Voxatron Alpha

Voxatron is a block-based platform shooter by Lexaloffle Games, where you navigate a small robot around a destructible world made of tiny cubes, with a variety of enemies to kill.  The game is still in alpha, but there are a number of levels included in the game, as well as a level editor and browser so you can check out other people’s creations..

I love the graphics.. the cute little block-enemies, the bright colours, the way everything starts to break up as you shoot it.. I even loved being killed the first time, because of the little cube explosion!

However, I really don’t enjoy the controls.  It’s not the movement.. I spent a great deal of my childhood playing Spectrum games which used cursors or “w”, “s”, “o” and “p” to move, with the spacebar or some other random button for jumping or shooting.  The movement is fine..

What I don’t like about Voxatron is the shooting, because of having to stop running and face the enemy before I can shoot.  I just found this frustrating.. especially when new enemies appeared up-close and I’d have to run away first, to make room to turn and fire.  It’s a shame, but it tipped the balance enough that I found myself not enjoying the game.. and well, I have more than enough games that I would rather play!

If I’m honest, I probably wouldn’t have given the game more than a quick look if it hadn’t been part of the recent Humble Bundle.. I wouldn’t have bought it without playing and loving a demo, certainly.  However, I love the idea of the Humble Bundle.. and I enjoyed the other games in this pack, so I don’t regret the purchase 🙂

Blocks That Matter

Blocks That Matter is a platform puzzle game by Swing Swing Submarine, featuring a tiny robot, blocks and puzzles.. another game with blocks?  Minecraft really has set the trend.. 🙂

The adventure mode is called The Underground Rescue, and it starts with the story of Indie Game Devs in Trouble.  A pair of indie developers have been working on a secret project which their fans have been anticipating just a little too much.. they decide they don’t want to wait any more..

The devs are kidnapped and held hostage with instructions to complete their game overnight.. however, their secret project isn’t a game but a little robot, the Tetrobot, which is sitting de-activated in their office.  To help them, you need to get him up and running!

In the first level, you are only able to collect blocks by bashing into them with your head.  Once you have collected four blocks, the first upgrade station unlocks; going into it awards you the first upgrade.. the drill!

The drill allows collection of more blocks.. sand, wood and stone at this point, more types to come in later levels.

Your next upgrade teaches you to combine your blocks into Tetrominos, Tetris-blocks which you use to help you jump up to other parts of the map to gather other blocks, reach more upgrade points, or get to the exit portal.

Each portal moves you a little bit closer to the devs!

There are also a few enemies.. slimes!  The small ones can be jumped easily.. contact with them more than once will result in them triggering your nanoreset, and you start the level again.  You can trigger this yourself if stuck by holding down the W key: the first time you do this you get an achievement: Someone did it wrong!

The big one, though..

She chased me through one level.. a frantic dash for the exit portal, broken up by entering puzzle mode to create tetromino stairs and platforms to jump gaps.  Maybe she was mad with me because I killed some of the smaller slimes by dropping blocks on them 😉

Sand falls if there is nothing supporting it, so if you drill out the block underneath it, or explode a row of eight blocks, and the sand will fall onto whatever is underneath.  This can be used to kill slimes, to provide a step to climb on, or used in the construction of a tetromino where you don’t want all four blocks to stay put.. all depending on the puzzle you’re trying to solve.

I can see the game getting frustrating later, as any mistakes are punished with the need to nanoreset, and return to the start of the level.

In addition to the Adventure Mode, there is a set of chocolate-themed bonus levels, from the Chocolate Update.. starting with Chocolate Rain.  Many blocks have been switched out for chocolate, and the puzzles here involve having the chocolate blob enemies blow up the blocks 🙂

I found myself stuck after only a few levels, though..  I think I’ll come back to this after the main game!

While checking over the game’s website, I saw that Swing Swing Submarine have another game in the works: Seasons After Fall.  I actually noticed this game thanks to the early artwork, featuring a cute little fox sleeping under a tree..

Image by Djaoul..

Seasons After Fall will be more of a discovery-based puzzle game where you explore the countryside taking advantage of the changing seasons.  It looks as though this was meant to be out in 2011, but they now say it will be done when it’s done.. which at least means they’re concentrating on getting a properly working product together, rather than shipping something out full of bugs.. plus points to them!

The Binding of Isaac

The Binding of Isaac is an action adventure RPG by Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl, the developers of Super Meat Boy.  I got this game via the Humble Voxatron Debut..

I was initially repulsed by the graphics for this game.. a crying boy surrounded by mutated tormentors.. and the story isn’t much nicer.  Apparently, it’s based on a Hebrew Bible story in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and he binds him before leaving him on an altar to die..

In the game, Isaac’s mother begins to hear the voice of God.. who initially tells her that Isaac is unclean, causing her to take away his toys and lock him in his room.. but later demands she sacrifice him to prove her devotion!  To escape, Isaac dives into the basement, where he encounters mutated creatures.. lost brothers and sisters..

To fight these monsters, poor Isaac fires his tears at them.. some, like the squishy-headed thing above, don’t fight back.. while others are immediately hostile.

There are a variety of power-ups and items available too, giving stronger ‘arrows’, shielding or bombs.   The loot from one chest included a yellow bomb with a face.. which I just about recognised as trollface.. just as it exploded, taking away a heart 😮

I’ve had a few forays into the game now, and while the dungeons, loot, enemies and bosses are all randomised, so far each basement I’ve seen has had a treasure room, a shop, and a room with a boss..

The first boss I encountered was Monstro.. who slaughtered me when I got a little too close!

Fighting isn’t complex at all.. if anything it feels a bit cheap as you can just kite the enemy around the room while shooting.  Monstro jumps, landing on the place the player had been standing; easy enough to avoid so long as you don’t get yourself trapped in the corner as I did 😉

The second boss I’ve faced was more repulsive still.. Gemini features conjoined twins: the larger one chases Isaac and strangles him if he gets close enough, while the smaller one intermittently vomits a shower of blood at Isaac!

This boss moves quickly, and I was glad of the rocks to hide behind.. though he did catch up with me on this attempt.  When Isaac dies, it’s game over.. there is no save game system.. you just get to see his Last Will. 😉

The music is actually very good too..
It’s not often I really notice the music in games (especially since I spend a lot of my gaming time on Mumble) but it really adds to the feeling of despair and sadness.  Ok.. I’m off to go hug the kitties now!

The Humble Voxatron Debut

I picked up the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle at the end of September, paying a rather small figure for a number of rather cool indie games.

The latest Humble Bundle is now out: the Humble Voxatron Debut!
As usual, it’s “pay what you want”,though if you want more than the headline game you need to beat the average paid to date.. an absolute bargain right now, as it’s still under a fiver 🙂

The headline game is an alpha of Lexaloffle’s Voxatron, a “voxel-based, old-school-gone-new platform shooter”, where you explore a world made of destructible blocks; it also comes with a voxel designer and level mapping tools, and the ability to share them with your friends!  I wonder if this will be as addictive as Minecraft.. one to explore this weekend, I think!

Also included in the Bundle are the creepy-looking dungeon explorer The Binding of Isaac, by the developers of the equally squicky Super Meat Boy, and puzzle-platform Blocks That Matter by Swing Swing Submarine.

Blocks That Matter sees you play a tiny robot called the Tetrobot, drilling blocks and recombining the materials into other blocks.. it sounds intriguing, but having installed it on my PC at work, I was unable to get it running due to some resolution issue.  I’ll be trying this one at home on the Beast instead 🙂

As for The Binding of Isaac.. I saw this advertised on Steam a while ago, and was repelled by the image of a crying boy surrounded by mutants.. however, I’m not going to let that stop me trying the game out.. that would be silly!

Orcs Must Die Some More

Another game I tried out during ScampLAN was Orcs Must Die!

I previously played the demo, and while I thought the game was a lot of fun, I could see myself getting tired of it.. especially without co-op or versus mode.  Therefore, I didn’t pick up the game, though I will keep my eye on it in case of a nice Steam offer 😉

The full game has more maps and a wider range of traps, though.. including some throwable acid pots which were very nice against small enemies.  These were easier to use than the Boom Barrels, as they detonate with a right click.. or shatter when a trap goes off, rather than relying on you being able to shoot it in the middle of a horde of Orcs.

The demo had limited maps, so I was keen to look at the new ones on offer.  Some of these had numerous routes for the enemies to take, meaning there was even more ground to cover.. for these I set up lots of traps down one path while I fought enemies down the other, rather than try to take them all on nearer the Rift.

The new defenses included Wall Blades, Spring Traps, and the Floor Scorcher.. I used Spring Traps and Floor Scorchers to knock enemies back, though I wished for a faster reset on both!

I was pleased to see new enemies too, as they add a bit of variation.  The Kobolds were fast and rather good at slipping past my defenses.. though acid pots were great for wiping groups of them out.. and the Ogres were tough..

I didn’t get as far as looking at the upgrades for the new defenses, or at some of the other weapons for the Warmage.. but yeah.. waiting for that Steam offer 😉

Dungeons

During ScampLAN, I tried out DUNGEONS on a friend’s PC.
Dungeons is a strategy RPG by Kalypso Media, where you play the role of a deposed Dungeon Lord fighting his way back to power by creating fantastic dungeons and killing off heroes and explorers who come to plunder your riches.

On the first part of the tutorial, you learn how to navigate by taking your goblin minion through a few corridors, and here, I found turning was choppy and awkward.  Fortunately, I was told the game itself wasn’t so bad.. though the next part of the story had me escape my original dungeon lair, and I found it very easy to lose track of where the Lord was amongst all the details, never mind the place he was meant to go!

So.. starting off at the bottom again, you have a tiny dungeon with nothing much in it.  To enlarge the dungeon and your influence,  you need to convert or build monster pentagrams.. first killing any non-loyal monsters.  As well as gaining influence, you need a source of Soul Energy, which you gather from Heroes!  Heroes enter your dungeon in search of treasure, and build up Soul Energy as they do the things they are interested in.. gather gold, fight monsters, etc.  To get the Soul Energy, you simply attack the Heroes and imprison them, which squeezes the Energy out of them!

As I progressed through the first few levels, I found the difficulty increasing too..

Placing monster pentagrams to increase the size of the dungeon meant I kept coming close to the population cap whilst not quite expanding as far as I wanted in any direction.. and meant the monsters were spread around the edges of the map instead of tactically placed near my Dungeon Heart or treasure.  I also started to get harassed by the Zombie King, who wanted me to ‘donate’ Soul Energy to him almost as fast as I was earning it.. this left me less room to concentrate on the missions at hand and made it more frustrating than enjoyable.

In addition to increasing his influence, the Dungeon Lord needs to earn prestige by building gimmicks.. coffins, braziers and so on.  Apart from using them to entice Heroes along different routes within the Dungeon, they do give a nice bit of atmosphere.  However, at times the requirement for a set amount of prestige meant littering rooms with gimmicks and spoiling the illusion altogether.

I did like the options for levelling up the character and his skills, with three skill trees: combat, improvements or building, but felt the only way to go was improvements.. this would then allow you to leave your monsters to handle invading forces rather than trying to micro-manage everything.

A Little Minecraft Project.. and a Texture Pack

A few things have changed since I first set up my Minecraft server.. I turned off the mobs, to avoid creeper-related destruction.. and updated the server to 1.8, to take advantage of proper flight.  VoxelAir is certainly better than nothing, but the flight in the 1.8 update is much nicer to use, allowing tiny, fine-controlled movements.  I also started using the creative mode, because after all, this server is for creating things 🙂

I started on a Dwarven Fortress..

The rest of the fortress is inside the mountain.. carved out with VoxelSniper, and the rest created by myself and a friend.  In just a few days we’ve built most of a city down here! 🙂

We’ve got shops, a brewery, a Tavern and a vast mine leading all the way down to the bedrock.. lit by lava 🙂

After a little poking, I installed a texture pack.. Better Armour Dokucraft.. which actually looks far better than I expected, especially on the lava.. though I’m less keen on how unmined minerals appear.

While playing around with VoxelSniper, my friend managed to add some interesting new friends to the world.. though they were most definitely not welcome inside the Fortress!

Monoculus and More TF2 Goodness!

When we’ve managed to down Monoculus over the past few days, I wasn’t ever close enough to get in the portal to Loot Island.  That changed tonight tho, as I was invited along to a friend’s server to try for the achievement and to receive presents..

Loot Island.. the bit with the skull..

Within the Skull.. the Bombinomicon!  Running through the book gave me the achievement “Dive Into a Good Book”, and when I next died, I received the “Bombinomicon”.. an item which causes player deaths to be as over the top as possible!  I can see the novelty wearing off after a while, but for now it’s all about the silly 🙂

After collecting this, we hung around to play.. normal playing between Monoculus’ appearances, then attacking only him once he’d arrived.  The group on the server were fun to play with, and there was even an agreement in place that they’d take it in turns to grab the random Halloween gift box until everyone had received one 🙂

With the teamwork, we took the boss down a number of times, allowing enough trips onto Loot Island to experience the bombing to oblivion that happens if you try to stay on the map, and to get a look at the back of the Bombinomicon, where you can see a price tag.. $6.66.. and note some reviews on the back!

Apparently the previous two Halloween events are still accessible.. may have to look into this 🙂

Halloween Goodness!

Halloween.. time to celebrate zombies and undead things.. and time to check out the awesome extras added to certain games! 🙂

A friend pointed me towards TF2, and the Halloween map, the Eyeaduct!
This is a modified version of Viaduct, with pumpkins, candy, and ghosts roaming the map.. get too close, and you end up “Scared Stiff”!

There were freebies too: I was given a Seal Mask and Dr Gogglestache.. there were some new achievements to grab.. and there was also a boss to fight!

Monoculus spawns randomly in the map once there are enough human players, and sets about firing eyeball rockets at the players, who have a minute and a half to kill him before he leaves for another realm.  He seems to have a lot of health, and he hits hard.. I only saw him killed a few times during the hours we played, versus the hundreds of times he killed me.

While alive, Monoculus moves around the map leaving behind a purple vortex which grants access to the Underworld.. a special map where you take constant damage until you escape via the second portal.  Players escaping the Underworld get invulnerability and a brief crit boost.. and Monoculus gets stunned in the process, thereby helping to bring him down.

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet grabbed the Bombinomicon..
When Monoculus is defeated he drops an open Bombinomicon, granting access to Loot Island for those fast enough, and a copy of the Bombinomicon.

Last night, I had a decent run with the Demoman.. finding Stickybombs a lot of fun 😉
Tonight’s game included a bit of Heavy and Medic power, which was working out rather well between Monoculus’ appearances.. but again, I think I should play more TF2 🙂

Dungeon Defenders was the second game with Halloween additions, in the form of free DLC.. a Halloween-themed map for high level players, and some unlockable outfits.  The Tavern was also decorated for the occasion 🙂

The Halloween map is available to all, but as I found, it’s far too difficult for low level players.. there are three Eternia Crystals to guard, and the enemies are very strong.  I lasted a whole 48 seconds! 🙂

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine – Exterminatus!

Exterminatus is the new co-op survival mode for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, for up to four players to face wave after wave of Orks..

We’ve waited a while for this mode, hoping it would work better than versus did.. when both myself and a friend ended up with network issues on the PC.  In the meantime, I’ve played with randoms on the 360.. and though I’d rather play with friends, it was still good fun.

I preferred the Seige Ground mode, as it provided a common objective for the team.. playing with randoms tends to mean less useful communication, but players tend to group up on the capture points anyway.

On to Exterminatus, though..

We tried this with just three of us against the waves of Orks being dropped off around the map.  You can play as Tactical, Devastator or Assault, depending on whether you’ve unlocked them yet or not.. and if you’ve unlocked them, you can use different perks too.  I picked Assault because of the Jump Pack 🙂

Just to break things up, there are a few Challenges issued during play too.. such as getting a number of headshots within a time limit.  These award extra lives or increased score if met, so are worth going for.. if you notice them in the Ork-killing frenzy, that is!

There are only two maps.. although there are a number of arenas in each map, which you move through if you clear enough waves of enemies.

We also found that all four players are wanted.. the game does not send less Orks if there are only two players 😉