Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Alphaxion noted that old romantic partners of RPS, UK Resistance has broke the news of a new Sonic the Hedgehog PC game. It’s clearly an entirely legitimate product from Sega, and in a Modern-Warfare-2 piece of relevancy, the eponymous spiked-creature is now homeless, living under a bridge and doing drugs. Nice one Sega. Developed by one chap in four days, it’s simultaneously a revisionist masterpiece which makes us reconsider our relationship with the medium and total crap. More details over at UK:R. Send our love.

I’ve been wanting to post about Sacraboar for a while. Because I like its name. Alas, there’s been no video to link to and no demo, so little reason to do so other than “Crikey! Nice name, eh?”. However, with its release imminent (Steam, Impulse, Gamersgate if you want to pre-order), they’ve released a demo so people can have a taste of it. You can get it from here. What is it? Well, it’s a “real-time capture-the-pig strategy game”. The ghost of Psycho Pigs UXB lives. The full thing is actually on our Steam press accounts, but no-one on RPS has had time to have a crack yet – Jim did, but it crashed his PC (Which he thinks is a bad download rather than the game). Impressions will have to wait. But it certainly has a splendid name.

IndieGames have a really interesting story about Symantec’s response to Zach Gage’s indie game, Lose/Lose, that Kieron wrote about here. The impish game’s a shmup that deletes files from your computer every time you shoot an enemy ship. Which is something anti-virus computer-protecting Symantec have now identified as a threat, and labelled it a trojan.

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Kieron spotted this in the 2010 IGF list. Called 78641, it purports to be an English translation of the classic Esperanto game, Pato Viro Simulilo. It’s, um, sort of an adventure game, but mostly an exercise in surrealism. And unlike most things that people label “surreal”, this isn’t just “silly” or saying “fish” a lot – it’s a genuinely surreal and often unsettling experience. In the game you play Doug Beachez, a frying pan. Who sells dildos.

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The_B flagged up this IGF entry immediately, and you can see why. Attack of the 50ft Robot! from Digipen is the sort of thing which just begs for posting. It’s a retro-50s B-movie Rampage-esque homage with lots of physics malarkies. Its most obviously striking element is the Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow-esque black-and-white footage, shot through with the vivid-laser reds. The secondary striking element is the ability to throw your own head as a striking element. A little twitchy – it crashed a couple of times when I played it – but it’s splendidly silly stuff. You can download from here (EDIT: NEW LINK WITH NEW BUILD) and see footage below…
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Always good to see a developer who knows exactly what they’re doing. I’ve clicked on the link to play the flash demo of Rocketbirds Revolution, and come away thinking “a modern Flashback, but with Chickens”. Going back to the mail and I discover that the Delphine-classic is the top of their list of influences. In other words, it’s in the line of the original Prince of Persia of slower-paced, “adult” 2D platform adventures. But with – er – chickens and assorted other fowl. The other thing to note is that it’s what I’ll describe as a premier flash game – in that while there’s a demo to play, you have to pay to unlock the full adventure, which you play on their site by logging in. The advantage is being able to play wherever in the world there’s a net connection. The disadvantage is requiring a net connection to play. I’ve only played the demo so far, and plan to go back soon, but this is an enormously slick and stylish experience so far. With chickens. Footage follows…
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Michael Todd of Spyeart mails to mention he’s thrown a beta-vertical-slice-thingy of his game online. It’s clearly the three-level IGF demo sort of thing, which I had a quick play at now, and find it quite promising. It’s an indie RTS with a psychonauts-esque theme and a striking art style which reminds me of one part 3D Ant Attack and one part a gothy-iconic comic an Ex of mine used to really like whose name currently escapes me. Oh – and the We Share Our Mother’s Health video. You can download it from here and find some footage below. The finished game will apparently be on Steam next year…
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I’ve been easing into the morning with a demo of Matrix-published Niels Bauer Games-developed turn-based space-exploration thing. It’s basically Elite… but turn-based. Get missions, screw your reputation, shoot mercenaries and similar. At least with the equipment in the demo – they stress there’s a lot more in the full version – the combats are pretty repetitive, but it basically seems like a more-complicated long-form version of Strange Adventures In Infinite Space, with some role-playing-game-esque skill-trees. To be honest, with the right implementation, I’d almost rather play an Elite clone like this rather than something like X. The interesting thing is the choices, not the flying. You can find more info here but there’s no video online, so instead I’ll link to Reel 2 Reel (feat. the Mad Stuntman)’s I Like To Move It instead. The “It” in question being “resources from a low-price planet to a high-price one”.
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I think the Cursor*10-inspired single player co-op is an idea with legs. Of course Flashbang recently proved this with the lovely Time Donkey, and next year will see a slick looking side-scrolling shooter, Zeit² from Brightside Games, play with the idea some more. With the ability to rewind time you can help yourself out as you approach trickier parts of the level. There’s a trailer below.

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Well, not really. While John and Alec play the Torchlight demo, I try and up my indie-cred by playing this comedy-WW1 action-RPG instead. More fool me. To be fair, it’s a hyper-lo-fi thing, and does feature a three features I really like. Firstly, that there appears to be some hit-location elements, so if you head-shot, the comedy-Hun go down quicker and you save ammo. Secondly, when you get shot, occasionally your trousers fall down in an International-Karate-Plus fashion. And thirdly… well, the unusual setting married to more traditional mechanics. I’ve love to see more Indie RPG push in this direction – the Lovecraftian Cyclopean will be great, but I’d love to see a whole lot more. The rest… well, it’s not enormously good. I wouldn’t recommend someone buying it even if I could work out how to buy it. The demo doesn’t include any mention of it. Its website doesn’t either. And neither does its documentation. I highlight this, because it’s worrying Indie Marketing fail. Releasing a demo is the first and possibly last burst of publicity your indie game gets – even if the full version isn’t available, you should have explained that. Man!