#indie games
#indie games
By: Omar (@siegarettes)
If there’s one thing that keeps me coming back to ACE Team games, it’s their ability to channel aesthetics from all kinds of places into eye catching locations for digital violence. That’s still true in The Deadly Tower of Monsters, a top down action game that takes inspiration from B-movie special effects. It’s a fitting tribute; ACE Team games seem to occupy similar spaces among their peers, banking on the appeal of their art and design while leaving certain seams revealed.
By: Omar (@siegarettes)
Sunset is a game about being caught between worlds. Told in half hour segments before sunset, it tells the story of Angela, a Black university graduate from Baltimore living as a housekeeper in a Latin American country on the verge of revolution. It’s a narrative both reverent and stumbling. Ambitious and vibrant, but still finding its way.
By Omar (@siegarettes)
I’ve played quite a bit of Not A Hero lately. It’s a solid game from the people who brought us Olli Olli. It doesn’t hit on as many points as their previous game did, largely due to a sense of level design that chops up the pace of the game, and makes the proceedings a bit more frustrating when you fail. In that way it reminds me a bit of Vanquish, a game that presents an incredible sense of mastery over your hostile environment when it all aligns and you nail it, but can frustrate up until your able to. What struck me more than that, however, was its sense of humour.
It’s All Hallow’s Eve! Want something appropriate for the occasion? Here’s a couple recommendations to jostle your skeleton around:
by Omar (@siegarettes)
Copy Kitty is a game where a cat with the ability to steal other’s abilities gets sent a military training program by her strange uncle. It’s also a solid action game that combines Gunstar Heroes style weapon mixing with an almost Bangai-O sense of level design that’s built to get you to explore the myriad applications of your weapons. Now I’m a big fan of Treasure, so having Copy Kitty hit some of those same notes solidified it as action excellence for me.
I still found a lot to dislike about it, however.
by Omar (@siegarettes)
Neverending Nightmares
Developer - Infinitap Games
Publisher - Infinitap Games
PC (Steam) and Ouya (reviewed on PC)
Rating - N/A
Neverending Nightmares is not fun. As I played it, it became a game I became reluctant to return to. From start to finish, it was an experience that left me feeling ridden with anxiety. That’s also exactly the way it should be.
Built as a conduit to channel the depressive and intrusive thoughts that creator Matt Gilgenbach experienced following the commercial failure of the studio’s previous game, Retro/Grade, Neverending Nightmares is grave deep in oppressive atmosphere. From the very start Nightmares makes it clear that the experience won’t be fun.
By Omar (@siegarettes)
Does RIchard & Alice need to be a videogame? Visually rough, running on the conventions of nearly archaic adventure games, its presentation speaks of a more handicraft approach in a landscape where indie megaliths are quickly approaching the visual flair and polish of their big budget counterparts. By contrast R&A’s artwork is basic, representational. The soundtrack is part composed works and royalty free, and I suspect that a version of Adventure Game Studio is running underneath.
What’s left to hold it together then, is its writing, an element that videogames have often been anemic of good examples.
By Omar (@siegarettes)
The Floor is Jelly is part of what I like to call “gallery games”. It sits alongside titles such as PixelJunk Eden, Nidhogg, and Proteus as games that would feel just as at home in a gallery as the screen in front of you. It’s a game that takes the titular concept and builds a world around the idea, inviting you to explore and understand it.
