RPS Feature Clone Something Good
You don’t actually need an original gimmick, developers. You can just take an old gimmick and do it really well. That’s BOOR’s [official site] approach, a 2D platform puzzle game in which your character can create very temporary clones of herself and work in cooperation with them. We’ve seen it lots of times before, but when a good idea is done nicely, it’s – well – a good idea! Make it utterly, utterly lovely to look at and you’re well on your way. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Woke AF
There are a lot of retro platformers about just now. And most of them are pretty rubbish, echoing games they remember without really understanding them, or fixating on some deluded belief that it was great in the 80s when they were near-impossible to play (Chuckie Egg 2, anyone?), and that pixel-perfect jumps and ludicrous insta-kills with no saves are a sepia-toned nostalgic cuddle we can only wish to embrace once again. No. They were terrible games, stop emulating them.
Meanwhile, 8-bit NES-a-like Alwa’s Awakening [official site] by Elden Pixels is bloody brilliant. Read the rest of this entry »
RPS Feature Shadows are rather simple, actually
Shadow Complex [official site] originally came out on the Xbox 360 in 2009. Then after a little six year pause, a so-called “Remastered” edition was released, for free, to try to push Epic’s “Epic Games” downloader that I’ve never heard a single person mention since. It has been released again, yesterday, on Steam, this time for money. About ten monies. Which is, oddly, fewer monies than it now costs on Epic’s entirely unused launcher. Anyway, here’s wot I think:
Originally released as a 3DS game in 2012, Fractured Soul took heavy advantage of the two screens by having you platform one character in two places at the same time. Brain ows. Tomorrow, as if from nowhere, it appears on the PC, employing the magic of splitscreen to achieve the same effect.
First-person puzzling is a genre there can never be enough of, and Space Budgie’s Glitchspace is adding itself to the gang. Immediately visually reminiscent of InMomentum, this isn’t so much about speed, but more – well – reprogramming the platforms to allow you to achieve your goals. It’s best that you watch the video.
RPS Feature Brain fart
Formerly a PS3 and Vita exclusive, Stick It To The Man is now out on Steam too. A mid-length puzzle platform game about mind reading and psychic sticker application, owing more than a nod to Tim Schafer. So wot do I think? This is wot I think:
As we know, leading scientists still have no idea how magnets work. Is it witchcraft? Is it angels holding things together between their wings? We’ll likely never know. But employing their dangerous mystery is Teslagrad, a very charming platformer in which you PUNCH metal objects to magnetise them. Just like real life.
First of all, A Hat In Time is a great name. Second of all, Gears For Breakfast is an excellent name for a developer. Third of all, looking a lot like Zelda: Windwaker and attempting to emulate N64 collect-me-do 3D platformers is the right thing to do. Fourth, fifth and infinityth of all, there’s obviously a Kickstarter.
While the trailer is from a couple of months back, this is the first time we’ve encountered partly hand-drawn platformer Shu. Scottish indies Secret Lunch are going to reveal more of the game at next week’s GDC, but the footage released so far is too gorgeous not to share.
Twas on Saturday that I found myself boasting on Twitter about how great RPS is, even on the weekends. Because it is! But there was one thing missing. As Thais Weller pointed out, Danilo Dias and Pedro Paiva’s sprite platformer Oniken wasn’t mentioned. It was a gross oversight, and I can only apologise. You have to give this trailer a view.
I’ve previously hypothesised that one day every novel platforming mechanic will have been thought of, and on that day we all have to pack up and go home. We’re not there yet, but even Spin Spin‘s creator Chris Hughes admits it’s borrowed its core idea from And Yet It Moves. Although never mind, frankly, as it’s done so nicely here in this bite-sized web-based episode. It’s your afternoon tea distraction.
It’s scientific fact that sheep go to heaven, while goats go to hell (see below), so it seems quite some predicament that there are a number of sheep trapped within a hellish underworld of pixelated puzzles. Thank goodness you are a goat, accompanied by an occasionally hat-wearing mouse, who can save them. Through the masterful art of jumping and pushing buttons. Escape Goat (winner of the Best Game I’ve Seen In A While Award) has been a bit of a hit on the Xbox’s obscured Indie Live Arcade, and is coming to PC next month.
InMomentum, the runny-jumpy leap-em-up from Digital Arrow, is getting its first major patch. Which brings me to the realisation that “runny” isn’t a good word to describe a game. Ew. However, it does mean the game is getting a bunch of new content, maps, as well as tweaks and improvements.
Alientrap’s new platform game, Apotheon, is pretty. A 2D platform action-RPG set in Greek mythology, where you’ll fight your way to the top of Mount Olympus. It’s the age old tale of a champion fighting for humanity against the wife and usurper of Zeus, Hera. We’ve all been there, battling Greek gods, stealing their powers, controlling the elements. I was doing just so last night, cleverly disguised as eating pork dumplings and prawn crackers while slumped in bed rewatching Doctor Who. If you squinted, you’d have seen the truth.
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Chinese IGF winner, Sugar Cube: Bittersweet Factory is having a commercial release. From S. Korean indie team Turtle Cream, it’s a 2D platformer starring a cube of sugar, fighting against his fate. But, and I’ll never get tired of typing this, with yet another awesome twist idea. Here each screen exists in two versions, constructed from a grid of tiles that are flipped in blocks of four when the cube walks past them. So as you walk along a platform, you may replace it with empty space, deadly spikes, or key elements to completing the screen. It’s a brain-hurtingly interesting idea, and it looks utterly lovely, as you’ll see below.
I have come to the conclusion that indie developers will never run out of cool new ways to meddle with platforming standards. The latest I’ve encountered is Swindler, from the pixel masters at Nitrome (check out why we rate them). Here you appear to play a blob of snot, who is able to let loose from his own ectoplasmic entity a long, stretchy green string, tied to a post at the top of a level, and then extended or contracted. However, rather than moving him about the world, you move the world about him.
In my life I’ve shot about 100 bullets and taken about 12 billion photographs, so why are the stats in games skewed towards bangthings? I’ll tell you why: Gov’t funded Big Ammo have been lobbying to have guns replace photographs in all games. Doom was originally about photographing demon families for their Christmas cards, until the developers were visited in the dead of night. Then it mysteriously became about killing things with bullets. Check the game code. It’s all in the code, people! Well brave soldiers Retro Affect are fighting the good fight with Snapshot, their bullet-free platform game where you use photos of the environment to solve puzzles. Five minutes of Zapruder-beating footage is right here. You can’t stop the signal!
This is swish. Platform game Backworlds has just released a demo, and I’ll urge you to play it because, yes, it’s been released as a prelude to asking you for money to help the game to be finished (also known as Crowdschafering). But it’s also a pretty, painterly puzzle game with bags of potential. It’s just a few licks of a brush away from greatness.
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Shoot Many Robots has a directness I can appreciate. When I eventually make a game, I’ll call it “Craig Make Gun Bangs”: it will have no story apart from a bit that says “he puts a bullet in his gun” in Comic Sans, and then a few seconds later “bang” spelled out in bullet holes. I reckon Ubisoft will pick it up like they have this four-player Borderlands-esque platform game. Sure, mine won’t have pretty graphics, charm, wit, or be anything more than an idea scribbled in crayon on a cereal packet, but then they already have that in Demiurge’s game.
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I think you may want to play Dustforce a lot too, after you watch the trailer below.
