I could write a massively long post about this game, but I think I'll be rather spartan. The game involves a room, 2 portals, teleporters, time rewinding function, gravity shifting and zero gravity, but not all at once. Super nice presentation and puzzles which ramp up in difficulty soon enough. So either try it out or avoid like the plague!
I keep mentioning Pastel games so frequently, people might think I'm being sponsored by them :P.
So here's their new offering, a point'n'click adventure in their usual style (what else?). If you've been following my posts then I guess there's not much to say here, so if you like the screenshot and played some other of their games, go right ahead and play this too :).
A small point'n'click adventure with lovely hand drawn graphics and nice atmosphere! Enough said I think, enjoy it!
First Gunbrick, then J-J-Jump, then Turnament... if you've played these games, you know that this is: more 48x48 mini-sized fun! Yay!
As usual, the concept of the game is really simple: you control a bird that throws snowballs, and you're off to fight a fire demon. So it's a shoot'em'up, but with an added twist: when you kill an enemy it doesn't just blow up and disappear, instead it starts falling down, moving with the same horizontal speed as it did before. Also, because it's now frozen, anything it touches that it's hot (which can mean enemies or switches) dies as well. This is a life saver for (for example) narrow vertical corridors filled with enemies. Also in the later levels you get to control some machines that have rockets - just block one of the rockets with snow so only the one you want works and then the machine starts moving.
The game lasts for about an hour or less so you can finish it in your first sitting easily. And here's the link if you want to try it out (which as usual I recommend!).
From the creator of Red- comes this one of a kind batch of games.
"But surely", one might wonder, "hasn't the 'spot the differences' genre not only isn't unique, but it's been done to the death?". Well...
First thing that strikes anyone playing these games are the themes of the pictures chosen. Most of the times they're urban photos - freeways, buildings, parks, dark alleys... the common factor is that they're usually unpopulated, deserted, abandoned, whatever. Or if there are people about, they're shown as silhouettes. The photos have been touched up, either messing up with the lighting or adding some common post signs etc. About half the times there's animation in there, people wandering around, cars only shown as headlights, giraffes crossing train stops (?), clouds moving, peoples' silhouettes being painted with random lines and levitating (?), neon signs flickering... The music (or well I should say "drones" that could pass as music) compliment those weird levels, adding a touch of tranquility (perhaps to soothe your frustration) and setting the mood brilliantly.
In a few words, it's mesmerizing.
I didn't mention anything about the games yet. They're all pretty hard with most of the levels having you end up clicking randomly inside the screen. But, frustrating as this is, I always wanted to see the rest of the games, so I pressed on. Sometimes to find all the differences you have to find the first 3-4 and then something happens on screen (for example a car passes by) which changes some things on one panel, creating a difference.
I'm not sure if I made a good case in favour of those games, but I did like them and I'd recommend those to anyone, especially if they're feeling mellow. 4 differences, 5 differences, 6 differences.
P.S. I've played these games in the past, but before I started this mostly personal bookmarks collection which is this site. So I neglected to mention them for so long. Today I played a game called Evoke which is quite similar to these three games. Worth mentioning here I guess!
Another point'n'click series that I've been following was finished recently (episode 1, episode 2, episode 3, episode 4) so it's write-up time!
The story's beginning isn't really original; you are a furry detective called to a small village in the middle of nowhere to investigate on claims that there has been a witch around those parts. Most of the people aren't too thrilled by your arrival, so it's up to you to gather scraps of information here and there to try to piece the story together. After the humble beginnings of episode 1, episodes 2 and 3 really take off and offer a quite original story which is most pleasing to follow. Of course the very nicely drawn graphics and soundtracks add to the experience a lot.
My only gripe is that episode 4 was a kind of a let down, after all this build up. Still, it's free and I can't argue with that - plus the quality is overall outstanding!
Of course without spending a ton of money on cutting edge technology (and of course without any guarantee that it'll work properly) this is something impossible to achieve for anyone except top gaming studios, so the developers thought of something different: have the game which you interact inside a 3D engine. So the game starts by the virtual player (which you control) sitting down on his desk to play a seemingly old styled platformer. The movement is passed to you, and soon enough the character in the game-inside-a-game comes across an obstacle (he can't see). So what you have to do is have the guy pick up his lighter and move it close to the monitor in the area that's pitch dark to light it up!
It's an interesting combination of platformer and puzzler which kept me interested for a while :).
At last, some competition for Pastel games :)
Well to be honest I'm not directly comparing this game to any of Pastel games' offerings - it's just a general comment about the quality of this game. In my (very) humble opinion, Pastel games have raised the bar an awful lot on online point'n'click adventure games (some people call them "Escape games" but I don't really think that term applies here too much), and few other games live up to this level of quality.
Well drawn graphics, fluent animations, outstanding audio, nice back story, challenging puzzles. All the ingredients that make up an enjoyable game present and waiting for you to enjoy them. Here's hoping that the author makes many more quality games!
Hooray, yet another tiny sized game from Nitrome (after Gunbrick and J-J-Jump). This time it's a turn-based game and looks like this:
At first I thought it was a pure turn-based RPG, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it is more of a puzzler than RPG. Your character (the red helmet thinghy above) moves around the screen and the enemies follow their own patterns. The key to winning the battle is attacking the enemies first and not giving them the chance to attack, otherwise you die and end up at the latest spawn point.
Talking about spawn points, each level is split up in many smaller and independent parts, so you don't have to finish a whole level (or the whole game) in one sitting, making it ideal for 1-2 minute breaks between doing other stuff. The graphics follow the same formula as the other two games, that is simple and distinguishable characters and tiles with vibrant colours. Apart from the last level that proved a real bitch, the rest of the game can be completed in about 1 hour which is just fine!
Here's hoping that Nitrome keeps this line of games up!
You're welcome to try it out :).
Usually, when a sports game gets into my hands my initial reaction is "oh damn...". Since I started playing games about 25 years ago I've mostly been disappointed in sports games. And it kind of makes sense, since the software companies used to get a big license from an Olympiad or summer/winter games or get a big contemporary star athlete to sign and deliver a rushed game which would go and sell lots, but would be of little substance (usually very nicely presented but mostly unplayable). There are a few exceptions to this of course (of course!) like Activision's Decathlon or Atari Olympics (which of course was a piss take if you didn't select the man or woman as your character), but try as I might I couldn't think of any more, and that's a bit worrying. (Okay, The Games: summer edition was quite fun, especially when you missed in some events). So what about this?
Well, it's got 15 events so you get enough variation in them. The graphics as you see are blocky and very simple and the sounds barely functional.
But the gameplay is really fun!
Instead of the usual "waggle till your arm comes out of its socket and press fire at the right time oh wait that wasn't the right time you fool!", you just use your mouse (or touch screen). The athlete has inertia, so dragging him across the screen he won't just follow your pointer, but he/she'll gradually gain speed. A power bar is at the top so you can give your athlete unlimited kinetic energy. Also, this bar recharges but you have to leave the athlete alone to cool down for a few moments.
Of course, having an athlete behave like a rigid body, trying to make him compete in an event is dead funny to watch and play! In the first event I tried (Javelin) you have to drag the athlete along with the javelin up to a point and then pull him/her back so that the javelin won't be affected by him/her anymore and go on its way. It took some tries to even make him and the javelin follow my movement, which was fun. But when I started laughing was when I realised that I could lift the athlete suddenly, then lower him down - the javelin would simply go higher and then start coming down, which gave me plenty of time to pull the athlete to the left and give him a good swing to the right to set the javelin racing across the screen :D. Needless to say, the rest of the events are like this and don't repeat themselves - each time you have to find the trick to score higher.
And that's about it I suppose. I had a really good time playing this so I thoroughly recommend it (get it here for Windows, here for iOS and here for Android)
It really does what it says on the title really. It's like Tangram but with the shapes pinned to each other, so you have to fold the parts together before moving them into place. Fun and addictive (and short!)
Game jams really give us quite excellent games. One of them is this little gem over here.
The idea is to guide your character around the screen, grab another small character and head back to the start. But you can't walk, jump or anything else like that to move around; your character's legs can stretch out (not ad infinitum, there's an upper limit to this) into any direction you like (and indeed you can change direction at will) until they reach grass. Then the rest of the body will travel where the traveling leg arrived and then the other leg will do the same. Of course there are obstacles to avoid, which makes timing essential.
A really refreshing concept which I suggest you try :).
Another short game and another hack'n'slash. This one's top down 2D flip screen and is controllable only by mouse. It features a nice mechanic to charge your attack or defend. The idea is to travel around the rooms and get keys in order to progress, but of course the monsters roaming around won't make this easy for you.
As I said above, the game is rather short but it doesn't make it any less fun! Graphics are really nicely drawn with nice little touches around (for example, you character leaving red footprints if he steps on blood). The game awaits for you to try it here.
The first thing that came to mind when I saw the title screen was: "Oh look, they ripped off Spaz/TLB's Megadeth font (as illustrated in the screenshot here).... which he ripped off Megadeth... oookay then"!
So what we have here? You get to roam around a dungeon and slash whatever moves to bits. It all reminds of D**blo very much (nope, I'll never mention any of Blizzard's games other than Blackthorne and maybe Lost Vikings :P) but I find this more fun. 
The characters and moving parts in general are made of flat polygons that move around smoothly (at least on my netbook!) and a thrash metal-y tune is blasting in the background. I really ran out of things to say other than it's fun and easy to pick up and play. So grab it for Windows or Mac (supports multiplayer too) or play it online!
It's been a long time since I played a decent beat'em'up. This one being a LD48 entry makes it double impresssive!
There's not much to say about it. The whole gameplay mechanic is directly pulled from the dime-a-dozen beat'em'ups from the early 90s (like Capcom's Final Fight): walk around, punch everything that moves, punch everything that doesn't move for extra bonus, pick up stuff to throw at everything that moves, health bars on top of the villeins (which of course have silly names), and so on. All this just because the poor protagonist was denied of his raise. Sad isn't it :)? Graphics and sounds are quite top notch and the game plays quite good (like I mentioned).
One of the great things about the rise of touchscreen gaming is the avalanche of original game ideas that have come out of it. Now, I can't say that New Orbit is a completely new game design, but it does bring its own elements to the table, and is packaged into a game that simply doesn't have a peer. Or at least one that I have played.
New Orbit is one of the more unique games I've played on iOS. You play as a shuttle pilot stranded out in deep space after his mothership met a rather nasty ending deep behind enemy lines. Your goal, of course, is to return to your home system in one piece. This is much easier said than done, for more than one reason. The game's controls are simple and manageable to learn, but difficult to master. As the game uses Newtonian physics, you accelerate your ship simply by holding your finger in the direction that you want to go. Of course, just doing this won't make you go in that direction if you are currently moving. You have to take into account the direction you are currently moving in as well as your velocity. And that's just moving from Point A to Point B. Wait until you start doing missions that require you to maintain an orbit.
The game wouldn't be titled New Orbit for nothing. Several of the missions that you encounter will require you to establish orbits around asteroids and other large interstellar objects. When doing this, you have to take many different factors into account, especially your velocity and direction in relation to the size and gravity of the object. Some smaller asteroids aren't that difficult to establish orbits around, but some of the larger ones with high gravity can be a complete pain. Not that it isn't fun, though. The challenge gives a nice feel of what it might be like trying to put an object into orbit, even if you're only using a 2D playing field.
The graphics are nothing special, but really don't have to be considering the scope of the game. They are definitely serviceable and have some nice touches to them. The same would also apply to the audio, which mostly consists of the voice-acting of the shuttle pilot as well as a few others. Considering that the developer, Blackish Games, is essentially a one man operation, I think what's there is definitely most impressive.
What isn't impressive, however, is the lack of content for a game that costs $1.99 from the App Store. Just when the game really is coming into its own, it ends. In fact, there's so little here that it essentially feels like you're playing a demo of a game that may someday arrive. There is only around an hour or so of content so far, and possibly less if you've played it through already and don't have to repeat missions. The game holds a lot of promise, but it's difficult to recommend paying for what amounts to a game demo. Although more content is promised, it has been over a year since it was first released, with no additional content whatsoever. If you're looking for a fun and unique game, I can recommend giving it a try, but only if you don't mind paying more than $1.00 per hour of content.
I wanted to mention this series for a few years now, but I thought I'd wait till it reached the end. Of course, the series has ended for a few months now, but it doesn't matter too much in the grand scheme of things! Anyway...
Pastel games has been supplying us with top notch adventure/escape games for quite a few years now, beginning (I think) with the excellent Submachine series. Lots of one-offs, lots of ongoing series, great visual style each time (with variations for each game), really moody music and sound fx that enhance the games greatly, and, more important for me, lots of little touches like small smooth animations that make the games look really professionally made. The difficulty in their games ranges from challenging to quite hard, so it's not for everyone and I have to admit that a few times I have to consult walkthroughs because I can't figure a puzzle out or forget an item in one room etc. Of all the games I've played from them so far I haven't been disappointed yet, which itself tells a lot.
Anyway, in Covert front you play the role of a female spy, codename "Kara", the time is around 1904 and there's a war with the Germans going about. Some scientists have been missing and the field agents that were assigned to track them down are also missing. So headquarters assign her to investigate. An interesting plot with quite a lot of written notes scattered about so you can try to piece the puzzle together and challenging puzzles.
I'd advise adventure fans to dig right in and anyone else to stay clear! Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.
Wait a minute! Alice? Dead? That's not supposed to happen! And you, the rabbit, her long time partner, wake up next to her without remembering what happened. So go forth and explore around, see if you can jog your memory back and find out who's responsible.
As you gathered, this is yet another alternate universe to that of Lewis Carrol's where everything is not so innocent (although the original version isn't, but anyway!). Lots of violence, gruesome descriptions and generally messed up characters in this point'n'click adventure. It consists of three episodes, neither of which are too big so they're perfect for finishing in one sitting.
To be honest, I could just have you watch the youtube video that is embedded at the end of this post and let you draw your own conclusions. But I suppose I can spare a sentence or two!
This game is built around a really simple idea: the cat moves to the right constantly except when the user tells it to go up or down. It doesn't slow down either, so you need to be quick with your reflexes or you might either crash or get trapped (and the crash again). The game plays really fine.
But the team that wrote it took the extra mile and polished it and made it really special. Some times you think you're painting a modern painting, or walk though it. As far as I remember there's no repetition in palettes (although it's only 18 levels) and to spice up things, different little patches of graphics are pasted on each level. The music accompanying the visuals is really pleasant and really adds to the atmosphere.
Lots of love has been poured on this project and it shows! Download it for Windows, Macintosh or simply play it online. And now, the video!
I bet you're scratching your heads right now, trying to figure out from what 8-bit machine the above screenshot escaped from. But no, it's a new game! (ok, I know that the title also includes platforms and you've probably seen them, but it seemed like a nice introduction ;))
So, what we have here is a simple idea with simple graphics and sound, but a really addictive game. Imagine Superfly but instead of the character moving up or down, have the character move down or left depending on whether you hold the button or not. Or doing a clockwise or anticlockwise circle. Also imagine hitting some coloured lines that reverse direction. Or open doors. Sounds complicated?
Well, it is for the first couple of seconds. Then it becomes second nature, really! And, I realised that I really don't have to add much more, except that you should try the demo or visit the site to buy it!
Every once in a while, you play a game that, while not revolutionary, seems to successfully combine everything great about games of its genre. When you come across a game like this, the whole of the game seems to fit together better than the sum of its parts. That's how I would describe Kingdom Rush, the shining jewel in the crown of the fairly recent genre of "tower defense" games.
Kingdom Rush isn't just your standard every day tower defense game. I would hope that much would be obvious just by what was stated above. In fact, there's few tower defense games that I would really compare to it, although that may largely be due to my usual avoidance of the genre. On first glance, it's easy to notice that the game seems to take some heavy influence from the Warcraft games. And no, I'm not talking about World of Warcraft, but the real time strategy games that came before it. Of course, Kingdom Rush can't really be classified as such, because, well, it if was a RTS, it wouldn't be a TD!
Naturally, the influence from the old Warcraft games isn't quite as much in the gameplay as in the artwork. The cartoony style and colors of the graphics do evoke the look and feel of those games, but also adds its own distinct character. But, enough about the graphics. How does the game play?
I'd have to say it plays pretty damn good. You start each map in the overarching story of the game with money, and possibly a few starter towers. You can then proceed to build towers of soldiers, archers, magicians, and artillery. Each tower you build can be upgraded as you go through a level and collect money from slain enemies. The tower upgrades aren't completely linear, either. Once you have progressed through the game, your towers will give you different branches of abilities, thus allowing a good variety of different towers to guard against the rampaging hordes. It also gives you quite a bit of flexibility in how you want to stage your defense of a level.
Your upgrades don't end with just your towers. Once levels are completed, you can earn stars, the amount of which depending on how thoroughly you were able to complete the level. With these stars, you can purchase upgrades for pretty much everything in the game, ranging from your towers' abilities to the strength of your reinforcement troops. The game gives a great amount of replay value once you have completed the first time around, allowing you to go through and beat various difficulty levels of each map as well as giving you a few more to complete.
If there is one gripe I have about the game, it would be about its insane difficulty. There are one or two levels that can be difficult to complete even after beating the game the first time around and earning some decent upgrades. Also, the difficulty of the bonus levels that open up later is completely retardedly insane, and pretty much impossible to beat.
However, don't let the above dissuade you from checking this game out. With it available for both the iOS and PC platforms, there's no excuse for not giving this one a go!
While playing this, I realised that I haven't reviewed a lot of shoot'em'ups. Of course the reason is obvious: there aren't a lot of 2D shooters coming out for the PC these days, and out of those few make the grade. Either because the controls suck, the visuals are jerky, the graphics are abstract (that's justifiable in freeware games as there's a LOT of assets needed for a shoot'em up. Also, having the graphics abstract is not a bad thing some times, but seeing that everywhere just gets old), the game is short, etc etc etc. But then I started up this game and was greeted with this: 
which quickly became:
The only thought that occurred to me was "wow". Direction, smoothness, nicely drawn gfx, tons of parallax and effects, responsive controls, tough as nails difficulty... I certainly wasn't expecting that :).
So yeah, it's a side scrolling shooter, with the main character having 2 weapons in its disposal, bullet spray and a huge laser which drains pretty fast so you have to use with care. You have no energy bars, so touch anything you shouldn't and you're toast. Each enemy you kill throws some coloured gems that you can pick up for extra score. As you hit each enemy a number next to it appears so you know how much energy it's got left, which is quite handy. Every now and then you encounter a boss that takes its sweet time to die and throws tons of bullets at you to avoid.
Sadly the game is not finished and will never be, but what's there is really good. I guess you know my verdict by now, go and try it out!
Here's yet another old but not forgotten gem (at least by me!). Tri-Heli 2 seems really easy at first sight: maneuver a helicopter around a scrolling terrain, where there are some diamonds buried. The copter is armed with infinite bombs so you can bomb the ground and open a small crater where the explosion happens. Make enough of them in strategic places and the diamonds will be unearthed and you will be able to pick them up and take them straight back to the base.
To make things more challenging, a plane files across the top and throws bags of dirt (I think!) where you open craters, so they can potentially clog up all your hard work and you have to start again. You have to be either really quick about it or more cunning: open up several bogus spots on the ground so that the plane will not cover up your areas of interest. That's really good fun when you manage and outsmart it or maneuver around dirt at the last moment.
But things get even more challenging as the levels pass by with another game feature: the ground level starts going up, and the diamonds are potentially buried much lower under the ground. Which means you start making up complete mines just to unearth one diamond. And of course it is all too easy to get trapped inside if the airplane covers your entry point - d'oh! No amount of words can describe the agony you have and the pleasure you get when you go to the surface with a diamond got from way below!
Give it a try, you won't regret it!
And if you like the Atari 800 better, here's Buried Bucks, the game that most definitely inspired Tri-Heli 2. Coded by Tom Hudson no less!
I remembered about this game because free indie games posted a quite similar game to this. But it isn't as fun as Chain reaction is!
First things first though, the game's description, straight from the readme:
The object of Chain Reaction is to bethe only person left with atoms on
the board at the end of the game.
How do you do it? Dead easy....
When it's your turn, point the mouse
at a cell and click either button.
You can only play in an empty cell,
or a cell owned by you.
Each cell can only hold a certain
number of atoms before reaching
critical mass and exploding. This
depends on where the cell is. A
corner cell will explode with two
atoms in it, an edge cell will
explode with three atoms in it, and
all other cells explode with four
atoms in them. To aid your memory, a
warning sounds when you have placed
the maximum safe number of atoms in a
cell.
When a cell explodes, it fires an
atom into each cell next to it.
These cells are captured. If the
captured cells are now at critical
mass, they will explode as well.
This can lead to quite lengthy chain
reactions.
(yay, I can't find how to switch to a monospaced font, this was actually written for a 40-column text mode, as such is the ST's low resolution mode with a 8x8 font)
Now then, regarding that fun factor I mentioned above. Chain reaction supports from 2 up to 6 players in the same game. Each player can be either a human or AI and while this doesn't sound to exciting in theory, it adds massive depth to the game. For starters the AI isn't stupid and usually can make the right choice, which is to wreak as much havoc as possible in the form of more explosions (emphasis on "usually" - it can make wrong choices!). Couple that with the fact that this game is very dynamic, i.e. every player's status on the board can change on a single turn and you end up with situations where you're dominating most of the board and next turn you're left with one atom or completely wiped out! I really can't put to words what goes inside your head when you've played this a couple of times, it has to be experienced!
I was never a big fan of multiplayer games (partly because I couldn't find too many people to agree to play games on a computer ;)), but this game really holds a special place in my memories. Recommended!
P.S. originally the game is really fussy about how you run it because it wants to run from the root directory of a floppy. Because I wanted to take a snapshot of the game in action AND didn't want to mess around with floppy images, I briefly donned my D-Bug cap and patched the program for hard drives. This is the version I'm offering for download here - enjoy!
Here's another of those games I used to play on the ST: Zap is tiny, both in size (about 8k) and as a game. There's nothing too groundbreaking with this one, just kill all enemies wave after wave till there's no more :). The enemies move fast with erratic patterns that intensify as you make progress. No sound but the graphics aren't bad (plus, 50hz arcade quality FTW!). I actually managed to finish it without any cheats - see how far can you get!
Here's a real blast from the past! Back from a time that the term 'indie' hasn't been invented by the hipsters (or journalists? Who cares anyway!). Back when the Internet was but a dream, and to get any news one had to buy magazines (in my case, imported from other countries) with coverdisks filled with Public Domain (and other) stuff. And in the first coverdisk I ever got (ST User, June 1990), this game was inside:
and what a great game it was (and still is)! Simple shooter, easy to pick up and play, but becomes very tricky after a couple of levels. Basically you have your ship that can only go left/right and waves of enemies come at you. You have to clear each wave completely before you can progress to the next, and with the enemies firing and moving frantically about it can become really hard.
I keep coming back to this game once in a while, in my opinion one of the best PD releases for the Atari ST. Download and play on your favorite emulator already :).
P.S. My brother woke up one day in 2003 and decided to port it to the PC (and I had to rip the graphics for him :P)!
I think a screenshot will describe the game much better than I'm going to, so here it is:
In short, you have gears that turn clockwise and counterclockwise. The goal is to wrap chains around them so they all turn and group them in relation to turning direction. Fun!
Here's a game that will bring back happy memories for those who played its spiritual father, Sheep, about a decade ago.
In this game, you control a sheep dog that has to gather all the sheep and lead them to the light green area. There are different types of sheep: those that come willfully towards the dog, those that try to attack the dog (so they have to be dodged), and those that go the opposite direction from the dog. Also there's a wolf at some levels that tries to grab the sheep for lunch, so you must be on your toes. Later levels also feature lakes (the sheep will drown), switches (you have to put one or more sheep depending on the switch to open doors), and barbwire (the dog loses health upon touching it).
In its essence, it's a tracking sprites routine with cutey graphics, sound that tries to resemble 8 bit machines (thankfully not as annoying as most tunes of that genre are), and really good playbility and level design. Give it a go!
The screenshot and game's name don't leave much to the imagination - it's easy to gather what the game's about! You're a perpetually jumping line with the sole aim of reaching the end. The player only controls the horizontal speed, the moment the line touches a solid block ti bounces back.
But stationary blocks aren't just the only hurdle you have to overcome. There are moving/rotating platforms, empty spots that send you back to the last checkpoint (really fun animation when you hit a checkpoint btw), inverse gravity areas (marked by the background colour changing slightly), moving boxes that have inertia (so you can interact with them), differently coloured platforms that only become active when you hit a switch of the same colour, blocks that go away only when you hit a certain amount of black switches, and spiky things that kill you instantly when you touch them. All the above elements make up for some varied level design which has a nice difficulty curve with only the last few checkpoints becoming really challenging.
Graphics are kept to a minimum, with the physics of the moving boxes being quite spot on. Musically the game consists of some piano phrases, sequenced together and changing the mood a bit depending which point of the game the player is (I think). As for gameplay, the line is really responsive to your movements and has a nice acceleration/deceleration curve. My only problem was on a few areas when I was losing frequently, the platforms weren't reset so I had to wait till they become synchronised again, which killed my buzz a bit.
Anyway, I clocked myself playing about 50 mins from start to end, so if you have an hour to spare, give it a go.
Here's one game I'm reviewing the day it was released :). To be precise, it was released today on the demo party (actually it's demo/LAN party nowdays) Assembly 2012 from the group Bombsquad. Without further ado, let's have a look the game!
Pretty, right? The idea of the game is that you control a volcano's lava and you have to torch some villages to the ground! You can direct the flow of the lava using the arrow you see at the screenshot, but the most useful thing is that you can freeze a block of lava so the rest can travel on top of it. This gives you a sort of terraforming ability which you can use to your advantage to finish the level. Of course the lava is limited, so you have to be quick and manage your resources carefully or you'll end up failing the level.
The lava physics is fun and runs very smooth here. Audio consists of some ambient background noise and the screams of people when a village is destroyed (really useful for keeping track what you have to do, even if it's not on screen). The game plays really nice and you always feel you're in control, so you don't have to blame the game if you fail a level - it's your fault! There's also a built-in editor so you can create your own levels and put the villagers in the hot seat!
I don't know if this is going to be developed further, but I have a feeling that a port of this to iOS/Android would be a hit. Anyway, you can judge for yourselves by grabbing the binary or visiting the pouet.net page to see the comments. Have fun!
