Waltorious Writes About Games

Game-related ramblings.

Tag: Indie Time Page 3 of 5

Indie Time: Gravity Bone

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On February 13, 2013

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There’s been quite a lot of talk amongst game-playing types recently about Thirty Flights of Loving, a very short but allegedly very excellent game that does a lot of interesting stuff with storytelling. But what really caught my attention was the fact that it’s the sequel to Gravity Bone (look for the link at the bottom of that page), a game I’d read about many years ago but never got around to trying. I was also delighted to discover that both titles are brought to us by Blendo Games, a developer I became familiar with when trying out the rather relaxing Flotilla.

Clearly, it was time to correct my earlier negligence and play through Gravity Bone.

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Indie Time: Corrypt

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On February 5, 2013

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Now that I’ve finished playing Dishonored (for now, anyway), I started up another big-budget game. But I won’t be able to post about it. Fortunately, I have a backlog of shorter indie games I’ve been meaning to write about. First up is Corrypt, which was making noises in the indie scene a few weeks ago.

Corrypt is a puzzle game. You move your character around the screen one square at a time, pushing boxes around, like you’ve done in many other such games. This time you will also pull boxes, which might seem like a minor detail but was actually a big enough change to keep me stumped in quite a few puzzles. At these times I appreciated being able to explore other parts of the world and try my hand at a different puzzle for a change. Soon I was making good progress, and enjoying the rather strange visuals and excellent music.

If that was all Corrypt was, it would still be worth a look. But it soon became apparent that Corrypt is much, much more.

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Indie Time: Insane Balancing On One Leg In Extremely High Places

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On January 26, 2013

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Insane Balancing On One Leg In Extremely High Places is a game with a self-explanatory name. It’s indie. It’s free. It has high scores. Do you need any more explaining than that?

Oh, all right.

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Indie Time: Swords and Sorcery — Underworld Gold

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On January 18, 2013

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Longtime readers may recall that I was quite impressed with Might and Magic Book One, a game originally released in 1986, when I played it for the first time a few years ago. Impressed enough, in fact, that I honored it with the very first History Lessons post on this blog. Well, it turns out I’m not the only one who likes that particular brand of old-school role-playing. Swords and Sorcery — Underworld Gold is an homage to the first two Might and Magic games, created (as they were) by a single person.

Now, the word “homage” does not fully capture just how similar Underworld is to those early games. The six-character party, the first-person turn-based movement, the 16×16 grid maps, the combat system, and even many specific spells are pretty much copied from the first Might and Magic games. In fact, the original version of Underworld had almost no graphics, just like Might and Magic Book One. Underworld creator Charles Clerc later made a slew of design changes and bug fixes, and hired an artist to redo all the graphics, resulting in the newer, shinier Gold edition.

Actually, let’s talk about those graphics first.

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Indie Time: Endless Forms Most Beautiful

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On January 15, 2013

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Endless Forms Most Beautiful has an interesting history. It was originally released by Dave Hughes early in 2012 for the ZX Spectrum. Yes, the ZX Spectrum, a machine that first hit the market in 1982. There is still a community developing for the Spectrum over at World of Spectrum, although I imagine many of the games are actually played through emulation these days.

Anyway, Locomalito (known for their retro-styled freeware games like Hydorah and l’Abbaye Des Morts) were looking for a game to remake for PC, and decided that Endless Forms Most Beautiful was an ideal candidate. The port not only updates the graphics with a more recent retro aesthetic, but also apparently lowered the difficulty significantly to make it more accessible to newcomers. Now, you can play this remake of the arcarde-style game for free on your PC.

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Indie Time: Megaman Sprite Game

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On December 21, 2012

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Released on Halloween, Megaman Sprite Game is a game made using real Megaman sprites. If you’re played any Megaman games before, you’ll immediately recognize Megaman’s toothy smile, his basketball-toting brother Zero, and of course, Megaman’s predilection for smacking ghosts.

Wait, what?

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Indie Time: The Wager

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On December 4, 2012

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Ludum Dare is a recurring game development competition in which participants are given 48 hours to make a game based around the competition’s theme. The results have been surprisingly good, with the strict time limit forcing developers to focus on a solid core design for their entries, making the competition quite popular among designers and players alike. After Ludum Dare 18, a secondary competition was added called the Jam, which allows for teams and has an extended time limit of 72 hours.

The Wager was an entry in the Ludum Dare 19 Jam, with the theme of “discovery” (see the winners here). Since then, developers Surprised Man have gone back to fix bugs and add some features, and the latest version 1.2.4 is available for free from their site. The game pits the player against the dastardly Sir Lester Marwood, with whom the player has made a wager: whoever can make the most money from their maritime explorations by the end of the year 1777, wins. The player sails north, Marwood sails south. It’s on.

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Indie Time: Kevin Rudd Farming Generations

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On November 25, 2012

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I feel like I’m writing about Japanese-style role-playing games disproportionately often, compared to what I’m actually playing. I think this is because, like roguelikes, they make excellent “break time” games that can be played in short, quick sessions and don’t require a significant time investment. While I’m always playing at least one large-scale game, I can’t always sit down for a serious gaming session, and sometimes these “break time” games are all I have time for. I hope to post about the other stuff I’m playing soon, but it may be small-scale games for a while.

Kevin Rudd Farming Generations is a Japanese-style role-playing game made using RPGMaker [EDIT: It was actually made using GameMaker]. I can confirm that it involves both farming and generations.

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Indie Time: Moustache King Adventure

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On October 26, 2012

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My wrist has recovered enough to allow me to play two-handed games again! I’m playing a few at the moment, but I’m not ready to write about them yet, so I wasn’t sure what to post about. Then I played Moustache King Adventure.

Moustache King Adventure was an entry in the latest A Game By Its Cover competition, in which developers must make a game based on a fake game cartridge (in this case, it was this cartridge). The first A Game By Its Cover competition was hosted over at Tigsource (an indie games site run by Derek Yu, of Spelunky fame), and brought us such classics as Cat Poke and Under the Garden (which is, incidentally, getting a full-blown sequel called Under the Ocean). It seems that the A Game By Its Cover competition has since spun out on its own, with a dedicated website and everything. In this second contest, entrants had one month to make their games from scratch, so most of the games are simple and short. Moustache King Adventure is no exception, but it’s an enjoyable way to spend a few hours. It also has 400% more moustaches than the average game.

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Indie Time: Breath Of Death VII: The Beginning

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On August 17, 2012

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Zeboyd Games are best known for Cthulhu Saves The World, a parody of old-school Japanese-style RPGs. The game was very well received by the gaming press, and made headlines when the PC release made them more money in one week than they’d made in over a year and a half on X-box Live Indie Games. Readers of this blog may have noticed that I prefer to play PC games, and a major reason for that is the openness of the platform that allows indie developers like Zeboyd to be successful. Readers of this blog may also have noticed that I enjoy the occasional old-school Japanese-style RPG, such as Master of the Wind. So, naturally, I picked up a copy of Cthulhu Saves The World.

Then, I discovered that the PC release also includes Zeboyd’s earlier title, Breath Of Death VII: The Beginning. Being rather picky about playing things in the right order, I decided to try it first.

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