The Indie Gala Magicka

The Indie Gala has released the latest indie bundle offering: The Indie Gala Magicka.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uMWsFxaArI] (more…)

Competitions and Presents!

What’s better than games?  Free games!  Having seen a large number of Christmas competitions out at the moment, I decided that I may as well try to win some games and spare my bank balance the pain..

So last weekend, I won a copy of the beautiful Trine from a competition on Splitkick.com!  Since I had a copy, the guys kindly let me give it to a friend.. although this turned into a comedy of errors as he told me the wrong email and only realised after I’d told them.. but one more email later, he got the game 🙂

Oh, and I’ve completed Trine too!  I loved the last level, with the continually rising lava, and the evil ghostly figure trying to stop us.  There was also a bonus level, which was another mad dash to escape rising lava, but with purple vials to collect on the way.

Developers Frozenbyte have also now released Trine 2, and I found a few competitions for the game, and told friends to enter too.  One of these involved writing a short story.. and I was surprised to find it really hard to come up with something, and how self-conscious I felt writing it and sending it in.  I realised that I’m even more fussy about my writing than I am about my drawing!

My friend was lucky enough to win one of the competitions for Trine 2.. so he now has both games.. and through DR Gaming‘s 12 Days of Christmas giveaway on Facebook, I won a copy of EA’s Alice: Madness Returns for the 360.. awesome stuff as both Tim and I have wanted this since the teaser trailers came out over a year ago!

Valve have been running a Daily Wishlist Giveaway on Steam over the last week, where a winner each day will get the contents of their Wishlist.  They’ve also had some great offers on, and two friends gifted me games as they came up: Robot Entertainment‘s fortress defence Orcs Must Die and DLC, and Bastion, an RPG by Supergiant Games!

I’ve been playing through Orcs Must Die, and discovered some of the new weapons and traps.. the Fire Bracers allow me to throw fireballs, and are therefore automatically awesome, although I run out of mana rather quickly.. and the Pounder, a ceiling-mounted trap, crushes the orcs with such finality that I can’t not love it! 🙂

I was also pleasantly surprised by the introduction of the Weavers, which add optional talent trees to the game, either strengthening the War Mage or the traps and Guardians.  I love the fact you can choose these at the beginning of each level, so you can change how you play each time 🙂

Trine

I picked Frozenbyte‘s Trine up in the Humble Bundle a few days back, and although I’d seen the name before, I had no idea what the game really was beyond “puzzle action”.

So when the game launched, I wasn’t expecting something quite so pretty and well-polished..

The story is told by a Narrator with an awesome voice, with some rather nice graphics to illustrate the decline of a magical kingdom beset by evil, with the dead rising from their graves until it was abandoned..

This is where the Thief came in.. like all thieves she wants treasure, and having learned of an ancient object hidden within the Astral Academy.. here she is!  The Thief is an acrobatic, agile character, equipped with a bow for ranged combat, and a grapple hook to get around.  Finding the treasure itself served as the tutorial..

On entering the Shrine and touching the object within, she was frozen..

The next character introduced was the Wizard, who wanted to escape the armies of the Undead.. but he saw a light from within the Shrine, and entered..

The Wizard has the ability to move objects, using the right mouse button, as well as create boxes by drawing them using the left mouse button.  This allows him to create a way of climbing up onto high ledges, or interacting with puzzles to clear a path or gather experience bottles which appeared during this level.  He eventually made his way to where the Thief was trapped.. and ended up touching the object and being frozen too!

The third character was the Knight.. he had been training to fight the Undead so he could join the King’s Army.  He also noticed the light within the Shrine, and headed on in.  The Knight is a more offensive character, and on his run to the Shrine I met some Undead skeletons to try my sword out on 🙂

Eventually he made his way to the object, and touched it too..

This then caused the three characters’ souls to be joined together by the object.. the Trine!

From here, you make your way through the Academy, playing as one of the three characters at any time.  You can switch between the characters as you want or need them by pressing 1, 2 or 3 for Wizard, Thief or Knight.

For travelling around, I preferred the Thief.. the grappling hook allows for fast movement and getting over large gaps, and just feels rather nice to use..

Her bow is great for ranged attack, so long as you power up the shot, but for any real combat I preferred to switch to the Knight.. he has the added ability of being able block damage with his shield, whereas the Thief is just too vulnerable at close quarters.

The Wizard has no direct offensive capability, although he can conjure a box in just the right place to land on an enemy and squish him!  I’ve only done that on single enemies so far.. mainly to see if it would work! 🙂

The characters have their own health and energy bars, and it is possible for the active character to die if they take too much damage.  If this happens, you can carry on with your remaining characters till you get to a checkpoint, where they return to life and all characters receive a health and energy boost.  Health is also dropped by some enemies, but first you have to kill them 😉

It appears that you can manage for a short while without one of your characters, as most puzzles can be dealt with by jumping, grappling, or climbing on conjured boxes.. but I wouldn’t like to try taking on waves of Skeletons without the Knight, and the Thief is the only one who can grapple over long jumps, so there will be some places where you’d have to go back to the last checkpoint.

The first boss I met was a giant Skeleton!

I used the Knight almost exclusively here, as the Skeleton moved too quickly for ranged attacks, and hacked through conjured boxes too easily to use them as a barricade.

The three characters are constantly gathering experience, and when they level up you can improve an ability or purchase a new one.  The improvement for the Wizard’s conjure skill allows him to have two boxes at a time.. and later he’ll be able to conjure boards and bridges!  I also found some pieces of equipment such as the Necklace of Life, which improves maximum health points and therefore went to the Knight, and the Ring of Spellcaster, giving the Wizard an energy boost.. this character is the only one who I’ve managed to run out of energy so far.

I might not have completed the game, but I’ve already discovered that it has a local co-op mode allowing two or even three people to play, though apparently it requires game controllers and some configuring.  This allows each player to take control of a character, with all player-characters active at once.. easier in terms of combat, but more difficult as all need to be able to get through the puzzles.  When I’ve completed the game, I might just have to grab someone to try this! 🙂

The Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle!

The Humble Bundle is a pack of indie games offered at a price set by the individual customer.. literally “pay what you want”.. where the money gets split between the developers, charity and the Humble Bundle site itself.. again as each customer sees fit.

Supporting indies and charity?  I don’t see a downside.. 🙂

This particular offer was headlined by Frozen Synapse, a turn-based strategy game which seems to have rated highly justabout everywhere.  While you could choose to pay just £1 for the game, paying more than the average also nets you some bonus games..

In this case, the bonus pack was the Humble FrozenByte Bundle, including: Trine a puzzle-action game featuring a thief, a wizard and a warrior, action games Shadowgrounds and Shadowgrounds: Survivor, a pre-order of Splot, a fairytale adventure, and Jack Claw, a prototype game featuring a guy with a rather large claw!

Trauma has since been added to the bundle, and can be downloaded by those who had already paid and redeemed their codes simply by visiting the unique link sent via email.  This one sounds like a different sort of game, described on the site as a “photographic experience” in the mind of a traumatized young woman.. I’m half-expecting something on the lines of Korsakovia, but we’ll see! 🙂