Posts with ‘Teknopants’ Tag

Samurai Gunn

By: Lorne Whiting

On: December 13th, 2013

0Space creator Teknopants has released a new game focusing on local multiplayer, Samurai Gunn.

You play a samurai wielding a sword and a gun in a small arena, and the first player to 10 kills wins. The fast paced gameplay will feel familiar to anyone who has played Towerfall’s versus mode, though Samurai Gunn is more focused on close-ranged combat as your bullets are limited and easily deflected.

There’s not a great deal of content for the 15 dollar price tag, with nothing but the basic versus mode and a co-operative survival mode. However, the game has a great deal of polish put in to it and part of the fun is discovering the subtler mechanics, like changing stances or playing dead– or just tapping the up button in the post-game scoring to make it look like your character is laughing.

The game also has phenomenal sound design, with excellent music by Doseone (which was released as an EP with added vocals), and a different voice for each character.

Shoot First

By: ithamore

On: July 9th, 2010

Shoot First

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.

Action Fist!

By: Guest Reviewer

On: April 14th, 2010

[This is a guest review by Cellulose Man. If you’re interested in writing an article for TIGSource, please go here.]

Beau Blyth, of Fish Face fame, recently released his largest work to date. Action Fist! is a side-scrolling shoot ’em up modeled in the style of (and as a tribute to) classic games like Gunstar Heroes.

The basic premise is thus: Domingus, a man of action, has had everything he loves stolen from him by an insidious villain known only as The Madman. He and his monocle-wearing platonic lady friend Ina are armed to the teeth and will fight their way through countless dangers and hordes of robot guards to take back what’s theirs. (Well, what’s Domingus’s, but you get the point.)

The game sports two-player co-op mode, several unlockables, fabulous music by the creator’s brother, and a weapon upgrading mechanic that keeps gameplay feeling very dynamic. It spans several stages, each split into two acts with a boss fight at the end. The stages are gorgeous and the boss battles polish them off expertly. The alternate characters have different mechanics (which I won’t spoil) and the difficulty modes range from relatively easy to near-impossible. It took some effort on my part to beat normal mode but I’m a crappy gamer. Replay value is quite present though – I’ve had three or four play throughs and I’m not done yet!

Of special note to the game designers out there is the detailed polish that went into every corner of the game. You might not notice while playing, but every enemy gives a warning prior to firing its weapon. Sounds are used extensively. Enemy bullets are easy to see. The player characters flash visibly when hurt. It’s clear when you’ve defeated an enemy. At times the game goes to lengths to sacrifice realism for player intuitiveness. (See: in the highway level you can jump to shoot enemies behind you.) Effort to this effect – gameplay tuning – has dramatically improved the feel of the game from its early versions.

My criticisms of the final cut are as follows: The color-matching mechanic (wherein the player can do additional damage to enemies with like-colored bullets) seems ill-explained, and many of my friends didn’t pick up on it. The game’s second level has no way to get power-ups. The second-to-last boss is a pushover, especially compared to the ones preceding it, and you can’t wall jump until you double-jump. The final fight is dramatically harder than the rest of the game, though I’m not certain if I really mind. Lastly, the fun of massacring enemies with an upgraded weapon tends to be lost on less skilled players who die frequently, losing said upgrades. Additionally, many of the weapon crates are well-hidden.

All that said, the ending deserves some kind of goddamned award. The game’s well worth the zero dollars you’ll pay for it, so give it a try.

TIGdb: Entry for Action Fist!

Fish Face

By: Derek Yu

On: March 22nd, 2010

Fish Face

Beau’s Fish Face is a fun one-switch game made for GAMMA IV. You control a fish with a face and your goal is to save the Cephalopod Princess and party with your friends at the end of each of the three stages. Pressing either “Z” or the down arrow makes you swim downward, and when you release the key the water will buoy you up and send you flying into the air. Despite the game’s dark color palette, the graphics and music are really cute and cheery, and each stage is varied and filled with nice little details, like rain, waterfalls, and various flora/fauna (I noticed the awesome homage, Beau!). I found the level design to be well done, also – it’s fairly challenging and provides lots of opportunities to make tricky jumps, one of the most satisfying things to do in the game. Good work!

TIGdb: Entry for Fish Face