Flotilla is out

By: Lorne Whiting

On: March 8th, 2010

Blendo Games (the creator behind the very stylish and classy Gravity Bone) released Flotilla a little over a week ago.

Flotilla is a space exploration game where you go from star to star flirting with danger and talking to bull-slavers and cat-pirates and various other terrestrial animals piloting space ships, killing and getting killed by many of them.

The meat of the game is the turn-based spaceship combat. Turns take place simultaneously, so you have to really think about what your enemies are going to do, especially since each ship has a bunch of invulnerable armor plating that you have to circumvent. You can control the orientation of your ships, and there are a few movement options that let you trade speed for firepower and vice-versa, so it’s really a battle of lining up your ships so that you’re ships are flanking or can otherwise hurt the enemy, while making sure their shots can’t get past your armor.

It’s an incredibly satisfying system with a lot of depth, and the demo will make you cry and wish you had $10 when it ends. Or, y’know, you do and you can buy the game and everybody wins.

Previews: Flotilla and Frozen Synapse

By: Derek Yu

On: January 28th, 2010

Flotilla is a new space strategy game from Brendon Chung, who’s best known for his stylish spy game Gravity Bone. Even if it ends up being a more awesome version of Weird Worlds, I’m sold. Coming soon to PC and Xbox Live Indie Games.

Also, Mode 7 Games is working on Frozen Synapse, a tactical squad combat game for PC. That’s really all I know about it. But it looks neat, too, doesn’t it?

(Source: Kieron Gillen, via Rock, Paper, Shotgun)

Atom Zombie Smasher (Coming Soon?)

By: Derek Yu

On: February 26th, 2009

Brendon Chung, creator of the stylish FPS Gravity Bone, has announced that his next game, Atom Zombie Smasher, is “coming soon” to Xbox Live Community Games.

His site reads:

On his forums, Brendon describes the game as a “light strategy game played from the top-down view.”

(Thanks to AuthenticKaizen for the tip!)

Gravity Bone

By: Derek Yu

On: January 2nd, 2009

Gravity Bone is a stylish first-person action game set in the seedy world of Nuevo Aires. The game is almost painfully short, but has enough panache in its two levels to make it somewhat of an indie sleeper hit of the end of 2008. Creator Brendon Chung has an impeccable flair for graphic design, and imbued Gravity Bone with a look that invokes Portal with its utilitarian graphics and deadpan sense of humor. But whereas in Portal we’re confined in a sterile world of white and gray, GB is bursting with delicious color, and features blocky-headed characters that are infinitely more interesting to look at and interact with than the frightening Realdolls game players are often forced to contend with in modern FPS’s. Now if only it didn’t feel like we were walking in on it during the last act…

(Thanks, Zaphos, Tim, and others!)

TIGdb: Entry for Gravity Bone