By: Paul Eres

On: September 15th, 2010



1. Hikuri. By Lief. Danmaku (bullet hell) game, where the main goal is to avoid bullets, but not Japanese (sorry, Ashford Pride and Anarkex). The movement’s radial, you can only shoot when within a circle (and it’s automatic inside it). I found it very fun, and it’s still early in development so I’m looking forward to seeing what it’s like when complete, although the only things I think it really lacks are music and a variety of bosses. 29113 is my high score.



2. FRENZY DEFENSE. By JW, who has made dozens of other games like Coptra, 10800 Zombies, The Gutter, and Gregg the Egg. It’s a simplified tower defense game where clicking places a tower; the type placed depends only on how much money you have. Although somewhat random rather than strategic the frenzy makes up for it. My current high score is 109.



3. Probe L. By Tadeon. Mouse-controlled game, hard to describe but easy to understand once you see how it works. The challenge ramps up quickly, and is usually of the “I know what I have to do but it’s very hard to do it” sort, rather than being a puzzle. The movement system is what really makes this game unique, it’d be interesting to see this system used in an action game.



4. Chill Out. By GZ Storm, who collaborated with Tales of Games on Barkley: Shut Up and Jam, Gaiden. Made as a remake of an Action 52 game for Mr. Podunkian’s Action 52 Owns contest. The point of that contest is to take all the terrible games from the Action 52 collection and remake them to good games, and this one does a pretty fair job at that. I especially liked the Super Mario Bros. 3 style level selection screen.



5. Dude Icarus. By Switchbreak. Platformer where you collect features, each of which gives you an additional “jump” (you start with a double-jump, next a triple, quadruple, etc.). The goal is to get to the sun. Nicely designed and peaceful, although patience is required to complete the game due to how slow the platforms that you need to get higher move around the world, and how few of them there are rotating around the world.



6. The Arm. By Tipp (who also made two A Game By Its Cover entries: Pidgeon Racing and Refus Q. Jibberjabber’s Day Out. Grab the blocks with your arm and drop them in the fire. I loved the art style. It’s a short five-minute game, but memorable. A few problems with collisions and controls. The game reminded me of Arms, a relatively unknown game by cactus, which both feature mouse control of an arm and grabbing things.



7. L’Abbaye Des Morts. By one of the makers of Hydorah, Locomalito. It’s a puzzle platformer that has unique riddle-like puzzles and requires a high level of platforming skill. It’s pretty short, but some of the puzzles are obscure enough that without a walkthrough you may never solve them. There are limited lives, no continues, no saving, no pausing. Good luck.

8. Cadet 227. By Shen Games. A game without visuals, intended for the blind but playable by anyone. Pretty short, but only the first three parts of it are done. Worth playing just to see an example of how an audio-only game can be implemented. No image because, well, it’s audio-only. There’s a video trailer here.



9. Loneliness. By Necessary Games (aka Jordon Magnuson aka Flaming Pear aka the founder of TIGSource.com). Notgame about loneliness. I liked how different orientations of dots could be taken to represent different kinds of social structures. Don’t expect much game here, and also the controls don’t seem to work for me in Chrome (only FireFox). It reminded me of one of my lone Flash experimental game which I probably shouldn’t link to for fear of self-promotion accusations, but the basic idea of representing social structures through the gravitational relations between particles was similar. Also, there’s a message at the ending, so when the screen goes black don’t quit just yet.



10. TimeStill 2. By Zack, who made other games like 5400 zombies and Paper Dreams. Platformer where the main mechanic is the ability to stop and restart time. When time is stopped, you can do things like stand on bullets, using them as platforms. I found the controls too slippery for my tastes though (vertical speed is much faster than horizontal speed, which feels strange). But the graphics and level design are pretty good.



Classic of the week: Orbit Racers. By Pug Fugly, who is perhaps best known for Return to Sector 9. I reviewed Orbit Racers on TimW’s old indygamer blog years ago when it first came out, but still replay it from time to time. It’s a single-button racing game where the button moves you into or out of the orbit. It shares some similarities with the Super Mario Kart games: collecting items which knock back other players, and driving over arrows to zoom forward. Very well-made.