Here are some things I did in Intrusion 2:
Intrusion 2 is awesome.
Please remember that you can click on images for larger versions.
Games have always had a certain obsession with water. Water is notoriously difficult to model, so game designers have sought all sorts of tricks to make it look more realistic. Early attempts were often simple flat planes, with a change of the color palette (and sound effects) to indicate when the player was submerged. Later, pre-made looped animations could create impressive waterfalls or rivers, but these failed to respond believably when the player or another object interrupted the flow. Even modern games like Skyrim use different methods to make the water look and feel realistic with varying degrees of success; advanced mathematics determine how the liquid surface reflects light, which looks stunning, but most bodies of water are still flat planes with canned wave animations. Water that actually behaves realistically is virtually unheard of in games.
Things are moving ever forwards, of course. From Dust has some pretty cool water and lava physics, and fancy new graphics tech can render some fantastic-looking water in real time, although it’s not in any games yet. But while realistic water in a three-dimensional environment may still be in the early stages, some two-dimensional games already offer real fluid dynamics. Vessel is such a game.
Unlike the rest of the games in the Marathon, Barbarium was actually released after the Marathon started. That was still over two months ago, however. This is why I used the word Marathon for this series. Anyway, Barbarium is the first game from Hypnohustler Games, which is actually a single person with no prior programming experience. It’s quite impressive, considering, and I’m not surprised it took two years to make.
As the title suggests, it’s a game about a barbarian. By which I mean a huge, hulking man wearing nothing but a fur speedo, carrying a big sword in one hand and a laser pistol in the other.
Oh yeah, there are laser pistols too.
The next game in the Marathon is Snapshot, by the two-man team known as Retro Affect (and otherwise known as Kyle Pulver and David Carrigg). Kyle Pulver has been developing indie platformers for some time, starting with Bonesaw: The Game which got a brief mention in my round-up of indie platformer classics. But he’s better known for his later work, including Jottobots (with J. Otto Seibold) and Offspring Fling. For David Carrigg, however, Snapshot is (I believe) his first platformer, as he was previously working on MMOs (that’s Massively Multiplayer Online games, for those who don’t know; think World of Warcraft). And apparently there was a third member of the team, Peter Jones, who has since departed but did some art and animation work for Snapshot.
Snapshot’s premise is simple and immediately intriguing. The player character, a small robot named PIC, has the ability to capture certain objects by taking a photograph of them. It can then drop these items again in a different location, sometimes after rotating them first. The early stages start with simply moving boxes around, as any good platformer should, but things quickly become more complex as the variety of objects (and creatures) that can be captured grows. Springboards, projectiles, doors, flying platforms, magnets… all of these things can be captured and used in interesting ways.
The next entry in the Marathon, Nimbus (also available on Desura), was originally released back in 2010, but I didn’t pick it up until it appeared in the first Indie Royale bundle the following year. And, before I go any farther, let’s get this out of the way: many people will not consider Nimbus to be a platformer. The playable character in the game is some sort of flying craft, and it tends to avoid platforms rather than jump on them. While it’s tempting to respond to these people by stating that this is my blog and I can do whatever I want, in this case I think I’m legitimately justified. Nimbus really does feel like a platformer, even if it doesn’t play like a traditional one. Levels are brightly-colored, physically impossible configurations of floating platforms, peppered with bounce pads, color-coded switches, keys that must be collected to open doors, and rotatable cannons for propelling the ship, just like the barrels in Donkey Kong Country. Oh, and spikes. Lots and lots of spikes. Sound like any platformers you know? The levels are even connected to one another via a map that’s straight out of Super Mario World, complete with level names like “World 1-4” and “World 3-3”. And of course there are secret exits in certain levels leading to bonus levels or alternate paths. Even the (extremely limited) story recalls the Mario games: a big evil thing kidnaps your spaceship friend! Go rescue it!
Essentially, Nimbus asks a question that we have all asked ourselves at some point in our lives: what if Mario were a spaceship?
BasketBelle was something of a surprise. I remember seeing some screenshots and a trailer or two when it was released nearly a year ago, but I didn’t actually pick it up. I’d read that it was very short and rather odd. But then it showed up in the Indie Royale Harvest bundle a few months later, along with several other games I was interested in, so I picked up the pack. Deciding that a shorter game was just what I needed after the constantly exploding Explodemon!, I decided to slot it next in the Marathon.
And I’m glad I did, because BasketBelle is really something special.
I’m back from vacation, and the Indie Platformer Marathon continues! Next up is Explodemon!, a game by Curve Studios, the same developers responsible for Stealth Bastard, which I’ve written about before (incidentally, Stealth Bastard recently got a brand new, for-sale Deluxe version which looks excellent, but probably won’t make it into this marathon due to time constraints). Explodemon! was actually released first, but spent quite some time as a Playstation Network exclusive, later being ported to PC, allowing me to play it since I don’t own a Playstation. Unfortunately, it’s more famous for some (false) controversy than for the game itself: just after announcing Explodemon!, the team discovered that another indie developer, Twisted Pixel, had independently come up with the same core idea, namely a protagonist with the ability to explode him/herself. Repeatedly. While the two teams were amiable about the coincidence (read an interesting blog post with the full story from Curve’s point of view here), Twisted Pixel’s game Splosion Man released first, and this ended up being bad news for Explodemon!. Suddenly everyone was calling Explodemon! a ripoff, even though it had actually started development before Splosion Man. This even prevented the team from securing publishing deals, forcing them to finish development with their own funding.
But finish it they did, and it’s a good thing too, because Explodemon! is well worth playing.
I’m going on vacation! I’ll be away from computers for a couple of weeks, so the Indie Platformer Marathon will have to be put on hold until I get back. But you can read the latest entry about LogiGun in the meantime. Awesome.
It’s inevitable that LogiGun will be compared to Portal. There are obvious similarities: the test-like puzzle rooms, an antagonist who constantly chimes in remotely, and guns that shoot puzzle-related things rather than bullets (although they do not shoot portals). LogiGun even has a female protagonist like Portal does, although it’s a sad reminder of the state of the games industry that simply having a female protagonist is noteworthy. Many people will likely take a quick look at LogiGun and dismiss it as a Portal ripoff, which is a shame, because LogiGun is actually an excellent game in its own right.
While Portal used the single mechanic of portal generation married with an expertly-designed (and often hilarious) narrative to create a short but brilliant game, Logigun instead embraces a myriad of puzzle mechanics, all of which intertwine to form some truly devious puzzles. LogiGun has not one, but four different guns, and each has plenty of versatility for puzzle-solving. When puzzles start featuring two of them at once, things get wonderfully complex.
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