3 games from Andrew Brophy
Andrew Brophy has released three games in one go — which means to find time to play them all through in one day, I’ve had to give up sleep, naptime, mid-afternoon naptime and late evening snooze. You’ll understand if I’m a bit crabby.
1 Back To The Laboratory. Dodge your pet monkey’s flailing fists — while protecting those very same fists from the evil army fighter jets. The anguish! Below-average shooter, but 10/10 for the monkey drawing. His spiralling eyeballs will haunt you in your sleep for decades to come.
2 Takishawa Is Dead! A visually appealing 3D platformer, ostensibly about the search for the eponymous Takishawa. Mainly notable for having to wait 30+ seconds for your hero to very slowly descend to the first level, which is right up there with the queue at the post office on my Fun-Time Things list. Other than that, Takishawa Is Dead! is strangely alluring stuff, despite its obvious simplicity and insistence that this time, buster, you’re gonna be the cameraman.
3 Sworrd Buster. Andrew, I like this one, I really do. But. You grab the sword, you wave the sword, you shoot astonishingly pretty laser death from the sword… what’s not to like? Answer: INVISIBLE BOUNDARIES THAT MAKE PLAYING IMPOSSIBLE. Tch. Perhaps you’re supposed to stay near to that ‘base’ at the bottom of the level? I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt: those rainbow lasers really have put my eyes in a very good mood.
Play Back To The Laboratory, Takishawa Is Dead! and Sworrd Buster (Windows download)
May 27, 2009 1 Comment
RepliCat
RepliCat is a bit like that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the Enterprise stumbles across a time-shifted doppelganger of itself. Yes, I know — wasn’t that EVERY episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation? Forget that for now: just focus on this very clever, very compulsive little game. All you have to do is fly from planet to planet, dodging the ghostly shadows of your own past — who have the really annoying tendency of doing exactly what you were doing, three seconds ago.
RepliCat is, curiously, both fast-paced and brain-frazzingly cerebral, and the mouse-only ship control really works. The music (Chaoz Fantasy by alextheDJ) is terrific, too. More of this kind of thing please. Play RepliCat (Flash)
May 26, 2009 Leave a comment
MegaSuper:TIMEWARP
Put down that croissant and spend five minutes with MegaSuper:TIMEWARP, Sophie Houlden’s twist on the rhythm action game. Music goes bomf-bomf-bomf, you go tap-tap-tap — so far, so familiar. But wait! The better you are at matching the timing, the faster the music goes. It’s strangely gratifying, and Sophie’s done a bang-on job of matching the beats to the button-presses and luring you hypnotically inside the music. Gets hard and fast at the end, too. As a result, my keys have come off and I want to know who to sue. Play MegaSuper: TIMEWARP (Unity, Windows, OSX)
May 25, 2009 Leave a comment
Heavy Weapons
Starts off slow, this one. Roving spaceship, short waves of enemies, seems a bit easy… and did the developer not get the memo that all shoot-’em-ups need to have glowing neon lights now? But then Heavy Weapons goes shopping. Grab cash from dropped enemies and you can spend it on 20 bigger, beefier guns — the details of which are all hush-hush until you can afford them. The lure of what’s behind that $500,000 slot is too much to resist — and with only three weapon slots, you have to be intelligent about your choices as the 60 levels get more varied, and tougher, and better. Who doesn’t love a field full of retro robots with orange heads?
Good stuff, then. Especially level 15. We eagerly await the sequels, Heavy Weapons 2: Heavier Weapons and Heavy Weapons 3: Ooh No, I’m Not Lifting That, I’m Worried I’ll Put My Back Out. Play Heavy Weapons (Flash)
May 25, 2009 Leave a comment
Toast Boy
Update: Toast Boy too tricky for ya? here’s a Toast Boy save file with all the levels unlocked. Just download it and stick it in the same folder as ‘Toast Boy.exe’.
Blocky pixelated characters propelling themselves around levels with reverse-thrust jetpacks are sooo hot right now. The cute but adorable Nolegs was released just yesterday — and now here’s the all-shooting, all-flying Toast Boy, who clearly isn’t content with the warmth of a toaster and would rather risk frazzling his legs right off courtesy of combustible rocket fuel. This simplistic little platform-shooter isn’t complex, or varied, or easy to control. But it’s got a couple of mini surprises — and cute-as-a-button characters with wiggly arms. Only 25 teeny levels, too, so no need to cancel that crucial lunch, business types. Play Toast Boy (Windows download)
May 24, 2009 Leave a comment
Pixels from the past: Mug Smashers
So I’m worshipping Easy Retro as my new god now — sacrificing goats, the lot. They’re creating a library of old arcade, console and computer games that you can play right in your browser — none of that faffing about with emulators, which means more time for fun and biscuits. One highlight is obscure ’90s beat-’em-up Mug Smashers, which isn’t as good as Final Fight but obv has a much better name. The array of mugs you have to smash include sailors, street workers, and men wearing little more than leotards and an angry face. SMASH THEM ALL, because these basts think nothing of hanging your trussed-up girlfriend out of a helicopter. Or, slightly less sinisterly, driving her around on the back of a forklift truck. Play Mug Smasher (Flash)
May 24, 2009 Leave a comment
Stunt Pilot 2
Not only does this look gorgeous, it plays fantastically too. The aim’s simple: fly through the rings, with only the up and down arrows on your keyboard for company (and Space for boost). It’s tougher than it looks — but Stunt Pilot 2′s one of those games that rewards you for failure. The little men on the ground run for their lives, the scenery explodes and topples, and, pleasingly, even the rings themselves fall out of the sky if you clip them. Which you will. A lot.
Best of all, you can turn the music off. Play Stunt Pilot 2 (Flash)
May 23, 2009 Leave a comment
Shift 4
Oh god. If you haven’t played Shifts 1, 2 and 3, go back and play Shifts 1, 2 and 3. Go on. We’ll wait.
All done? Fun, wasn’t it? And now you’re perfectly prepared for Shift 4, which expects you to be fully briefed on its brain-sizzling concept: press Shift, and the room flips 180 degrees, turning the walls into gaps and the gaps into walls. Like its predecessors, the fourquel improves as your mind and eyes start to work almost on automatic (it feels a bit like mastering the face and the vase). But this time, you’re using Ctrl to switch between multiple people — which ups the satisfaction that comes with trotting impossibly over/through/under/over walls to the exit. And offsets the motion sickness and possible vomiting.
Don’t miss the hidden unlockable achievements, either. Some of them can be earned before you’ve even started the game, hint hint. Play Shift 4 (Flash)
May 21, 2009 Leave a comment
Crunchball 3000
Speedball online, basically. The Amiga futur-o-sport classic hasn’t materialized as an emulated browser game in its own right — but Crunchball 3000 from Ben Olding Games will do very nicely in the meantime. For those new to the idea: run, throw ball, tackle, and don’t bother appealing to the ref — there isn’t one. Even if there was, he’d probably just get face-pummelled to the floor like everyone else. Crunchball is more Speedball 1 than Speedball 2, so no coins, no bounce pads, etc. But it’ll still bring out the hyper-aggressive sports thug in you. Play Crunchball 3000 (Flash)
May 20, 2009 Leave a comment
Party Boat
Messhof (aka Mark Essen) has just released this dodge-the-missiles game. It is fun. But it’s only fun when you’ve worked through the three ‘stages of comprehension’, which are:
1. realising that you’re rotating and thrusting, and — oh! — you can suddenly control the blasted helicopter
2. remembering that the title screen told you that you can ‘FLIP FOR MULTIPLIERS!!’
3. stopping trying to flee from the missiles, and starting to weave elegant looping 360-degree-flipping arcs around the sky that are mathematically calculated to avoid death
Then you’re playing it all night. Play Party Boat (Flash)
May 19, 2009 Leave a comment