Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Roguelikes! Everybody worth their salt is making a roguelike this week but the cheeky chaps at Kerberos jumped the gun somewhat and started work on their Sword of the Stars spin-off ages ago. The Pit is out now and can be purchased from GamersGate for £7.99 or through Steam for £6.29. There is also a demo, which I’ve dabbled with. It’s from the Dredmor School of Accessible Roguery, with chunky cartoonish graphics and what I think is a sense of humour. My roguelibrary has a sci-fi gap in it so I’m willing to give the lasers and spacestations a fair shake, but I’ll most likely end up craving something more complex.

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You might recall that we previously mentioned Candlelight, the game in which you play as, well, a candle? Well, now you can actually see how that works, thanks to an embedded demo just here. (Requires Unity plug-in.) It’s rather pretty, and the candle-burning mechanic is clever. I can see it being deeply unforgiving, however.

The full game is due to appear some time later this year. Trailer below.
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Paradox’s newly-released grand strategy game March of the Eagles gave our Adam something of a road to multiplayer Damascus moment, but now you are free from the iron grip of reading other people’s words and able to try this game of Napoleonic conquest yourself. The demo’s up on Steam for you to try, unless you don’t fancy it tonight, Josephine.

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Crasleen is a city and its walls are besieged by orcs and necromancers, who are (probably) blasting out a sixty five minute Phil Collins drum solo while they prepare their plan of attack. The slightly ponderous translated text, including the in-game manual, doesn’t bode particularly well, but this is a turn-based tactical game of small-scale combat. That is to say, it’s my type, no matter how rough some of the detail might be. I spent an hour with the demo this morning and, once you get to know what Crasleen is really all about, it’s quite the charmer, even if it does occasionally say the most inappropriate things: “…there is an account side where to deliver a blow…” There sure is, Crasleen, there sure is.

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Puzzle platformers must rotate. It’s the new law. Pulse Shift certainly obeys it, asking you to negotiate a series of floating tiled platforms by rotating the world left or right (relating to the direction you’re facing). There’s a demo up on Desura, along with the full game for £6.50. And I’ve kindly put some thoughts on the demo below.

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Valentine’s Day is the one with the pestilent patchwork bears and the twisted offerings of edible hearts, right? I’d have waited until tomorrow to post about Camp Keepalive, as it’d be a fitting game to share on Jason Voorhees’ birthday, but today’s macabre celebration of the vulnerability of the human pumping station is fitting as well.

Camp Keepalive is a turn-based strategy game set in a camp straight out of an 80′s horror movie. Save the helpless and dull-witted campers from an onslaught of monsters with a team of counsellors, each with a special power.

If that description didn’t herald a very fine game, I’d be grossly disappointed. Thankfully, Camp Keepalive is splendid. Video below.

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Have you been on the fence about Cardboard Computer’s magnificent Kentucky Route Zero? Well, get down from there, you. It’s dangerous, and honestly, you just look silly. I wasn’t going to say anything, but everyone’s talking about it. OK, OK, since you’re apparently either very stubborn or a cat, let’s try enticing you down. How about a demo? It’s not just any regular old nipped and tucked snippet, either. As co-creator Jake Elliott put it, Limits and Demonstrations is “unique and doesn’t overlap with Act I, and it starts sketching out some backstory for a few already-introduced characters.” It’s also free! Freer than coffee. Freer than moody bluegrass tunes. Freer than freedom.

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I have a problem. In fact we all do, but it’s a good problem to have. The problem is this: there are far too many games to write about. I can’t open my inbox without finding news of something that deserves at least a paragraph of attention and more often than not there’s something that I’d like to dedicate a few hours and a thousand words or so to. Anodyne’s demo was like an injection of surreality and mystery straight into the brain-stem and now that the full game is out, I’m determined to play it. But when? Perhaps you have already taken the journey? Any thoughts? There’s a tantalising trailer below.

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I haven’t had a chance to play this yet, what with all the very important blogging I have to do, but it looks like a rare kind of fun. Real World Racing, for that is its name, is a Micro-Machines (or perhaps Supercars / Super Sprint) styled racing game, where the tracks are generated from real-world satellite imagery. Why hasn’t this been done before? Perhaps it has. Anyway, it’s here now, and it has a demo. Yes, sir.

Happy-making video with terrible music, below. And it looks pretty good in motion, honest.
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