Return of Indie Games You Should Know
Posted by inpheaux on February 5th, 2006 at 6:35 am
Oh yes, it's time for another installment of our ongoing series "Indie Games You Should Know".
First up today, a game I've had installed for quite awhile now, Break Quest. Break Quest is at its core a very solid breakout clone, where you control a paddle and use it to bounce a ball to break bricks and clear a level. Break Quest sets itself apart from pretty much every other breakout clone I've ever played in two ways. First is powerups, there's a huge variety of powerups in Break Quest which go far beyond the Arkanoid-standards of sticky ball and shooting. There are powerups that change ball attributes like speed, shape and material. Others let you use all manner of different weapons such as dumb-fire rockets, fly-by-wire rockets, spread guns, dual-guns, all kinds of different alternative ways to blow things up, even mines that your ball can drop off when it hits a target. Then there are ones that do things distinctly special to Break Quest, like modify your semi-circular paddle by changing its size, pitch, shape, etc.
The other main difference is that the game's levels are unique. You won't be blowing up bricks for 100 levels. Instead, levels are all "themed". Sometimes it'll just be a cosmetic thing, where bricks are all of a certain size and are being used to draw some large pixel-art drawing that you'll be chipping away at. Other times it'll be retro game clashes, for instance one level that puts you in the middle of Space Invaders, with real working aliens that will attempt to fire at you, and if they hit your paddle will stun you for a short period. Other levels remove bricks altogether, and have you shooting at pinball-ish targets until they explode. Some levels end up looking like physics experiments, with dangling boxes hanging from the ceiling, which all react to your little bouncing ball.
Break Quest is good stuff, $19.99 gets you 100 levels and three difficulty levels. If you're on the fence, they've got a limited demo available on their website. Oh, and there's also an OSX port. Macs can play games? Who knew!
Next up, Oasis, a past winner of the IGF. Oasis is sorta like what would happen if Civilization and Minesweeper were to collide at high speed. The setting is Ancient Egypt, and you play a young prince trying to gather and unite his followers. Your goal, in general, is to survive. At the start of each round you're presented with a grid obscured by fog. Under that fog are three things: cities, barbarian camps, and an oasis. In a limited number of turns, you need to accomplish a few things: find some cities, fortify them, and find the oasis. There are side goals that need to be accomplished, too, like discovering technologies, finding advisors, and locating the barbarian camps, but the main point is to get ready for the barbarians. As you prepare, you can shift resources around to put up a better fight against the barbarian hordes, but eventually there won't be any turns left and it'll be time.
When time runs out, the barbarians attack the closest city to their starting point, and civ-style combat takes place. A fight of numbers takes place, and you either kill the barbarians or lose a city and they roll on to the next one. If you win, well, great, you move on to the next level. If by some stroke of misfortune, the barbarians trash all your happy cities, you have one last line of defense: the oasis. If you found and fully uncovered the oasis you can use the adjacent obelisk to fight the remaining barbarians on your own, using patented Ancient Egyptian magic. If you lose then well, you lose. Sorry.
Oasis has a lot of levels, and hard mode is really hard. It's a nice novel little game, and it involves a good deal of strategy and thought to really do well. If you're into that kind of thing, it can be purchased straight from Mind Control Software for $19.95. As always, there's a time-limited demo available on their website, and it's a nice and long one, the tutorial alone lasted me about 45 minutes, and I still had plenty of time to screw around in the actual game modes before the trial ran out. So go check it out.
Finally today, a brilliant and still-topical game from "Thompsonsoft", a wonderful traditional pixel-tastic sidescrolling platformer entitled "I'm OK". I'm OK is the result of everyone's favourite insane anti-gaming pundit Jack Thompson's "Modest Video Game Proposal", in which Jack described a ridiculously ultraviolent videogame about going on a murderous rampage that was in-turn justified by violent video games. Jack went on to make a challenge: if someone actually makes his game, he'd personally donate $10,000 to charity.
So, of course, someone made the game. The result is - amazingly - really pretty well done. I'm OK is an oldschool sidescrolling beat-em-up filled with equal parts gore and parody. It's short, but only because it follows Jack's ridiculous plot rather strictly. Luckily, it makes up for its short length by being nice and hard. As you travel through this trip into the deranged mind of Jack Thompson, you get to use a slew of weapons: uzis, a rocket launcher, a shotgun, a large friendly baseball bat, and so on. There isn't really a whole lot to talk about, but it's good ridiculous ultra-violent fun, exactly the kind of fun Jack Thompson doesn't want us to have. It's also free, so what are you waiting for? Go simulate yourself some murder. Oh, and be sure to check out Thompsonsoft's "A Brief History of Video Game Violence" timeline, and take heed of the cautionary tale of the horrors of "Wand of Gamelon".
Right! So that's our latest installment of "Indie Games You Should Know". Three more great games altogether costing less than $40. Coming next week: more news, a couple reviews, and [if you're all good] a sizable serving of "other stuff".
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