Hydorah – Demo Updated

By: Xander

On: January 17th, 2010

Recently updated to alter the speed, hitboxes and power ups within the game, which may or may not have something to do with me being able to finish the damn thing now, there’s almost no better time to talk about the Hydorah Demo .

At its core Hydorah is an 80’s style shoot ‘em up, right down to the punishing difficulty and arcade-style screen ratio. There are a number of major differences in terms of how much freedom you have to move around and the way that power-ups are fairly abundant and even partially retained after death, however it isn’t fully apparent from the demo which doesn’t demonstrate the branching level structure involved in the rest of the game which embraces the sentiment of struggling through and finally beating each one of the 18 main levels of the game.

Since there’s that many I hope that the variety manages to keep the pace, but with a customisable weapon load out and extra levels outside of the main experience this could be really something. Oh, it also looks freaking fantastic and the soundscape is incredibly well thought out, strongly evoking that nostalgic arcade atmosphere. If you know what the phrase ‘Shoot the core’ means, you should probably keep an eye out for this one.

Leave Home

By: Guest Reviewer

On: January 9th, 2010

[This is a guest review by anosou of an XBLIG game.]

Leave Home is a procedural, scrolling, score attack shooter. This basically means that the “levels” take shape depending on how you play. You can simply describe it as “do good = more stuff” but there’s a bit more to it than that. The smoothness of how the levels change is admirable – during my first couple of playthroughs I didn’t realize it got progressively harder the better I was playing. When I started learning the enemy and bullet patterns, thus scoring more points, I began to see the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between a good and a bad playthrough. For example I reached an area in the third stage I had never seen before when I had racked up some massive points, it was quite the revelation. There is much more under the hood than just “more points = more enemies” and it’s incredibly satisfying to explore this.

At heart Leave Home is a scrolling shooter with a lot of what comes with the genre. Luckily Hermitgames has worked on these before (Fren-zE for example) and knows exactly how it’s done. There are plenty of nods toward established games in the genre but the game still manages to feel fresh. The side-scrolling first level has a distinct Gradius-flavor, even similar enemy patterns. The fourth level feels like a nod towards Treasure’s Ikaruga and a late part of level 3 is pretty much an homage to Jeff Minter’s unreleased Unity project for GameCube. The two bosses you face at the end are very challenging and brings a definite bullet hell flavor to the game. Overall Leave Home feels like one big love letter to the shmup masters but because of the procedural nature it manages to keep it interesting. One of the more original gameplay elements is the ability to split shots with the right trigger, nothing fancy but it gives you a lot of extra control over how you play since the game lacks power-ups.

Leave Home is a fixed length game which essentially means a session will always take the same amount of time to complete. The beauty of this score attack mode of play is how it’s evolved in Leave Home as a result of the dynamic levels. If you do very good on level 3 for example you get to new parts of level 3 faster and these places generally have more possibilities to rack up a good score. The different ways you can play through a session, even though they’re all the same length, are staggering because of how the different stages change depending on how you do. If only XBLIG supported Leaderboards like XBLA does.. this would be the game to compete in.

Oh hey, did I mention that this game takes Rez and makes tough love to it to produce it’s graphics? The future-retro (yes, future-retro) flavor really makes the game pop out of the screen. Things explode into bursts of glowing particles and the clean cut shapes and black background work as great contrast to this light show. The music isn’t half bad either. Distorted squeaky acid basslines, glittering crunchy pads, Roland drum machines and other goodies go very well with the visuals and change seamlessly between levels.

The game is available for Xbox Live Indie Games for 240MS (roughly three puny earth dollars) and there’s a free demo to go with that too so I urge you to take a look.

TIGdb: Entry for Leave Home

Gridrunner Revolution

By: Derek Yu

On: September 30th, 2009

Llamasoft has just released Gridrunner Revolution, an update to Gridrunner (1982) and Gridrunner++ (2002). The game has all the hallmarks of a modern Jeff Minter production: psychedelic graphics and gobs of hidden rules and scoring mechanics. And sheep.

Each level has a terrible sun in it that periodically fires on your ship, but can be destroyed for an extra man and leaves behind a black hole that creates a gravity well for your bullets. Curving your bullets through gravity is an important mechanic, allowing you to raise your multiplier and hit enemies from different angles (you can rotate your ship with the right mouse button). The extra ships system is novel – each ship looks unique and has a slightly different way of firing. When you find the right ship and the right angle it looks impressive and nets you an even more impressive multiplier.

I also really like the “Sheepie Save” mechanic. Collecting sheep increases your ships’ power but can also be used to save a dying ship. Once hit, your ship falls toward the bottom of the screen, but if you guide it to a sheep, it will be saved. Keeping your ship bouncing until a sheep arrives is actually one of my favorite things to do in the game. I won’t spoil how it works, exactly, but it’s a nifty idea.

Gridrunner Revolution is definitely a lot easier to get into than Minter’s Space Giraffe, although I feel like the game doesn’t really start cooking until well into the Madras (Medium) difficulty or in Vindaloo (Hard). From my experience, that’s the point where the mechanics start to make sense, because you’ll really be relying on your understanding of them to survive. For that reason I’d personally prefer fewer levels with a faster difficulty ramp. It might also make each level feel a bit more unique (as it is, you’re playing level after level of psychedelic void – pretty, but they tend to blur into one another).

You can have the full game for $20, or with Space Giraffe at $25. The full game comes with the original Gridrunner as a bonus feature that you can unlock.

TIGdb: Entry for Gridrunner Revolution

lose/lose

By: Derek Yu

On: September 23rd, 2009

“”http://www.stfj.net/art/2009/loselose/“>Lose/Lose is a video-game with real life consequences. Each alien in the game is created based on a random file on the player’s computer. ”color: #F26522">*If the player kills the alien, the file it is based on is deleted.* If the player’s ship is destroyed, the application itself is deleted."

Created by Zach Gage. Nope, I haven’t tried it! (By the way, this is not one of the “great playable games” I mentioned in the last post.)

(Source: f00m@nB@r, via Sensible Erection [NSFW?])

Let’s Jump!

By: Xander

On: September 11th, 2009

We originally posted the preview of this a month ago, but Hideous and Andy Wolff’s Let’s Jump is finally ready for consumption using the eyes and ears on your head and the fingers on your hands.

You control a sky diver by firing in the opposite direction to the one you want to travel in, pushing yourself with the blasts. Score as much as you can before your altitude hits 0m and above all just enjoy the sights and sounds of this sweet sojourn in the sky!

Captain Forever (Pre-Launch)

By: Derek Yu

On: September 8th, 2009

Captain Forever is the latest project of Farbs (ROM CHECK FAIL), and his first commercial project since he quit his job and became a full-time indie developer. In the game you pilot the Nemesis, a spaceship which can be modified with scrap parts taken from enemy ships. Despite the relatively few types of ship parts in this version and the limited scope of the game’s world, I found Captain Forever to be quite enjoyable – the pacing feels brisk and there’s always another ship design to try (or admire) on the horizon. This makes deciding whether to fight or flee and how to do it a blast.

Although there’s no demo for the pre-launch, Farbs himself gives a few good reasons for why you should or shouldn’t buy it now ($15 for pre-launch, discounted from $20). Personally, I’m glad I got it early, because 1. the game is already great fun, 2. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s coming in the supporter-only updates and 3. it’s easy to want to support Farbs, creative and lovable bastard that he is. You might also check out the TIGSource thread for more opinions about the game.

TIGdb: Entry for Captain Forever

Cosmop Teaser

By: Brandon McCartin (BMcC)

On: August 31st, 2009

Cosmop is a WIP shooter from Andy Wolff. I saw it on the Indie Games Blog, and it looks just tasty. (Is that a Giant Enemy Crab?!)

Be sure to check out Andy’s site for other cool games!

GearToyGear

By: Brandon McCartin (BMcC)

On: August 11th, 2009

GearToyGear is a new crazy-fast tunnel shooter from shmup deity Kenta Cho. The instructions are: “Avoid incoming bullets/lasers/obstacles and destroy enemies. Hold the right trigger to speed up and earn more score.” It might be prudent to add a seizure warning as well.

Download here. (Requires XNA Framework)

(Source: TimW!)

Upgrade Complete!

By: Xander

On: July 14th, 2009

Rock, Paper, Shotgun recently posted about an interesting little flash game entitled Upgrade Complete. It’s a simple shmup where the aim is to blast everything onscreen to hell, collect money to upgrade and keep on killing. The difference here is that you use the money to upgrade everything, and I mean everything. The main menu only has two buttons until you buy more. Like how it appears in the screenshot? That’s the final upgrade of the graphics engine. You even have to buy the music and the mute button seperately.

It’s a bizarre game that’s ultimately varied in the satisfaction the player feels from it, which I can only really equate to playing ‘Ginormo Sword’. Simply put, the game itself is pretty boring as the enemies don’t fight back at all, and the only real measure of entertainment comes from just how much you enjoy a persistent upgradable experience. There is something so curiously brilliant about the way everything slowly builds together around your gameplay. Customising your ship with lightning cannons and missle launchers as well as upgrading each one to launch volleys of firepower in seconds is quite a lot of fun even though there is no real grand goal and each level features no great challenge to overcome. It is a game that completely depends on your own involvement to turn it into something above your initial perceptions.

Something worth playing if only to discuss why the hell it’s worth playing then…

Nanosmiles

By: ithamore

On: July 2nd, 2009

Nanosmiles has been long overdue for a review on TIGSource, especially since Dong was considerate enough to have it translated by Siiseli from Japanese into English for us. The game pits the player against microbes in an arena shmup with a twist: the unarmed player must collect and guide attack units in order to clear each level of enemies. This gives Nanosmiles a blend of direct and indirect control, and it helped to generate enough innovation within the game for it to have been showcased in last year’s Sense of Wonder Night at the Tokyo Game Show. (In case you didn’t know, the deadline for SOWN 2009 is August 16, and there is no entry fee.)

Overall, Nanosmiles is a well rounded game with enough levels to explore the basics of its gameplay and a challenging final level to cap the experience. The darting nature of the directional controls can be annoying at times, but it’s also fitting.

Edit: Dong recently updated EngRish Games with a post about Exelinya Burst, which is a cartoony Every Extend variant with a grappling claw that is now in English.