Indie game: Crop Defenders
You know the world’s running out of twists on the Tower Defence concept when you get a game where bazooka-carrying birds are protecting a vegetable garden from bunnies. But it’s that odd twist that makes Rob Scherer’s Crop Defenders kinda pretty much all right. Things are so much more interesting when your ‘grenade tower’ is actually a parrot indiscriminately chucking explosive barrels all over the shop — especially when, satisfyingly, there’s very little attempt to cutesify everything up. The RSPCA would probably be appalled, but even they must want the terrifying shadowy lake-monsters to be killed with maximum brutality. The game’s one flaw — and it’s a big one — is asking you to direct your birds’ fire, which means that when the feathers start flying and explosions are exploding at ten a second, it’s impossible to work out what the hell is going on. Still. Pretty good. Play Crop Defenders (Flash)
January 9, 2010 Leave a comment
Indie game: Fat Slice
Aaron Neugebauer of Chew On Glass is your new best friend. And then your most hated arch-nemesis. And then your best friend again and possibly something more. Because his new game Fat Slice is great, then really annoying, then pretty special and funny. It’s a neat concept: swoosh your mouse to slice chunks off an on-screen shape — the catch being you can only do it when all the bouncing balls are grouped together on one side or the other. Challenging, satisfying… until it turns into a lot of waiting, endlessly, for balls to move into the right place and burning your eyeballs through staring. But THEN, just when you think it’s done, it has a few cute tricks up its sleeve. Give it a go. Play Fat Slice (Flash)
June 10, 2009 1 Comment
Little Wheel
Created in Slovakia by OneClickDog, Little Wheel is a lovely little thing. The aim’s to restore the electricity to a switched-off robot planet. It’s technically a point-and-click adventure, but only in the way that, say, a car park pay-and-display machine is a point-and-click adventure — the puzzles aren’t really puzzles, and clickable things have big throbbing ‘click me!’ circles over them. But that’s fine, because Little Wheel’s world of silhouette and sunset is a joy to behold. It’s far too short, inevitably, and it’s nearly scuppered by a terrible ‘puzzle’ near the end. But it’s very affecting, and it reminds me a bit of Wall-E. Play Little Wheel (Flash)
June 10, 2009 Leave a comment
A Day Out West
Oh dear. Now I feel even worse for not liking all the hard work that’s gone into The Pretender. Because the game you see above was thrown together in 97 minutes. It’s A Day Out West, it’s by Legendary Creations, and it was put together for the latest 2-hour game development competition on The Poppenkast. All you have to do is jump over cactii, wiggle about in mid-air, and shoot rivals who have seemingly exchanged their horses for trampolines. But who isn’t a sucker for games with giganto-pixels like this? And there’s something massively satisfying about catching those flying cowboys in mid-arc. It gives you a little glimpse into how clay pigeon shooters feel. Clay pigeon shooters on horses. Play A Day Out West (download, Windows)
June 10, 2009 3 Comments
The Pretender – Part One
Hmm. I try to be nice, I really do. But the first part of The Pretender by Launching Pad Games just doesn’t seem to justify the attention it’s getting. It’s one of those puzzle-games-in-a-platformer thingies. You play some sort of Victorian conjuror who opens up a magic portal and has to rescue his trapped audience members from an alternate universe or something. And people complain about stories with plumbers and princesses, eh? In visuals, and music, and atmosphere, The Pretender has the desperation to be Braid written all over it. And the puzzles — which, inexplicably, mainly involve the conjuror transforming into The Incredible Hulk to push rocks about — aren’t quite as clever or compulsive as they think they are. I’ve spent some time thinking about this, and I’ve come to the conclusion that people want to like this because the main character wears a top hat. Play The Pretender – Part One (Flash)
June 9, 2009 1 Comment
Spacetacular Voyage
Wait, come back! Spacetacular Voyage by Sash MacKinnon might be cursed with a teeth-clenchingly awful name. And some equally bad puns, eg “It’s a sine”. BUT it plays a blinder. Your spaceship’s just a glorified mouse cursor, and to survive you have to dodge, push past or blast through a waterfall of falling geometric shapes. It just works, and it’s not short on ideas: one minute you’re using brute force to wade through a hailstorm of clonking great balls, the next you’re negotiating a twisting path of innocent-looking squares. One of the few games of late that has the decency to weave physics into its play, rather than half-heartedly sellotape some gravity algorithms to its head and saunter off for a coffee and biscuit. I like it. Play Spacetacular Voyage (Flash)
June 6, 2009 Leave a comment
Pixels from the past: R.C. Pro-Am
What to do about the relative lack of decent browser-based racing games? Either sit and shake your head ruefully until it falls off. Or play R.C. Pro-Am — the 1988 NES game from Banjo-Tooie boys Rare that’s still one of the best racers in racertown. Race surprisingly fast for 20-year-old technology! Skid around with satisfying just-rightness! Aim rockets at dastardly cheat-happy rival racers! And realise that with that happy little between-circuit screen of medals and cups, Rare invented Achievements about 2 decades before the fates intended. Play R.C. Pro-Am (in-browser, Java)
June 2, 2009 1 Comment
Tokimeki Kikoriaru
Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up silly microgames. Yoshio Ishii’s Tokimeki Kikoriaru lasts approximately three-and-a-half seconds. But I can’t help but love the little thing. That’s about all I can say. Viel Spaβ, as they say in Germany. Play Tokimeki Kikoriaru (Flash)
June 1, 2009 Leave a comment
The Chaser
What exactly is The Chaser all about? Creator Conor Carpenter fashioned it from brain and fingers in just 12 hours, and claims it’s designed to “induce a state of mind and mood”. Here’s how it does it: by making you chase some poor dude through a forest, seemingly forever. It’s tougher than it looks — as the speed ramps up, one carelessly-strewn rock can send you spinning like a dog in tail-chase mode. And it’s weirder than it looks — why does the chasee occasionally grow to about ten times his normal size, and why do clouds suddenly start appearing on the ground? The Chaser is simple, compelling — and comes with music you’ll be humming in your grave. Play The Chaser (Windows download)
Update: oh, it’s one of those games.
May 31, 2009 2 Comments
A Shot In The Dark
So what if I told you that a game you have no control over — a game that is essentially entirely random and isn’t even a proper game dammit – is one of the funniest things you’ll play this week? A Shot In The Dark by Uncommon, part of Castle Paradox’s laudable Terrible Games Contest 2009*, is just brilliant. You press left Shift or right Shift to ‘choose’ the course of ten characters’ lives — but the game basically ignores you and throws out whichever ending it likes. This is what all videogames will be like when the sentient AI has enslaved us all. Thanks to the randomness — and the superb writing — this is one game you will genuinely WANT to play over and over again. Gogogo. Play A Shot In The Dark (Windows download)
* and you really should get over there and download these so-called ‘terrible’ games, because surprise surprise they ain’t that terrible at all if you take them in the correct spirit. Which is that they’re, er, terrible. OOOH PARADOX.
May 28, 2009 2 Comments