Crystal Wave and Sky Scream

By: Derek Yu

On: November 15th, 2010

[This is a guest post by ortoslon.]

Johnny B. of Golden Beast Studios (Anyman, Techno-Drone Alliance) has started a rapid development project called Lazy Brain Games. His goal is to release one game per week, restricted to NES graphics and 8-bit sounds. So far he’s made two little shmups controlled with WASD+mouse.

Crystal Wave is a score-based arena shooter that plays a lot like JW’s Coptra: it goes from easy to crazy in thirty seconds as enemies come from all directions. Score mostly comes in the form of large gems that fly randomly across the screen. The game has a small online highscore table, currently occupied by yours truly.

Sky Scream is a vertical shooter inspired by Sin and Punishment, Contra and Megaman. It takes about four minutes to beat the game but it’s hard enough that you won’t reach the end on your first try. The colorful background looks great in motion:

Blade Buster

By: Derek Yu

On: October 12th, 2010

Blade Buster is a new homebrew NES shoot ’em up by the doujin group High Level Challenge. The game is based on the two time attack modes from the 1990 Turbografx-16 vertical shoot ’em up Super Star Soldier, in which you try to achieve the highest possible score in either 2 or 5 minutes. So there are only two short stages in the game, with the boss battles at the end of each one. Aside from the standard enemies, boxes, and gems, there are various hidden bonuses you can get for extra points.

It’s always nice to see a high-quality homebrew title come out for the NES, and Blade Buster certainly fits the bill, with nice graphics and music, and fun level design. The game also runs very well on FCEUX, my NES emulator of choice, putting lots of fast-moving sprites on the screen with almost no slowdown or flicker. Check it out if you’re a fan of NES homebrew or shoot ’em ups!

TIGdb: Entry for Blade Buster

Explosionade

By: Brandon McCartin (BMcC)

On: October 1st, 2010

“Just like lemonade, but with explosions,” Explosionade is the latest action romp from Nathan Fouts (Mommy’s Best Games), creator of Grapple Buggy, Shoot 1UP, Weapon of Choice, and more.

Due for XBLIG this coming Monday, Explosionade features Nathan’s usual (impressive) level of polish: two player co-op, online leader boards, destructible terrain, not to mention his trademark, sickly art style, which I’ve grown quite fond of. And it’s only 80 MS points — $1 USD! Not a bad way to start October, eh?

Vibrant

By: ithamore

On: October 1st, 2010

Vibrant is an high-speed arena shmp by #ponce that faces you against AI clones of your ship. Their number and aggressiveness increase with each level (their power and variety also increase occasionally), and the increased challenge begins show after the first few easy levels. After level 20, it is difficult to get through a wave without dieing at least once. Just surviving the initial barrage of fire requires as much luck as it does skill.

What makes the Vibrant fun, though, are the generous powerups and the game’s quick restart after death. The blurbs that show up after dieing are also a nice touch. The bullet time slows down time enough to pull off some tight maneuvering, and once you’ve picked up 2 or 3 weapon+ powerups you can fire a shower of bullets that surpass the blast.

I wish there was a multiplayer version, and the traps are annoying. I sometimes mistaken them for blast powerups when their gray surfaces are highlighted too brightly. And if you don’t like the music, there is no in-game method for muting. I like it, but those who don’t enjoy techno can replace the .ogg in the game’s folder by renaming another song to the original’s name. But I would suggest picking something you want to hear over and over again or merge several songs into one.

The highscore is only for your current play session, which I didn’t like at first. But since I prefer to play Vibrant just for fun and the chance to get a good run, it doesn’t really matter. And when I do have a good ship built up, and I’ve made it through several levels by the skin of my teeth, I can get worked up enough to break a sweat. The last game to do that to me was Shoot First.

For those who don’t like installers, there’s a zipped version linked down in the changelog. Also, the controls: C/Ctrl fires, X/Shift for turbo engines, Z/space catches powerups (press twice to use the bullet time), WADS and the arrows can be used for movement. The mouse buttons can also be used, but the order of commands felt awkward for me.

(Source: Pixel Prospector)

Update: Some or most ATI graphics cards might not be able to run the game.

PAX 2010: Solace

By: Derek Yu

On: September 9th, 2010

[This is a guest review by NMcCoy. If you’d like to contribute an article for TIGSource, go here.]

So, I just got back from my day at PAX. There was all sorts of delightful stuff on display, fun things to do, and some very impressive demos in the expo hall. The one game that I was utterly blown away by, however, was not LittleBigPlanet 2 or Duke Nukem Forever or Final Fantasy XIV, but a student game in the PAX 10 called Solace. Something that’s been on my mind lately is the fact that while games, as a medium, have certainly been explored as a vessel for expressive artistic statement, gameplay has not often been a part of that. If you take Braid and remove the text, you end up with a puzzle game involving time manipulation that is barely about anything other than puzzles involving time manipulation. On the other hand, if you took Solace, removed the text, and replaced all the beautiful graphics and superb sound design with rectangles and beeps, it would still be about the five stages of grief as represented through the gameplay of its levels – the message would not be conveyed nearly so brilliantly, but nor would it be lost.

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Shoot First

By: ithamore

On: July 9th, 2010

Shoot First, the latest game from Beau Blyth (aka Tenkopants), is the offspring of a run-n-gun and a roguelike. It reminds me much of my experiences of learning how to play Spelunky and Xong, and it’s addictive. I’ve been playing it everyday after reading about it on the IndieGames Blog.

Exploring the floors of Shoot First is the core of the game. You can take a careful, attentive approach or take a gun-blazing, death-dodging approach to get to the exit as quickly as possible or to fully explore a floor. Its gameplay has nice openness.

To help you get further into the game than your gun assortment and skills alone can provide, there are chest that can be shot open to reveal helpful equipment, keys to unlock closed exits, AI friends to fight along your side, and ways of healing (potions, leveling up, rescued loves, and fountains of youth). It can also be a 2-player, co-op game to help balance out the challenge.

The controls are customizable, but the configuration isn’t saved. There is too much slide to the characters’ momentum, and some have complained about traps and rare bugs with enemy placement. However, Shoot First still provides a great experience with wonderful chiptunes to match it.

Update: A windowed version is available for those who had issues with the fullscreen version.

Hydorah

By: Derek Yu

On: June 4th, 2010

Hydorah is here! If you’ve been following the game’s development, I think that’s all you need to hear. It’s great – go download it.

If you’ve never heard of Locomalito, they’re a Spanish indie game crew that has a very well-defined philosophy of creating freeware games that try to redefine arcade gaming for today. Their influences are very clear. In Hydorah’s case, it’s a horizontal shoot ’em up that, at first glance, seems most inspired by Konami’s 1985 arcade hit Gradius.

Aside from some superficial similarities, however, Hydorah is actually fairly different. The game employs three types of weapons: primary, secondary, and “bomb”. The primary and secondary weapons can be upgraded by separate power-ups (red and green). However, a red power-up will turn into green and back if you leave it, giving you some choice about how you want to upgrade. Bomb weapons (yellow) and speed power-ups (blue) are similarly flipped during the game. There’s one other power-up, a purple shield that allows you to take one hit.

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Ceramic Shooter – Electronic Poem

By: Paul Eres

On: April 13th, 2010

Ceramic Shooter – Electronic Poem by Theta games is a sequel to their earlier 2008 game Ceramic Shooter. Although it was released nearly a month ago, when I went to play it it had only been tried by 10 people. Ortoslon’s video playthrough of the game (above) had far more views as the game had plays; Death Worm had about 15000x as many plays. This was kind of surprising to me considering how good this game is.

I suggest neither watching the video or reading the rest of the review under the jump; just play it first. If you want instructions: avoid breaking stuff for the first half of the game (this is hard, because you can’t stop firing). After playing through it, then watch the video, because it shows some things that you probably missed while frantically trying to avoid shooting stuff. I watched the video first, which made me expect the game to be a lot easier than it actually is (it’s an Ortoslon video).

I found the design and music of this game top-notch; the sprites and graphics less so, but this is freeware. I especially liked how the music was in tune with the stuff that you have to avoid.

The concept for the game was also something I’ve been working on and thinking about for a while: an action game that isn’t about shooting everything, but still feels like an action game, with the same intensity. And this was achieved here, through a simple reversal: you have to move quick to avoid shooting things, because you can’t stop shooting. It’s certainly one way to do it. Maybe there are more.

There’s a trade-off in the game: if you stay near the bottom of the screen, you’re less likely to run into things and destroy them with your ship. But you then generate a long string of shots, which will destroy things more often. If you move to the top of the screen, you aren’t very likely to shoot anything at all (since your shots immediately go off screen), but you’re more likely to crash into things as they come into the view. How the player handle’s this trade-off is important; I usually kept myself in the middle of the screen.

The climax of the game comes about halfway in, when you’re finally able to shoot things (and encouraged to), although your real goal is to paint the screen full of color. That point is what makes it feel like a crime to me that this game had only 10 plays (hence this review). I hope to see a lot more from Theta Games.

Rules

By: ithamore

On: February 28th, 2010

Rules starts off as a Space Invaders clone but doesn’t stay that way for long. Every 10 seconds, it will change into something different by randomly remixing the rules unless you clear the screen of enemies or lose 3 lives before then. It can become a “Breakout Invaders” mashup, the ship’s movement be changed (1D to 2D, reversed, sliding, etc.) or its firing (use X instead of C, the firing rate, etc.), the borders can become deadly, the ship can function as a battering ram, and more. Different combinations of the rules are chosen for each stage, which can result in a great, ok, or bad mix. Defeating all the enemies quickly enough will net a 10 second time extension and being able to loose 3 lives to end a stage helps to compensate for having to play a bad mix of rules. Space is the start button, the game starts with a 60 second countdown, and the first level is always the same and relatively easy to clear.

In all, Rules can be a quick dose of fun for those who might enjoy its novelty, and it is a nice improvement over Hideki Kubo’s older games. It’s brevity, however, is also its greatest shortcoming. All of its replay value can be used up in less than 30 minutes.

(Source: Windows Forest)

Coptra

By: Derek Yu

On: February 22nd, 2010

Coptra is a new arena shoot ‘em up from Jan Willem Nijman, aka jwaap. Enemies and bullets move quickly in this game, making it very fast-paced. It’s simple, but the enemies and power-ups work really well together. I especially like how power-ups stack to create super-weapons.

If there’s one thing I’d change, I’d make the bomb its own unique-looking power-up. The bomb wipes out the entire screen and is the most strategical of all the weapons. Separating it from the rest would add some depth to the game and make it even more exciting.

If you plug in a dual-stick controller, you can use it to play Coptra (this game would kick ass on XBLIG). Press “B” in-game to toggle the gamepad settings until you find one that works with your controller. You can also turn off the scanlines by pressing “N”. I thought they looked cool, but I found it easier to play when they were off.

TIGdb: Entry for Coptra