Indie Gala 2 – Quick Overview

I grabbed my bundle of shiny new indie games from the Indie Gala 2 yesterday, adding Greed Corp, Roboblitz, Critical Mass, Fortix 2 and Bunch of Heroes to my Steam library, and to my ever-expanding backlog!  So on to trying them out, in no particular order..

Fortix 2 is a reverse turret defense game by Nemesys Games, an indie developer from Hungary.  The aim of the game is to capture the castle by capturing the land bit by bit, while avoiding the dragons, cannons, and other monsters..

I tried out the Fortix 2 demo a while ago, and found the gameplay rather easy.. maybe too easy.  At the time I resisted buying the game in part due to that, but also because of the backlog.. so I was rather glad to see it in the bundle and have a bit more of an excuse to get it 😉

I’m happy to note that the full game includes more difficult enemies, including Blood Bats which travel along the base line, meaning nowhere is safe!  Maps start to contain hazards such as bat caves, which when captured release more bats to plague you.. the added challenge was certainly appreciated!

One small niggle, though.. the game takes your name from your Steam profile, with no option for renaming.  Ordinarily I wouldn’t care, but with a character limit in place, it trimmed my name to “Sir CoffeeScam”!

Vanguard Games‘ Greed Corp is a turn based strategy, where you need to find the balance between harvesting the land for resources and preserving it. Each hexagon of terrain has a number of layers which collapse as you harvest the land.. these can also be strategically destroyed to throw enemy units and buildings into the abyss!

Combat between walkers is simple.. the larger force on each hexagon wins.. but when it comes to the buildings, you need to look at the layout of the map before doing anything!  Harvesters can be built on any land you own, then on each turn they generate resources out of the terrain they are on, as well as those around them.  However, this erodes a layer as well..

You can use these to sabotage your enemy by destroying the land under them; when a hexagon falls, any buildings or units on it fall too!

I only took a quick look at this game, playing through the tutorial to see how it all works.. I’ll be coming back to this one later, and maybe trying out the multiplayer: you can take on up to three other players across a range of maps 🙂

Bunch of Heroes was next: a four-player co-op shooter by NGD Studios.  Aliens are invading Earth, and summoning a Zombie army to assist them.. and the Bunch of Heroes are our last line of defense! 🙂

There are four playable characters in the Bunch, each with a different special attack:  El Comandante, the Cuban Commander, throws exploding cigars, while Jared Joe, the Quarterback, can make a touchdown for his special move.  Captain Smith, the Duke, can call in a bombing run to assist him, and Agent Liu, the spy, can set enemies on fire!  To use the special attack, you need to kill enemies and pick up the energy they drop.

There are three modes: Campaign, Survival and Timed Mode, with a few different scenarios.  Campaign mode consists of simple missions such as clearing enemies from an area, defending a point for a short time, and rescuing cheerleaders.  I found the cheerleader rescue rather funny, as you have to sling her over your shoulder and carry her..

Aside from screaming when you pick her up or put her down, the cheerleader dances at intermittent points while not being carried.  At one point I died while carrying her, and found it rather funny when she almost instantly started dancing at my corpse’s feet! 😀

The game is designed for four players, and as there are no AI bots, playing by yourself means being somewhat swamped.  After trying the first Campaign, I tried out Survival.. my first attempt was rather brief.. 😉

Roboblitz, by Naked Sky Entertainment, is a puzzle platform shooter featuring a little robot technician who lives aboard a Space Cannon Facility.  The Facility comes under attack from pirate robots led by the MegaNOAD, and Blitz has to get all systems up and running in order to fire the Space Cannon while fending off attacks from the various invading pirate robots.

You start off with only your grabby arms and a spin attack, which is fine for dealing with the Pirate Scouts, but ineffective on larger enemies.  Blitz can also gather collectible Upgradium, which can be used to purchase new weapons: the first of these is the EMP gun, which stuns enemies for a short time, but other weapons are able to destroy them.

I liked the variety of puzzles, spread across different areas which you can access at will, but I found the controls and movement occasionally quite poor.

Blitz’s item handling wasn’t as accurate as I’d have liked, and in getting close enough to pick some items up, I found myself bumping them away instead.  More frustrating was the jumping: in particular, I found jumping into one certain pipe in the Coolant Tower was more miss than hit, with a miss causing Blitz to get stuck on the edge, holding on by the arms.  After a few misses in the fan room, and having to go back to try again, this annoyed me enough that I decided to move on to the final game in the bundle..

Critical Mass, a 3d action puzzler by Manic Games Studios!  There are four modes: Classic, Survival, Meditation and Rush, but the core gameplay is the same in each.. destroy the mass by creating colour combos of four or more blocks.  Simple to understand, but difficult to master! 🙂

I tried Classic first, and quickly realised that this has the makings of an addictive game.. winning a level means proceeding to the next, slightly more difficult level, while defeat means retrying the level.  In this mode, the camera zooms in during play until the whole structure shakes and destroys itself.. producing a combo pushes the camera back and gives you just a little more time, while Survival ‘rewards’ a combo by throwing more blocks into the fray.  Rush mode times your efforts, with the object to clear the mass as quickly as possible, and Meditation is the calm, thoughtful mode where you can aim for the biggest combos on the board, without distraction.

The bundle came with music as well, and I have to note I don’t really listen to game music outside of the games themselves.  However, games without music wouldn’t be the same, so it’s good to see some support for indie music too 🙂

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 😉

Surviving Survival

I thought WoW was meant to be addictive, but I’m finding Sol Survivor’s survival mode more so..

In singleplayer, I’m obsessively chasing the badges, with the current goal of getting the gold badge for each.. it took ages to get the Cwm map with a load of attempts coming in around 20 to 30 seconds short of the required 20 minutes.

A friend offered to help me get the badges, so there was more co-op multiplayer.

The Undoer’s “Wall of Death” was made of lasers in this game, and aside from being rather nice to look at, are quite effective.

We also tried out the versus mode; the map was split up with coloured sections to show where you could place turrets, and we each had a drop point and base.  The “Wall of Death” was more effective than my tactic of spreading out different types of tower along the path, and I lost. 🙁

We managed another three-player game during the week too.. now how’s this for a light-show? 😀

Sol Survivor

Sol Survivor is a brilliant tower defense game from Cadenza Interactive, where you must protect colonies of innocents against the evil Ascendancy invaders.  I love tower defense, so this one was an instant winner for me 🙂

This game gives you an enormous range of turrets; from old-fashioned type pill boxes and mortars to lasers, radiation and lightening towers.. I quite like the drone turret, which sends drones to circle the enemy and shoot them, as well as the speed boost tower, which allows the towers to shoot at insane speeds.

In addition to the turrets, Sol Survivor gives you orbital support weapons, which you can use to finish off any creeps who get past the turrets.  During the earliest parts of the campaign, I preferred the fire bomb, but once I got into multiplayer and was able to try out the other support options, I found Fear and Drones became my new favourites.

Multiplayer Survival is also a lot of fun, and with the ability to share resources evenly between each member of the team, there’s no issue with one person getting an unfair share of the killing blows, and therefore the money.  I think the best we managed so far was just short of half an hour..

We also tried out multiplayer campaign, but found the earlier levels a bit too easy.  Once you’ve placed your first few turrets, the incoming creeps stand no chance.. especially with four of us vying to laser or firebomb them before they’ve even made it down the first stretch of road. 🙂

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II

I recently started playing this with a couple of friends.

My favourite has to be Last Stand.. maybe because I find it easier, though  🙂

So far I’ve concentrated on playing as the Force Commander, which I’m finding a great way to unwind.. there’s just something really sastisfying about running into a bunch of enemies and sending them flying all around!