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!

Love for the Little Games

The first ‘little’ game of the week was a freebie I spotted on Twitter: Super Crate Box, an indie game from Vlambeer.

This reminded me of the games I used to play on the Spectrum when I was tiny, with simple gameplay, arcade style graphics and music.  I had to kill the music after a little while though, as there was no option to lower the volume and I found it rather headache-inducing..

Dodge enemies, pick up crates, get guns, shoot enemies!

Each crate has a different weapon; dual pistols, shotgun, bazooka, and other weapons which can be unlocked over time like the revolver.. I liked the bazooka best of the weapons I tried, with the explosion able to take out more enemies.

The second game of the week is also a free one; Steel Storm Episode 1 by Kot-in-Action.   Well.. episode 1 is free, and also open-source (woop!) with Episode 2 being available to pre-order.  Not a bad way of doing things!

So.. a top-down shooter with power-ups, loads of enemies, and best of all multiple game modes including co-op!

The game is suprisingly challenging, due to massive waves of enemies, including some which spawn around you as you progress, and bosses which hit quite hard.

There is plenty to blow up.. there are structures you need to destroy to bring down forcefields for progression, but there are also other bits of tubing, crates, etc, which can be blown up.  Some of these reveal repair pick-ups, but there are not enough to go kamikaze.. you really need to make use of cover and avoid getting hit.. but I lack patience!

When you die you lose all the weapons you’ve found up till that point; good for your co-op partner who can grab them, but bad for you when you’re then back to your starting weapon.  We only spent one evening playing this, and I think it deserves more time.. I love it 🙂

Privates

Privates is a really funny game from indie outfit Zombie Cow Studios, all about sex and all the wonderful diseases you can get if you’re not too picky about your partners.

It’s a platform shooter where you and your troop of dim-witted marines go deep into the interesting parts of people who clearly weren’t picky enough about their partners, and shoot the diseases you find there.

I wouldn’t rely on this game for sex ed purposes though – if you think that wearing a condom on your head and shooting at diseases will save you, then you’re in for a horrible surprise somewhere down the line 😉