6 articles Tag platformer

Momentum

September 21, 2010, 0 comments

Momentum

Update: Hmm, which came first: this… or the suspiciously similar My First Quantum Translocator? I’m inclined to think the latter, in which case Momentum’s a bit of a slyly sudden ‘tribute’.

You like platformers with a twist. You like chubby robots with spindly little arms that wobble about a bit when they jump. You will therefore like Momentum, a short little diversion from the man behind double-cat beaut Black And White.

The twist in this platformer is that your robot can ‘store’ momentum to ‘retrieve’ later. So, first, you do a jump and press X to store the upward movement. Then, later, you can reach a high platform by using that previous momentum to boost a normal jump. Yes, it’s quite tricky to explain. And, yes, if you stuck a mighty great glowing gun in the hands of the main character, you wouldn’t be far off a 2D version of Portal. Assuming he could hold the gun with his spindly robot arms, the little cutie.

But that doesn’t prevent Momentum being an intriguing and pleasing little concept. Especially when power-up blobs start appearing to boost or reverse your movement, and cooking up the solutions requires you to turn the temperature up on your brain oven. It’s a bit rough around the edges, but consider it a taster for a (hopefully) inevitable sequel and you’ll come away happy. Play Momentum (Flash)

Dude Icarus

September 18, 2010, 0 comments

Dude Icarus

There really isn’t very much to Dude Icarus. But what there is is really very lovely.

Crafted in two weeks for the Indie City Game Jam, this little beaut sees you collecting feathers that help little Icarus soar higher and higher towards Apollo, who’s hanging out on top of the sun. It combines two of my favourite things: circular platforming (which I’ve had a soft spot for ever since Wario Ware Twisted gave us Super Mario Twisted), and game-area-that-zooms-out-as-you-explore (cf Small Worlds). There’s also some nice music, and – I’ll do you a favour here – a crucial game hint tucked away underneath the game window so you don’t see it until you’ve spent 25 minutes being completely stuck.

This game needs more love. Search for it on Google, go on. You get four measly entries and The Big G snidely asking if you really meant to type ‘Kid Icarus’. Go and play it, and tell all your friends. Play Dude Icarus (Flash)

Nudo

August 15, 2010, 0 comments

Thought I was clever, didn’t I, posting a link to this on TIGForums? Then realised the authors themselves had beaten me to it. I’ll get back into my hole.

Anyway, Nudo is well worth all the links and mentions it’s bound to rack up. Developers Ben Esposito and Manuel Pardo describe it as “a platformer on top of a Rubik’s Cube”. Apt description: you slide each screen’s rows and columns up, down, left and right until your man can leap his way to the treasure and the exit. It takes a while to get your head around, and it’s far from easy – but what I love is that the difficulty comes from puzzling out the solution rather than any pixel-perfect jumps or over-complicated chains of moves. As in all the best games, if the answer seems too fiddly to be fair, you need to go back to the question.

There are some real forehead-furrowing twists later on – and unlike a Rubik’s Cube, you can’t cheat by peeling off the colours and sticking them back on the other sides. Nice to see the colour scheme latching on to the latest Hollywood trends, too.

Play Nudo (Windows, download)

Pixels from the past: Toki

January 10, 2010, 0 comments

toki

Oh gawd, Toki. My main memories of this are playing it on some seedy city centre arcade, on a machine that only let you have two minutes per coin. Two minutes with Toki is nowhere near enough to figure out why Toki exists or what it wants from you. It’s a shooty platformer, yes. But with a fireball-spitting monkey. And zombie monkeys. And monkeys piloting giant floating aztec-style temples with boxing gloves on the bottom. Toki is slow, and it helps you find out exactly how many unfairly-placed deadly exploding stalacmites one game can squeeze in (answer: lots) — but it’s got something, it really has. And to prove it, there’s a sparkled-up version coming for Xbox Live and WiiWare, so this is the ideal time to monkey around with the original. Play Toki (in-browser, Java)

3 games from Andrew Brophy

May 27, 2009, 1 comment

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.

3 games from Andrew Brodny 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)