19 articles Tag 2D

Indie game: Crop Defenders

January 9, 2010, 0 comments

cropdefenders

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)

Indie game: Fat Slice

June 10, 2009, 1 comment

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)

Little Wheel

June 10, 2009, 0 comments

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)

A Day Out West

June 10, 2009, 3 comments

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)

The Pretender – Part One

June 9, 2009, 1 comment

The Pretender

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)