Indie Royale’s The Alpha Collection Impressions
Indie Royale’s latest bundle, The Alpha Collection is now available, featuring three currently-in-development games: Towns by SMP, 3079 by Phr00t and Wyv and Keep: The Temple of the Lost Idol by a jolly corpse.
Towns is a city building and management game where you organise your villagers to gather resources, build a town, craft weapons.. and then try to withstand the forces that come up from the depths, because your town is built on top of a dungeon!
Indie Royale – The Alpha Collection
The next indie bundle from the Indie Royale is out: The Alpha Collection! This bundle features three games which are currently in alpha: Towns by SMP, 3079 by Phr00t and Wyv and Keep by a jolly corpse.
Be Mine Impressions – Part 2
This is Part 2 of my mini-review/impressions of the games in the Be Mine Indie Game bundle, covering Beep, a physics-based platformer by Big Fat Alien, The Ball, an action-puzzle game by Teotl Studios, and as a bonus for achieving the first goal of $3,000, a point and click adventure game called Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals, by White Birds Productions.
Part 1 can be found here, with thoughts on Wasteland Angel, Sideway New York, and Xotic.
Beep, a physics-based platformer by Big Fat Alien, is the fourth game in the bundle. In the future, robots are sent out to explore the galaxy.. small expendable robots, which are dropped off onto a planet’s surface to explore before being beamed back up to the ship again. (more…)
Be Mine Impressions – Part 1
The Be Mine Indie Game Bundle launched earlier this week.. planned for Valentine’s Day, originally. The bundle is pay what you want, with a minimum price of $1, and 20% of the money goes to Child’s Play..
Games in the bundle: Wasteland Angel, a vehicular combat shoot ’em up from Octane Games, a puzzle-platform adventure called Sideway New York, by Playbrains and Fuel Entertainment, Xotic, an arcade-style first person shooter by WXP Games, Beep, a physics-based platformer by Big Fat Alien, and The Ball, an action-puzzle game by Teotl Studios, and as a bonus for achieving the first goal of $3,000, the three DLC packs for Xotic, and point and click adventure game Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals, by White Birds Productions. The next goal is set at $100,000, with soundtracks for The Ball and Beep, and new EPs.. and a third mystery bonus has been listed, but with no goal value as yet.
Here’s the first part of our impressions of the games in the bundle: Wasteland Angel, Sideway New York and Xotic.. Part 2 containing Beep, The Ball and Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals is here!
I played a chunk of Wasteland Angel last night.. this a mostly top-down vehicular shooter which takes place in the aftermath of nuclear war. I say mostly top-down; most of the levels are top-down, but the story is delivered via cutscenes, and the bonus levels are in first-person mode.
You play as Angel, a tough-talking girl who travels around defending small settlements of survivors from waves of bad guys who want to enslave them and/or use them as target practise. The first towns you visit have two levels, one in daytime and one at night, where you must defend the town against slavers.
The smaller vehicles will attack you, while buses and trucks head for the town and start capturing the civilians. These enemies were fairly easy to blow up, and many dropped different power-ups or secondary weapons such as land mines and napalm, which you can drop behind you for enemies to hopefully run through. There were a few extra missions during these: collect some items from around the map, escort a civilian vehicle.. and my favourite, manning the Crane of Destruction, a high-firepowered turret 🙂
Following these was the boss level, with several waves of smaller vehicles appearing before the much larger, more powerful boss..
These were harder to kill even with the special weapons, as they had flamethrowers and a spiked roller at the front, and coming in contact with them seemed to send me flying but do them no damage.
This tank had a slight inclination to get stuck on scenery. Oops.
After killing the boss, you get to play a bonus level.. in first-person mode! The graphics weren’t great, and the field-of-view was a little limited, but I really loved being so much closer to the action. A friend mentioned this mode made him feel motion sick though, so maybe it’s just as well it’s only a quick level’s worth..
The gameplay reminded me a little of Renegade Ops, but I found the driving controls a bit less comfortable.. the car seemed harder to steer exactly where I wanted it. Turning was controlled by the left analogue stick, but this was relative to the car rather than the screen. Maybe I was spoiled by Renegade Ops on this front.. but pointing the stick in the direction I want to go just feels easier. I got stuck on the scenery a few times, and had to rely on the AI crashing into me to get free.. I also ended a few waves blind-firing off-screen at enemies who were either stuck or driving in circles out there.
The game is fun, and I do plan to finish the story, but I don’t think I’d be going back to it afterwards. I prefer Renegade Ops, with its more intuitive driving and fun multiplayer with friends.. Wasteland Angel is singleplayer only, though with highscores to chase.
Sideway New York, a puzzle-platform adventure by Playbrains and Fuel Entertainment, was the next game on the list..
You play as graffiti artist Nox, who sprays over the wrong tag and gets sucked into an alternate universe controlled by the Dark Artist, Spray. Your goal is to defeat him, escape, and rescue your friend! Having been transformed into a graffiti figure, you are confined to the wall.. but when you come to the edge of one wall, you wrap round onto the next!
Getting across the landscape means jumping between boxes, windows and the tops of doors, and so long as the way isn’t blocked, moving on to the next wall or even the roof. Reaching the roof results in the same wrap-around effect, with the camera moving up to stay with you. Gravity is applied as if you were on a wall, with the ‘bottom’ being the side you accessed the roof from. There are collectible cans and tags littered everywhere, including secret tags and unlockable powers, with some only accessible by leaving the roof and re-entering to change the gravity!
There are painted enemies on the levels too; starting with easy to punch slimes, but you soon meet flying or spitting slimes which require a sliding tackle or flying kick. You start off being able to take two hits before you die, and when this happens you are sent back to the checkpoint with all enemies restored too. As you play you discover upgrades: increases to your health pool, the ability to turn certain tags into solid platforms or objects to damage enemies with, so this initial weakness really isn’t a problem.
I loved the colourful art style and the changing point of view as I moved around the levels. The music is by Mr. Lif.. this is not the sort of music I listen to, but I thought it fit the game pretty well even if it did start to get a bit repetitive.
The game has local co-op, too.. with a second player able to drop in simply by pressing the Jump button for the second controller or keyboard.
The view will expand to show both players on-screen to a point, but the camera stayed with Player 1 when moving onto or off a roof, with Player 2 sometimes then being teleported back to Player 1’s location.. a little frustrating, maybe. None of the puzzles need more than one player, so co-op is just a bit of fun.
I already owned the third game in the bundle; WXP Games‘ Xotic, having been lucky enough to win a copy in January! 🙂
Xotic is an arcade-style shooter set on a planet ravaged by an ancient, mad entity called the Orb, with strange plant life and aliens. Destroying the Scab plants weakens the Orb’s control over the planet, and allows new life to grow.
Killing these is fun.. the Scabs detonate and set each other off, and you can set up a nice chain reaction with them 😀
I found the mouse to be horribly sluggish to start.. I normally have to adjust the sensitivity a good chunk in Source games, for instance, but on this I had to bring it right up to 90. Reading around, many people had problems with sensitivity when the game was launched, and this led to the developers adding higher mouse sensitivity, as well as adding FOV settings 🙂
The goal in Xotic is simply to get the highest score you can, by collecting gems and powerups, and shooting enemies, alien plants, crystals and even seeking out hidden areas and bits of Orb brain. The lure of collecting all the things can mean you end up scouring the level for every last destructible item, which is at odds with the fast-paced nature of the rest of the game.
The game has a Campaign Mode, which you need to play to unlock the other modes, on a per-map basis. The other three modes are Scab Attack, Essense Attack and Brain Attack, which are timed modes, marked on the destruction of Scabs, Essense and Brains.
The tradeoff for the bright colourful environment is that the enemies are a bit hard to see: turrets look rather like Scabs, for instance. Some enemies seem to lurk right at the back of the level, and you have to go and find them.. the level exit doesn’t appear till you’ve killed all of them.
Upgrades were another issue.. while you earn points to upgrade your weapons or character, some of the options were locked and it wasn’t clear why through looking at the upgrade screen. The options actually unlock after successfully completing a level.
There are three DLCs planned for the game, the first of which, The Pipe Works, has been released. This adds three new levels, with towers of metal, and ancient aqueducts beneath the planet’s surface. The DLC packs were unlocked on the Be Mine bundle, but when I last looked (the site is down again at present) there were only Mac codes available: the developers haven’t yet released codes for the PC version.
That leaves Beep, The Ball, and Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals.. which I’ll get round to in Part 2!
Be Mine.. Or Not..
The traffic to Groupee’s Be Mine games and music bundle was rather more than expected, with the site going down almost as soon as the bundle came on sale.
Server capacity is currently being boosted, and the bundle, along with the Antisleep music bundle, will be relaunched tomorrow instead.
Be Mine will contains five games: Wasteland Angel, Sideway New York, Xotic, Beep and The Ball. Customers can pay what they want, with a minimum of $1, and 20% of the proceeds will be given to Child’s Play.
Indie Royale – Valentine’s Bundle Bonuses
The Indie Royale’s Valentine’s Bundle bonuses have now been unlocked!
They are: the Soulcaster I and II Remix Soundtrack, the Zeno Clash OST and the Lume mini-OST. As a extra special bonus, Soulcaster creator Ian Stocker has created the “Merchant’s Legendary Arrangements” mini-album!
All these bonuses can be downloaded from the redemption page. If you’ve lost your key, never fear – you can request a new email which will come with all the keys connected to your email address.
There’s just under two days left to pick up the Valentine’s Bundle! Here’s what’s in it, and here’s our quick impressions of the games.
Some Love for The Valentine’s Bundle!
I just picked up the Indie Royale’s The Valentine’s Bundle, which came with five games and bonus DLC! The first three games, Zeno Clash, Hoard and Lume, along with the bonus DLC for Hoard, all came with Steam keys 🙂
Zeno Clash, by Ace Team, is an action-fighting game in a strange fantasy world.. the visuals are colourful and varied.. but also a bit disturbing, with repugnant, deformed half-bird half-human creatures in a variety of bizarre, revealing outfits.
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the game at first, with the initial cutscene of babies, mannequins and cooking pots, and then the tutorial where player-character Ghat is taught the basics of combat by the growly-voiced Metamoq. The game seemed a bit weird, and I wasn’t sure whether I would get to grips with the melee combat enough to enjoy it. I don’t normally play fighting games, and I found the timing of strikes and dodging a little hard to get right. Fighting felt brilliantly violent, though, with a satisfying thud when I landed a blow 🙂
The story sees Ghat and flee the initial town after killing his “mother-father”, with the assistance of a friend who then faces exile with him. There are flashbacks to previous fights with members of the crazy Corwid, and other combat lessons with Metamoq mixed in withthe journey. More advanced fighting moves were introduced in these later tutorials, but it still seemed easiest to just punch the enemies over and over, and hope not to be surrounded.. many of the fights featured multiple enemies where it became harder to dodge blows. I’ll be trying the gamepad when I next launch the game to see if I find it any easier that way.. I do want to see where this story goes 🙂
I already owned Hoard, by Big Sandwich Games Inc., but hadn’t picked up the DLC: Dynamite Roll! and Flame-Broiled SANDwich. I wrote about Hoard when I got it back in May, and the game itself hasn’t been changed aside from the addition of the DLC here..
New buildings means more variety, and an extra heal from within the Bell Tower is nice if you’ve taken damage while trying to intimidate a town, but the bomb wagon is possibly the most noticeable addition from the Dynamite Roll! DLC, adding a wagon full of fireworks instead of the usual tithe wagon. These wagons still carry gold, but if you don’t back away after setting it on fire, it will take off a large chunk of your health.
You can use the explosion to damage enemies too 🙂
The Flame-Broiled SANDwich DLC is a new tileset, with a new look for all buildings, units and terrain, and even the dragons have more feathery scales. Tilesets can be swapped in the game options, under graphics. Available tilesets are: normal, snow, desert and random, and there’s also an option to set the game to night-time, for a completely different look to the map 🙂
Lume is a point and click puzzle adventure, with beautiful paper and cardboard scenery.. the game was nominated for the IGF’s Excellence in Visual Art award. When I first glanced over the contents of the Valentine’s Bundle, it was Lume, by StateofPlay, that really got my interest.
The story follows Lumi, who has gone to visit her grandfather.. but he’s left to find out why there’s no power in the nearby village. In the meantime, he left lots of little puzzles for Lumi to figure out, with the goal of restoring power to the house.
The first few puzzles were fairly easy.. finding a broken solar panel and re-wiring it, for instance, was a matter of clicking the squares to rotate them and get all the lines to join up. I quite liked this one 🙂
When it came to the later puzzles though, I found one in particular a little frustrating. There is no hint system in the game, which meant looking for a walkthrough.. something I’m not keen on, as I often end up seeing the whole solution when I only wanted a quick pointer. After dealing with that puzzle, I went on and completed Lume fairly quickly.. in part because it is a short game, but also because completing each puzzle led straight to the next and the next.
Lume is actually the first part of a larger story, with the next part currently in development.. progress can be followed on StateOfPlay’s blog!
Completing Lume left me with MagicalTimeBean‘s retro RPG defense games, Soulcaster and Soulcaster II. Soulcaster was previously released on Xbox LIVE, followed by Soulcaster II: this is the PC premiere for both titles.
Soulcaster is the tale of a wizard who manages to awaken the undead in his travels.. fortunately, he also discovers the statues of three heroes, and gains the ability to summon them in order to assist him. The heroes are: Shaedu, the archer, Aeox, the warrior, and Bloodfire, the alchemist. You can summon an image of the heroes by pressing Q, W or E, for Shaedu, Aeox or Bloodfire, with as many summons as you have Summoning Orbs.. you can also summon three of the same hero if you wish.
Each have different strengths and weaknesses; for instance, the archer can do a lot of damage, but needs a clear line of fire, while the warrior has little range but can take lots of damage. Positioning the summoned heroes matters; Aeox can be used to block the path while Bloodfire stays safe behind him and throws bombs to destroy attackers.
Enemies spawn as you progress through a level, sometimes coming from behind you, which can mean repositioning your heroes to face the oncoming attackers. To reposition the heroes, you first need to recall them by pressing R; however, this recalls them in the order they were summoned, rather than allowing you to select just the one you want to move. A shame, as otherwise the controls were great.
If one of your summoned heroes dies, you can re-summon him after a short delay. Bloodfire explodes on death though, which causes damage to all around him including you.. after being backed up in one dungeon I managed to get myself killed this way!
There’s also a merchant on some of the levels, where you can spend all the gold you find laying around in the dungeon. He supplies health potions and scrolls, and upgrades for the heroes’ gear, as well as the rather expensive Summoning Orbs. You have room for up to five Orbs, which would allow you to have up to five summoned heroes in play at once.
This game surprised me.. I hadn’t expected it to be this good, and hadn’t expected to want to carry on playing as long as I did.
As a quick look at the bundle wouldn’t be complete without it, I also took a very quick look at Soulcaster II.. and found it very similar to the previous game. I quickly found that I wanted to carry on playing, but ended up cutting it short because I really want to finish the first game before getting too far in!
For a quick look then.. just the first few levels.. this seemed to be more of the same gameplay, with the three heroes from the previous game along for the journey, and undead attackers springing up to try and ambush us. The description of the game on the dev’s site promises new puzzle elements and a new upgrade system, so I shall look forward to those! These two games really reminded me of my old Spectrum days 😀
The Valentine’s Bundle is available for a few more days yet.. go and get it, and show your love for the indie devs 😉
The Humble Bundle for Android
The latest Humble Bundle is here, and this time it’s an offering for fans of mobile gaming, as the games are available for Android mobile devices, as well as Windows, Mac and Linux.
Games in this bundle are: reverse tower defense Anomaly: Warzone Earth, by 11 Bit Studios, ambient physics game Osmos, by Hemisphere Games, and Mobigame‘s puzzle-platformer EDGE, with 2D Boy‘s classic indie game World of Goo the bonus for those paying more than the average price.
As usual, the bundle is pay what you want, with a choice in how your donation is split up: between developers, the Child’s Play Charity, or the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Humble Tip.