Screenshot Saturday Sundays: Sea slugs, bullet hell washing machines and a bad night's sleep
Gardens, guns, and a bad BnB
Screenshot Saturday Sundays! A weekly game development beauty pageant where the prize is a spot in my weekly screenshot round-up. A fitting reward, I feel. This week: underwater zookeeping, dizzying side-scrollers, an impractical garden, and the second-worst hostel bed I've ever slept in.
We're diving in this week with the adorable Loddlenaut. What's a Loddle? Nae clue, but I know I'm "naut" ignoring these delightful sea slugs.
Loddlenaut is very cute, team. Currently in development by Ricardo Escobar and Jin Young Sohn, it's a self-described "cosy aquatic pet sim" about cleaning up the ocean and taking care of these vibrant worm-like Loddles. Just look at them! Flapping their wee mouths and wriggling about after being fed! I'm in.
As far away as you can tonally get from underwater slug farms, James Wragg's booked us a night in his Lovely Hellplace. Y'know, I was feeling tired for a moment there but, wouldn't you know it, I've perked right up.
Talk about a bad night's sleep. The stark red's background might just a placeholder, but it really brings together oppressively hell mood of the shot. Wragg's a bit of a veteran with this old-school horror lark. His last game a haunted neon-tinted Dark Souls named Dread Delusion, popped up on The Haunted PS1 Demo Disk last month. If you want to check out his latest hellplace, there's a build available for backers on his Patreon.
Now, here's a gem. Pixel Soldier might be as generic-sounding a name as they come, but this looks brill - a frantic washing machine run 'n' gun from developers Accidentally Awesome.
There's a free demo over on the team's Itch page. It's lacking some of the visual flair of the slick shots the devs have been sharing lately, but it's damn good fun - a brutally clever rotating blaster that sits somewhere between Super Hexagon and Vlambeer's whole thing. I'm looking forward to seeing how nail-bitingly hard it gets. I'm also looking forward to them perhaps finding a more inspiring name.
Closing us out this weekend is an ominous horticultural contraption from Eli Cauley.
I have a great need to climb this garden.