russ Carroll: 6
I really wanted to like Shelled! It's not that I disliked it really. I found it to be interesting and fun, but it had a couple of flaws that kept it from really getting over the hump. The first problem is a general lack of balance. The weapons aren't very varied, but there is one weapon that stands out as being so much more effective than the other ones that there is little reason to use any other weapon. So if you can imagine Scorched Earth with one weapon that you should use and others (including more expensive weapons) that you should ignore, you're starting to see where I felt the game fell short. With 8 weapons, I'd like to see them well balanced to their price to increase the intrigue from round to round. Though the movement felt a little sluggish at times it did add another aspect to the game. For the price (free) it's a fun game that you can enjoy playing as a simple deathmatch with friends, but it could have been more.
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# 6
(tie) |
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X-Avenger
($19.95)
by Division Studios
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Mike Hommel: 8
I immediately expected yet another vertical shooter, but this is actually something different! It's
probably inspired by Thrust, but bears very little similarity. Good game all around. Solid, and a
different experience from your average shooter.
Seth Robinson: 6
Gorgeous graphics and explosions abound in this Thrust-like tunnel shooter. The controls never felt right – it tries to straddle the line between lunar lander and, I don't know, H.E.R.O or something; it ends up feelings awkward, especially if you try to use the mouse with it. The level progression, power-ups, save game feature, and challenge keep this from being below average for the month though.
John Bardinelli: 7
Once I figured out how to pronounce the name (hint: it isn't
'Zavenger'), I really got into this game. It feels like a 3D shooter
forced into a 2D perspective and it works quite well. The visuals are
polished to a really shiny finish and are matched by an immersive
soundtrack. As the game progressed, however, I found I was more
frustrated than amazed. While there are a good number of weapons to use,
they don't feel as unique as I want them to be. The game gets really
tough in later stages, so don't let the hand-holding tutorial lull you
into a sense of security.
Russ Carroll: 6
X-Avenger is a mix of destroying action and carefully planned maneuvers that just didn't quite work for me due to the game's absolutely punishing difficulty. Players
maneuver their ship around tight corridors blasting away at enemies
while trying to find switches to open doors and a big rock slab to
cover the vortex. While the enemies simply require a lot of patience to kill, the physical obstacles, such as fire blasting from the walls and smashing objects are just brutal. ("it serves no useful purpose for there to be a bunch of chompy, crushy things in the middle of a hallway. No, I mean we shouldn't have to do this, it makes no logical sense, why is it here?"). And honestly the quote from Galaxy Quest summed up how I felt after being pummeled for the 18th time while trying to get back to a switch that opened a door that I couldn't get to in time because of the enemies on the other side of the mashem corridor who took forever to destroy because I lost all my weapons when I was first smashed and had to fight them with a pea-shooter. AHHH!
(ok breath) Fun for those who like perfecting their every move in punishing games.
A nice difficulty tweak and this might be fun :).
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#
5 |
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Kingdom Elemental
($19.95)
by Chronic Logic & Liberation Studios
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Mike Hommel: 7
In this game, your battle is more with the interface than the enemies (extra problematic since the
enemies are extremely lethal, even on Easy). The target picking is very picky, and most of the time I
found myself unable to click the guy I wanted in the first two or three tries (which led to giving
orders to move to nowhere, since it uses left click to move). In the cramped battlefields it also
became very hard to pick a guy out from the crowd, and there was much rotating. It should really be
turn-based, because that's what it becomes with the need to change orders every 2 seconds and the
impossibility of actually clicking on a guy when it's not paused. If it didn't have these agonizing
interface problems (and nevermind the unresponsive skill buttons!), it would be a fun strategy game
with high difficulty. I like how it incorporates MMO concepts like aggro into a single player strategy
game.
Seth Robinson: 7
Tactical combat in beautiful 3D. You'll want to skip the forgettable storyline and get straight to beating down the many attackers that appear in waves. The key mechanic here is that the action is real-time until you pause; at this point you can issue orders at leisure - which is essential when selecting things can be so damned hard to do! Note quite deep enough strategy and no multiplayer mode, but all in all, a lot of fun. Best tutorial ever.
Brian Clair: 6
Kingdom Elemental is a 3D fantasy combat simulator. The player purchases various characters that fight it out against enemies in waves each round. As you complete waves, you earn unlock points that can be used to obtain new character classes, or unlock one of the three abilities that each class has to make your heroes more powerful. The production values in Kingdom Elemental are quite high, and I couldn't help but be impressed when I ran the game for the first time. Unfortunately, the play experience doesn't fare as well. Each level is essentially more of the same and there's very little actual player interaction needed. All you really need to do is try to build a decent army with the gold you've got, and then the rest is automatic with some power-use management tossed in. On top of this, I found the difficulty to be insanely hard on Normal, which forced me to play on Easy. Even then, you quickly reach boss monsters that seem impossible to defeat. Kingdom Elemental is a decent concept, but stopped short of being something great.
Russ Carroll: 9
Is it the world's first Real-Time Tacticle Combat? Well no, not exactly. Would it be one of the most fun games I'd played in a long time if it had Dawnspire's polish? Definitely. Is it still a pretty kick-but game? Absolutely! Kingdom Elemental is one of those games that my mind just couldn't put down and so I came back to it time and again. There are some balance and interface issues, but it's a cream of the crop strategy game that gets down to the nitty-gritty of a single battle set in a fantasy realm. Well worth the hours it will take you to pass it and
an extra point for having a tutorial that made me laugh.
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# 3
(tie) |
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Neon Wars
($19.99)
by Blitwise
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Mike Hommel: 7
It's half of a shooter! You dodge bullets, and the game shoots enemies for you. That really takes
away a lot from the game for me. I suppose it's very zen to just zone out and dodge stuff with nothing
but mouse motion, but to me it feels more like watching a screensaver (a very pretty one!). It's also
very easy to stay alive much longer than is fun (on Normal or Easy) – you end up with maxed out
weapons, dozens of lives and super bombs, and just sit there wading through the enemies with nothing to
look forward to but a better color on your score (it does eventually become impossible to survive, but
this takes an absurdly long time, and by then you have so many lives that it takes forever to use them
up). Earlier on than that it is fun though. I imagine the fun holds out as long as your life does
when you play on high difficulties. I tried the highest and I died long before I was bored!
Seth Robinson: 7
This abstract retro glowy shooter has the makings of a true classic – power-ups, multipliers, trance inducing sound and visuals, and amazingly good control with a mouse. The real kick in the pants is how the heck can you release such a great score-driven game without including internet rankings? Besides that giant flaw, strong offering.
John Bardinelli: 8
Arcade shooters have a tendency to overwhelm my methodical,
puzzle-oriented brain. Neon Wars does not. The entire game is played
with the mouse. Just the mouse. Your ship automatically fires at the
nearest enemy, so all you have to think about is moving around.
Simplifying everything down to one or two elements makes Neon Wars
extraordinarily entertaining. The game works well in short bursts of
play, as it can get a bit repetitive after long sessions. The neo-retro
style music and visuals are also a nice bonus as well.
Russ Carroll: 8
The first time I played this game I decided it was a bad idea. In my thinking I decided taking away my ability to shoot made the game decided for casual gamers and not for me. Coming back to play the game a second time I decided I can be an idiot sometimes. Neon Wars is anything but casual and anything but a bad idea. I really enjoyed this shooter and its intense action through a very carefully constructed progression path that left my jaw dropping in awe at just how well put-together the game is. However, in order to start to understand
it, you have to play deep into a game, which was actually hard to do the first few times. The game starts so simply and slowly that you'll find yourself nearly bored with the ease of play. Five minutes later things will start picking up and your score will start reaching high enough to give you a power-up or two. After 10 minutes, with a multitude of awesome power-ups at your side and your main weapons becoming faster and more power-ful you'll be swept away in the true brilliance of the title. It's very well orchestrated. The feeling of progression is
well-tuned and kept me glued to the screen for hours.
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# 3
(tie) |
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Dawnspire
($24.95)
by Silent Grove Studios
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John Bardinelli: 7
A great looking hack and slash multiplayer game with a good selection of
characters and areas to explore. The emphasis isn't on building an
avatar from the ground up by sacrificing your social life and/or trim
figure. Instead, you just log in and start hacking. A surprisingly rich
orchestral score accompanies you while you fight. I found the gameplay
itself a little lackluster and repetitive. Unless you can get a strategy
going with your teammates, all you do is run up to other players and
slam your finger on the mouse button as fast as you can. Then you die,
which is never fun.
Seth Robinson: 7
This is a team oriented online PVP fest where games are quick and it's about a lot of left clicking to move (WASD were basically unusable...) and using skills effectively. Like Once Upon a Time, the only single player action is standard play with bots. I hate this trend of not bothering to develop a single player/tutorial campaign and throwing people in the mix with only a few pop-up hints. Stick with it and you'll really enjoy the variety of characters, skills and strategies – providing you can find enough humans around to play with.
Brian Clair: 7
Dawnspire is a massively-multiplayer online fantasy game that focuses on player-vs-player action. What this translates to is that instead of fighting against NPC monsters as in most games (you can play against AI bots), you're going up other human players in a fight to the death. Currently the only gameplay mode in Dawnspire is a type of capture-the-flag where each team is up against the clock to capture three relics and bring them back to your base. At the same time, you need to defend your base against the enemy team who will attempt to steal your relics out from under you. If it sounds like Dawnspire is a work-in-progress, it is. The developers plan to continue expanding the title as time goes on. If you enjoy PVP action or have a group of friends to play with, then give Dawnspire a try. The full version is just $14.95, so there's a low cost of ownership; however, there weren't many people available to play against online either.
Russ Carroll: 9
Dawnspire is
unfortunately often mistaken for a MMORPG, though it clearly is NOT one. It's more of an online action combat game with a
lot of ability to customize your character. Think Counterstrike in a fantasy setting and you've got
the general idea, though I found Dawnspire to be more fun than Counterstrike. In fact, Dawnspire was the most fun I've had playing an online since
Orbz and anyone who knows me knows that is saying a lot. Each of the characters takes a bit of playing to fully master, but after playing several online multiplayer
games this month I was awed by how much better this one was than
everything else we played. Lots of fun and absolutely gorgeous too.
There are a couple of quirky things about the interface, but I found
them forgivable due to the amount of fun I had. I could go on, but
will simply recommend that you immediately download this game and
start playing the endless free trial.
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# 2 |
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Minigolf Mania
($19.95)
by Top Meadow
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Mike Hommel: 8
A very nice mini golf game with very improbable holes! It does have that sort of innate Torque
unpolish. For some reason, Torque users seem to often use default fonts and things amid their
otherwise snazzy presentation. It's a mystery. But it's quite a good game, notably similar to Rocket
Bowl, though in distant hindsight I think Rocket Bowl is superior.
Seth Robinson: 7
Huge selection of nicely themed levels (for instance, the snow ones have Christmas music), interesting contraptions, moving platforms, unlockables, and a strong online rankings element come together to make the best minigolf I've played this year. Sadly, I have to drop it a notch for being technically unstable; especially when trying to use the fly-over view. Great value here.
Brian Clair: 8
As with BlockHeads Clash, Minigolf Mania also goes with a cel-shaded motif for its graphical presentation. Don't let the relative simplicity fool you; however, this game is much cooler than it at first appears. Each level features truly inventive design to be remarkably original, while maintaining a sold challenge level. A built-in high-score table that accesses the Internet lets you know how you're ranking on a hole-by-hole basis as well. Plus, if you score particularly well, you're able to gain access to magic balls that each has a specific special power, such as leaning to the left or nudging the ball forward. While I ran into some graphical quirks on my system, they were minor. If you enjoy miniature golf, you owe it to yourself to give MiniGolf Mania a playtest.
Russ Carroll: 8
I had to throw my first review out and rescore the game after we received a patch. Upon talking to the developer about the up-coming courses I can't help but think that when those courses are released, I'll have to throw out this review and score it up again. Minigolf Mania is sort of Rocketbowl taken to golf. The holes on each of the 3 courses are original and fun and focus on the coolest part of miniture golf (which isn't putting!!!). The focus is
on exactly what it should be: trying to make just the right shot to put your ball past the windmall and going down a long set of corridors into a land you can't even see when you first start
your shot. The lava course was unfortunately not enjoyable at all for me, but the other 2
courses are wonderfully fun. When a couple more are added this will be a must-buy.
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#
1 |
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War on Folvos
($19.95)
by Lonely Troops
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Mike Hommel: 8
A nice straightforward turn-based strategy. It keeps everything simple, which is a good twist for a
wargame, while still making you deal with issues of supply, ranges, and the usual rock/paper/scissors
type concerns. I really have no complaints except for an odd issue where sometimes the units would be
invisible, showing only their shadows
Seth Robinson: 8
Hex grid turn based strategy usually scares me but thanks to an easy learning curve WOF makes it work. With an appropriately epic soundtrack you send units into battle as the Dune-like story unfolds. Why do infantry show the dying animation of tanks? Needs an undo button and something between "fast' and "instant' movement.
Brian Clair: 8
War on Folvos is a turn-based strategy game that pits you as one of two sides fighting for control of a planet. As a commander on the side of the original planetary government's military forces, you fight as a rebel leader who is trying to drive off the new government. The twist comes in that your own government's rulers have basically surrendered control of the world to the other side. So in a way, there isn't a “bad guy” so much as one side doesn't want to be ruled by the other and is fighting for independence. In terms of gameplay, War on Folvos is more of a tactical experience as you have no resources to gather and no way to build additional units. Each mission puts you in command of finite military assets that you must use carefully to achieve your objectives. Visually Folvos isn't anything too special, but the campaign narrative is nicely portrayed during mission briefings (though a bit rough on the localization). I felt that War on Folvo's interface was its weakest point, as there's a great deal of space used for something that ultimately tells you very little: It can be hard to differentiate some units short of right-clicking on them to bring up more details - this is something the interface should make clear at a glance.
Russ Carroll: 8
A solid strategy game that reminds me of Dune 2 with it's futuristic clashes and well-thoght out storyline. The variety of units should make any fan of Military Madness/Advance Wars quite happy. The graphics are quite well done and the music does a fantastic job of making you feel like you are in a real conflict to save your people from being ruled by a imperial dictatorship. Battles are long and sometimes a bit too drawn out, but for anyone looking for a great turn-based strategy game this one is it. I'm not sure we've seen a better turn-based strategy game this year!
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The
Illustrious Panel:
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.
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.
Brian Clair- Total
Gaming.net
Brian Clair was the publisher/editor of the Adrenaline Vault website
for more than nine years before moving to Stardock Entertainment in
early 2005. He currently runs the games publishing division for
Stardock Entertainment and is always on the look-out for the next big
hit.
John Bardinelli -
bardinelli.com
As a freelance video game writer, John thinks he's done something
pretty clever by combining his two greatest addictions into a career.
Now, among other projects, he spends much of his time scoping out the
latest and greatest casual/indie games for Casual Gameplay.
Russ Carroll - Game Tunnel
Russell's first taste of action in the Independent Games industry came
doing visuals and some audio work on several independent games for
BCSoft games. While so doing he became aware of the need for a Game
News and Review website dedicated to Indie games and launched Game
Tunnel in 2002 to fill the void. |
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Scoring
Scale: |
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10 - Perfection |
5 - Below Average |
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9 - Nearly Flawless |
4 - Way Below Average |
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8 - Way Above Average |
3 - Quite Poor |
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7 - Above Average |
2 - Terrible |
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6 - Average |
1 - Just Unbelievably Bad |
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By: The Illustrious Panel Posted: Friday December 22, 2006
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