#steam
#steam
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Take the elaborate bullet patterns of modern STGs, give them to adorable fantasy monster girls, then combine them into a fighting game and you get Maiden & Spell. A niche within a niche, Maiden & Spell is part of a line of surprisingly varied shooter-fighting game hybrids, following in the mold set by G-Rev’s Senko no Ronde. As you might expect from a combination of such obsessive niches, Senko no Ronde was a maximalist game, one with highly detailed mechanics and obtuse nuances that required serious effort before you could begin to understand what you were playing.
Compared to its contemporaries, Maiden & Spell is stripped down, focused on immediate communication. It turns an intimidating genre into an inviting one, one you can show to your friends and immediately have them understand.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Charming and inventive, Sky Racket’s synthesis of cute-em-ups and Arkanoid immediately won me over. There’s still nothing quite like the arc of a tennis racket, or the escalating tension of long rally, and Sky Racket builds on both beautifully. The crack of a racket and shatter of barriers is satisfying enough on its own, but the game builds on these with inventive mechanics and level design that kept me dancing across the screen.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
With a focus on momentum and aerial combat, Speed Brawl brings one of the best feeling combat systems of modern memory. It combines elements from popular time trial platformers alongside mechanics of tag based fighting games like Marvel Vs. Capcom to create a brawler with a wide range of expressive tools to master. It brings together the need to shave off seconds to get that gold ranking, and the desire to build even more elaborate combos in training mode. All of this is wrapped up in fantastic and varied character designs, each with their own distinct playstyle and synergies.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
I was totally wrong about SNK Heroines. It’s not the followup to SNK Gals’ Fighter nor the girly themed KOF14 style game I got on first impression. In fact, it completely ditches the familiar mechanics of King of Fighters or any other SNK fighters and goes for a pared down approach to tag style battles.
It’s astounding how many genre conventions SNK Heroines has stripped away. For instance, you can’t even crouch. You won’t deal with any high low mixups, or even any jumping cross ups, since blocking has now been moved to a Smash Bros style block button. Blocking can even be used in the air to do an air dodge, or combined with a direction to perform a dodge roll. Dodge rolls can even be done during blockstun for a small amount of meter.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
The first thing you learn when you start getting serious about fighting games is DON’T JUMP. Jumping is an aggressive move that makes you vulnerable, and should be used when you’re ready to go in or desperately need to get away. Despite that, most players are gonna end up turning every fighting game into an air brawl, where fighters feel like they’re on pogo sticks half the time. So I guess Indie Pogo saw that figured, why not make a fighting game where every character is perpetually jumping. In doing that it creates a fighter that moves the competition for territory from the horizontal plane into the vertical one. It’s a curious creative decision, and whether or not it pays off is a complicated question to answer.
By Amr (@siegarettes)
“You are dating every single student in the entire school.”
That’s how Heartbreak High starts. That’s just how damn popular you are. And of course, having done that, that means it’s time to break up with every one of them. The only problem? You’ve got to do it by the end of school, and there’s only 40 minutes left. What follows is a madcap sprint through dialogue trees and surprise minigames, as you play an anti-dating sim in fast forward.
It’s kind of wonderful.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
For a while, Assault Gunners HD seemed promising. Mechs feel weighty, guns fire off with heavy feedback that makes even basic weapons feel substantial, and there’s the eternal appeal of collecting parts and building up your machine. But the longer I stayed with it the more the flaws began to dominate the experience and by the end of it Assault Gunners had become a chore.
by Amr (@siegarettes)
Sometimes a game can get by on a little bit of charm and simple fun. Dig Dog just about does. It’s a small game from Rusty Moyher and Matt Grimm, who brought us the excellent Retro Game Crunch and Astro Duel. Both of those felt like strong executions on existing concepts, backed by a lot of charm.