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Fishy waters

Fishing! Boats! Exotic fish! What more could anyone ask for? What starts out rather tame with only a small pond and standard fish blows up to epic proportions when you start unlocking new areas and buy upgrades for your ship and gear. The fishing mechanism is surprisingly fun too!

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Together alone: love in limbo

Spooky theme aside, this game is based on the tried and tested formula of "walk through all tiles but only once". But since this gets boring after a while, new elements are added. For example there are 2 characters at the same time, and they can interact with each other. Thus levels become more complex and challenging. Also the story involves all the characters stuck in limbo because they share a common past, so that's a good way to advance the plot too. All in all the game is playable and fun to watch!

P.S. there is also a prequel you can try out here

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Ghost story

It's a real eyecandy of a platform shooter, lots of pretty explosions happening - the screen gets overwhelmed from explosions at times, which is very nice to watch! The game is about shooting the hell out of the ghosts that appear, and avoiding the treacherous platforms. Pressing space will flash the screen for a brief moment so you can see which platforms are real or not. Also you can see platforms that aren't visible so you can plan your jumps accordingly. Fun game!

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Crystal catacombs

Not sure what I want to write here, as this is a demo version of a commercial game. As far as the demo version goes, it looks very polished: Lovely animations and colours (low resolution of course but what the hell), upgrading system, procedurally generated levels, platformy/hacky/slashy action... it's all looking neat. But then again if I'd spend $10 for it, ummmm I don't think so :/. So there.

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The last night

A quite short game in the vein of Flashback - so lovely backgrounds, animations, atmosphere... very polished for a game jam quickie! I read that the authors are trying to make this into a full blown game, so I can only wish them best of luck!

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Stories at the dawn

Well, this isn't a highly challenging game or anything. Just a fun platformer with pretty pixels, sort-of-cooperative-playing (the other player is a bot), and 4 different endings so you don't get bored too quickly!

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Mr. Beam

In soviet Russia, shooting controls you! So yeah it's a Robotron clone, with two variations: a) you don't control the shooting angle 100%. What happens is that there is a cursor running freely along the playfield and when you hit fire, a ray is shot from you towards the cursor. So technically you can aim but not the traditional way! b) while you're shooting, an energy bar decreases. Once that reaches zero you have to recharge it by going close to the cursor. These two variations actually change the original game a lot and add to the challenge! Play!

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Not everything is flammable

in this game you play the role of... fire! And what is the end goal of a fire? To burn stuff of course! But... heed the game's title and choose the items you posess as fire as you might get trapped and not be able ro progress!

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The empty kingdom

Daniel Merlin really knows his stuff. He's proving it time and again with his releases. Just the title of the game, abstract shapes, eye pleasing colours, fitting soundtrack and sound effects, and only one written dialog in the entire game ("I miss you") are enough for him to evoke so many feelings while strolling along the screens. What good is a whole kingdom if you're lonely? Well, click and find out...

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Break the limits!

Well, this one's.... interesting to say the least. Essentially it's a clicker game like candy box but instead of the goal being to amass ALL THE THINGS as usual, your character has to overcome some sort of existential crisis. It's not getting too deep or philosophical but it gets points for choosing such a non standard theme! Play!

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Cat-ana

Mindless fighting game with lovely isometric graphics (a bit voxelly perhaps) and nice mindless gameplay. And made in a hurry for Ludum dare. neat!

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Upstream

Ok, for once I'll quote the author since he summed the game up so nicely!

In Upstream, you control a little diver and have to retrieve lost treasure chests from the bottom of the sea.

The trick is that you can't lift the chests - you can only push them horizontally. To reach the boats on the surface, you have to use the upstreams in the sea (the little up arrows). When there is no upstream go high enough, you can fill the gaps with air bubbles - they lift the chest one tile and disappear, so you have to think strategically using them.

Thank you, the author! Now go play his game!

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The cave of Ātman

Advertised as A Sequential Strategy RPG Puzzler, it does exactly that. No damn "oh look I rolled a dice, which I did it fair - trust me! - and the level 1 thinghy killed you even though you're level 255234" events happening here. It's plain and simple, you have the level to attack the enemy, you kill it - end of! Also of course it's not a traditional RPG in the sense that the enemies don't fight back. The idea is to level up your characters by killing enemies in correct sequence. When you kill an enemy, it drops a collectable that one of your characters can pick up and level up. So it's essentially a puzzle. But damn it, I find it much more interesting than a game that is based on pure luck :).

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Game of the probability goose

I wonder if any board game manufacturer ever though of what this game does actually. It really seems like it's based on snakes'n'ladders or ludo, but instead of a fixed die with the numbers 1-6 you get to choose between different dice each time, where numbers can be repeated. So the probability of the number you're getting is not 1/6 like a classic die. So, depending where you want to end up you can choose a die that has better probability for the number you want. You can also pay coins (if you have collected enough) to get a supposedly better die depending on your situation. All are great ideas to spice the old formula up!

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Platform panic

Well, this one's a great way to preserve your sanity during boring meetings or conference calls ;). The core gameplay is auto running, so the only control you have is jumping. But Nitrome spiced things up by lowering the pace a bit (compared to games like Canabalt) and adding platforms. Also they added various enemies with different movement strategies (homing to you, moving on a fixed path etc). And also randomly chained levels, so depending on the position you exit one level, a random one is chosen from a pool that have entrance in that position. There are upgrades and unlockable characters but meh, the core gameplay's good! Play it online here, Android, iOS.

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Monstrous mini mazes

Well, this is a really hardcore puzzler! After you pass what it seems to be the first level, the screen zooms out and then you start seeing the bigger picture. And there's extra obstacles. And you realise that you have to undo a few of the moves you made which seemed ok. And you start getting a bit scared!

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Interest 98 F

I really have no clue what's happening here. The broken English intro helped a bit, but not that much. All I know is that you are a mouse that tries to reach the top floor. You enter a maze of corridors that expand in a tree like fashion (left/right from top node). You get a coin with each corridor you pass but you can throw it in the left or right corridor to see if there's something (or someone) there. You also pick up some items that you can either consume for energy or throw at the corridors. Ummm that's about it. I've no idea if everything is happening by chance or you can kill enemies with coins or find the best route for each set of 10 floors. I just keep grinding at it for some reason.

Extra links: iOS, Android. One word of warning though, every time I ran it on my android phone, some system service would sap the battery real quick (in a matter of hours) even when I exited the app. So it's a good idea to kill the game from the task manager!

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Super Hexagon G&W

Yup, everyone knew from playing the original Hexagon that it was going to be something special. Then Super Hexagon came out and it even managed to improve on the original formula a bit. Then the tens of clones spawned soon. I knew of the text adventure version but recently a Game&Watch version was released. Sounds a bit crap but really plays nice!

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Avis Anguis

The author says that he was inspired by Snakebird and that he recreated the mechanics in puzzlescript, but to be honest both of them reminded me of coil. In any case this is a nice brain twister and it's definitely something to try out.

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Bloodungeon

Here's a good arcade game to get the blood pumping! Each room is filled with nasty traps which you have to dodge or avoid. But if that wasn't enough, the game's pace is insane, so you get to die a lot. A bit like Stealth bastard but without the stealth bit ;). Play.

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Necromorph

A quite short game (it's for Ludum dare so no worries) about umm some entity that can take the form and abilities of its enemies. Reminded me a lot of Messiah without the stealth bits. It's fun anyway!

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