Tag Archives: indie games
‘John Wick Hex’ is strategic, ultra-violent bliss
‘Return of the Obra Dinn’ comes to consoles on October 15th
Apple Arcade will cost $4.99 per month and launch September 19th
Popular indie game ‘Dear Esther’ is coming to iOS
Black-and-white adventure ‘Minit’ lands on iOS and Android
Ocean adventure ‘Abzû’ gets a glow-in-the-dark vinyl soundtrack
Devil’s Bluff: Like Clue Where the Murderer Actually Gets to Murder
One of the most annoying parts of playing Clue, for me, was to discover that in order to win I had to turn myself in. Also, why didn’t I know that I was the murderer? It makes no sense. I should have been solving my predicament by murdering all the people who are close to figuring me out. In Devil’s Bluff, that’s exactly what you get to do… WHILE WEARING A LUCHADOR COSTUME.
The online game stars ten friends who are enjoying their yearly costume party at a spooooOOOOoooky mansion when someone turns up rather murdered. That doesn’t usually happen, and a note from the murderer gets them all working on a scavenger hunt. The players need to form alliances, but that could be a serious problem, given that one of the players is actually the devil, hell bent on murdering everybody.
Meanwhile, the mansion is filled with secret passageways, peep holes, trap doors, sliding staircases, deathtraps, and hiding places that the players can use to their advantage. The devil can see all of these, but the survivors will have to discover them.
I think this sounds like great fun, so go spend money on Kickstarter; early birds get the game for $10(USD), and everybody else only has to spend $15. For now, the devs are only promising the game for Windows, Mac, and Linux, but PS4, PS Vita, Xbox One, Wii U, Android, and iOS are all stretch goals.
[via Kickstarter]
From Earth: A More Subtle Take on Figuring out an Alien Civilization
Normally, in games, alien cultures seem to be designed to be convenient, rather than plausible. Why is it that everybody but Hutts and Wookiees speaks English, regardless of the planet of origin or species. Here on Earth (only one planet) we have only one species using language (that we know of) and we have 6,909 living languages. It seems unlikely that a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away hundreds of planets somehow would all agree on one language. That, of course, only scratches the surface of how difficult it would be to deal with an alien culture.
From Earth is a noble attempt to make a game out of those sorts of problems. Players take to role of a crash-landed explorer on an alien planet. They can try to decipher the alien language, observe them using their own technology to learn how, or just kill ‘em all with a big stick and then try to escape from your pile of corpses without any help. I think it’s an interesting premise, and I’d love to give it a go, so I just voted “yes” on Steam Greenlight, and you should too.
Impact Winter: Can You Survive 30 Days of Snow and Good Voice Acting?
Eight years ago (in the game Impact Winter’s setting), an asteroid struck Manitoba. That was indeed bad, but the worst part was the amount of debris it kicked up into the atmosphere. As a result, the oceans froze over, the skies darkened, and snow covered everything. You play as Jacob Solomon who, along with his robot named Ako-Light, is leading a small group of survivors who are using an abandoned church as their home. There is hope, however, since the game starts with Ako-Light getting a “mysterious broadcast claiming that help will arrive in 30 days.”
Each of the other survivors offers something to the group’s well-being from crafting to repairing and upgrading Ako-Light to medicine, but all of those skills will require raw materials that are buried by 40 feet of snow out in the void. You’ll need to manage everybody’s physical and mental health, upgrade the church, and upgrade Ako-Light to last those 30 days.
What I really like is the emphasis on risk vs. reward that the developers are using. Ako-Light, for example, is very useful, offering maps, light, and a bunch of other upgrade features like heat “drilling,” but when his battery dies Jacob has to carry him, causing increased fatigue.
The developers said their inspiration comes from The Thing, The Oregon Trail, Fallout, and Don’t Starve, but I found myself thinking the decision-making sounded a lot like FTL. Impact Winter is new on Kickstarter, and you should give these people money.