Gradle-Unison

By: ithamore

On: October 9th, 2008

With Kenta Cho in mind, I offer you Gradle-Unison (a game from one who seems to have been inspired by and references Kenta Cho). If you’ve been yearning for an action oriented mouse clicking game, Isshiki’s Gradle-Unison might do it for you. Although Isshiki is probably better known for his shmups (the genre for which he has released most of his games), GU is more of an anti-shmup with bullet hell leanings.

In GU you control a vehicle that will accelerate toward your clicks to release an explosion around your ship to destroy “bullets” emitted from enemy bases. The greater the distance the vehicle travels across the playing field the larger the explosion.

Each round has a time goal to reach before the next round begins. After the first round, a base is added with some variation for the new round until reaching four bases. From there, the variety continues to evolve with each phase. (I’m just talking from experience, since I have no idea what the upper limit is on phases and bases: there might be more to it.)

Also, GU works well on Widows computers that aren’t setup to support non-Unicode Japanese text, and all of the in-game text is in English. It also tends to be a quick, short, intense game.

Diavolo no daibouken English Manual

By: Derek Yu

On: August 18th, 2008

A man called “Weizsacker” has created a downloadable html English manual for the Japanese roguelike Diavolo no daibouken. The manual looks completely comprehensive and also includes pictures. Even if you’re not necessarily interested in playing the game, it’s worth checking out as an oddity. Thanks, Weizsacker!

TIGdb: Entry for Diavolo no daibouken

Time Limit

By: Derek Yu

On: July 30th, 2008

Here’s a neat idea! In Time Limit (download) you play a young woman who’s trying to get to school on time (or is it work?). Her challenge is navigating the crowds of businessmen, schoolgirls, and bums, whom she can punch out of her way (“D”). She can also dash (“S”) past them, jump (“A”) over them, or simply walk around them. When your stress meter hits the maximum, you can also unleash a destructive “stress attack” by hitting “F.”

The neat thing about Time Limit is that it takes a snapshot of your desktop before the game starts, and uses it as the background for the game, allowing you to punch people out of the “window.” You can also hit “Space” once per level (there are two) to grab the window and shake it, sending people flying.

You can see these effects in the video, after the jump. Playing the game may require Japanese Unicode support. I also needed to download d3dx9_33.dll to run it.

(Source: LaughingCrow, via Lithium Leaf)

TIGdb: Entry for Time Limit

Roundtable: Kenta Cho, Jon Mak, Omega

By: Derek Yu

On: July 28th, 2008

Around September of 2007, insertcredit‘s Brandon Sheffield arranged a meeting of the abstract shoot ’em up minds in Tokyo, to talk about everything from bullet patterns to the Japanese “doujin” game scene. The transcript of that discussion went live today on Gamasutra (link), and it’s a fun one! It’s cool to hear, for example, Jon Mak ask Kenta Cho how he feels about random behavior in games. More of this, please!

TIGdb: Entries for ABA Games, Everyday Shooter, and Every Extend

Tobioriya and Curryki

By: Derek Yu

On: May 29th, 2008

In case you missed it, Ikiki has released two new games this year, and they’re both pretty nifty! The first is Tobioriya, an archery game where you have to shoot people jumping out of a building (naked, obviously). Hold down the mouse button and release to shoot. Try to aim the cursor on the jumpers as the arrow travels nearly instantaneously.

In the second game, Curryki, you have to put curry on rice. The rice appears on the left side, and you have to squirt the curry on the right. Then the machine will flip the right side onto the left (like a page in a book). So the goal is to place the curry so that it ends up in the right place! It’s quite tricky!

Really like both of these, especially Curryki, which I think is pretty novel. You can download them both from Ikiki’s games page. Curryki is at the top, and Tobioriya is the next one down.

(Source: LaughingCrow, via Lithium Leaf. Sweet blog, dude!)

GINORMO SWORD

By: Derek Yu

On: May 27th, 2008

Or: “A man and his phallic symbol embark on a fantasy adventure.”

GINORMO SWORD (full title: “Long and Thick My Ginormo”) is a new Flash game from Barbarageo, creators of the fairly mediocre but similarly awesome-sounding UCHUFORCE 2 (Gesundheit!). It’s a simple hack n’ slash fantasy game – your character follows the mouse cursor and you can attack by clicking the left mouse button. The aim of each area is to uncover the various hidden battle zones, defeat the monsters within, and eventually defeat the boss of the area, allowing you to move on.

Along the way you’ll encounter helpful townspeople and mages who will let you upgrade your sword and learn magicks. One such character is the blacksmith, who, along with leveling your weapon, will let you increase the “length” and “thickness” of your sword. As far as I can tell, these size increases are mostly cosmetic, but then again, isn’t just having a longer and thicker “sword” enough?

It’s actually a pretty entertaining game, though. Fun graphics, too. Just be prepared to slam your left-mouse button a few thousand times to get through.

(Source: Jean Snow, via Game|Life)

Missile Matador 1 and 2

By: Derek Yu

On: May 5th, 2008

In Missile Matador you have to trick homing missiles into hitting each other… without hitting you. If you fall off the bottom of the screen, you also lose! It’s a fun concept, and it’s unnerving to see all those missiles trained at you in the brief breathing period before each level starts!

Missile Matador II extends the concept by adding timed missiles and a way to make your own levels (by editing text files). The rules of the game have also changed slightly – in order to win, you must reach a goal somewhere on the screen.

As an aside, “Missile Matador” is an awesome name. It sounds like something the VGNG would have come up with.

(Source: Auntie Pixelante)

Hideki Kubo’s Music Games

By: ithamore

On: April 11th, 2008

These are two acid techno music games by Hideki Kubo, which can be found on his Download page. In the first, vs Music, the main mode is Shooting[Play]. It pits the player against a single boss ship that has 3 lives, and the boss’s fire patterns are sequenced to the music. Movement of the ship is slower than I normally like, but the slowness also makes dodging that much more precise. Use C for continuous fire, X to clear the screen of shots with a bomb, and SPACE to get past the intro screen and to start a play mode.

Action Jockey, the second game, is a 2D, fixed screen jump-and-shmp. The available enemies and bosses are changed by adjusting mixer settings during the Acid Machine Phase. Of the 3 bosses, I’ve only been able to beat the Pong Paddle bosses so far, and it seems the game simply loops until you run out of hearts. You can fire with C and X can be used to jump, double jump, or slide (when your crouched).

More info on the other modes of vs Music and Action Jockey’s variations can be found below in the extended.

vs Music

Shooting[Loop]: an endurance mode similar to Shooting[Play] but with no time limit.

Music[Reco]: adjust the instruments and patterns for different parts of the ship’s firing using the arrow keys and C. When the counter gets to zero, your secession overwrites the replay.dat file. This is the data used for Shooting[Play], so you might want to backup the original.

Music[Loop]: you can experiment with the music with no time limit and exit with SPACE.

vs Battle: it’s described as a 2 player mode, but I don’t know what the 2nd player is suppose to be able to do.

Action Jockey:

In the Acid Machine Phase, pressing left or right long enough will change the first 2 music values respectively for the lead, and pressing up or down long enough will change the last 2 music values respectively for the drums. Also, Q will change the first value and W the last.

The last value seems to effect which boss you face. The easiest way to get to each of the 3 bosses (SPOILERS/TIPS after this parenthetical statement) is to set it to 00 for the Pong Paddles, which is the default after dieing;
01 for the Giant Doppleganger, which is the default for starting the game’s .exe; and 02 for the merciless Space Ship.

The other three values seem to effect which enemies the player will encounter. The 1st, 2nd, and 4th values can also be changed by moving too much or pressing Q or W, but it’s not quite clear if they have any more effect beyond changing the music during the Action Phase.

Yume Nikki

By: Derek Yu

On: April 9th, 2008

In Yume Nikki (or “Dream Diary”), you play a young girl who can delve into a bizarre, and sometimes extremely frightening, dreamworld in order to collect “effects” that can alter her appearance in the dream. Some of the effects also have abilities that can be used there. At (almost) any time, our heroine can wake herself up and return to her small, spartan apartment, where she can write in her diary (save), or play a simple minigame on the television.

I really like this game. The lack of dialogue or any “action” fills me with this strange sense of dread. I also like the contrast between the tiny apartment and the enormous dreamworld. And visually, the game really reminds me very much of Earthbound (especially Moonside!) and cactus, which is a pretty awesome and terrifying mix.

Download the English version of the game here (42 Mb), via Rapidshare. The download includes the RPGMaker runtime, as well as instructions on how to configure your computer’s language support to play the game. It’s a fairly painless process.

Thanks, Anarkex!

Welcome to Ikiki ‘s House

By: Derek Yu

On: April 7th, 2008

Our dear and prolific friend Ikiki has finally carved out a home for himself on the interwebs. On his website you can find downloads for all his games, as well as some bewildering animated gifs featuring the signature naked men we’ve come to know and love (see left).

Even better, there are two new games to enjoy (at the top of the list). Truly amazing.

(Source: Tim, via IndieGames.com, natch!)