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Sep 23rd, 2012 at 15:47:56 - VVVVVV (PC) |
I purchased Humble Indie Bundle 3 ages ago and for some reason never played VVVVVV. Having heard many good things about this game, I looked up my old Steam key to activate my bundle on Steam, and here I am now, playing VVVVVV. Immediately not very interested in the game’s story, I began my adventure rapidly spamming spacebar to get through a very long and annoying storyline. Eventually, I had control of my character, and began my way to progress through the level. This game too advantage of an integrated tutorial, meaning the game obstacles were there in place to gradually teach you how the game worked, instead of writing out instructions on what to do. I like how most games are taking this approach now, as opposed to treating the player like an idiot and making demands as to how to go about conquering obstacles.
As far as actual gameplay is concerned, the game is a platformer in which you can’t jump, but can vertically reverse gravity while standing on a platform of some sort (you can’t reverse gravity in mid-air). While the concept of doing this isn’t anything unheard of or unseen in games before, this game’s level design exploited this simple mechanic and turned out to be a pretty fun and challenging game. The puzzles were plentiful and challenging, mostly relying on reflexes instead of wit. This ended up being not too terrible frustrating, as the games death system is very forgiving. There are checkpoints spammed literally all over the game, so the instant you fail a reflex puzzle you get to rinse and repeat till you get it correct. The game has a very expensive and open map, and didn’t confine you to one set path you had to follow to complete the game. At first the world seemed so large I was very confused as to what was going on, but after further exploration I gained an appreciation for how the world was laid out as in many instances you would enter the same level (room) from different ways and exit the same level in different ways which you weren’t able to do prior.
All in all I think the game is worth the price, and should be a fun play through for anyone who enjoys platformers. 4/5
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Sep 16th, 2012 at 17:41:06 - Closure (PC) |
After recently completely Limbo, here I was left without dark puzzle-platformer, yet aching for more. As a huge indie game enthusiast, as soon as I saw “Closure” available on Steam for 10 dollars, I instantaneously purchased it. And so here I am, still currently playing through what seems to be yet another amazing indie game.
Closure is a unique puzzle platformer because during gameplay, only things that you can see (ie. are lit by some sort of light source and therefore visible to the player) are actually real tangible objects or material. For instance if an orb was on a platform and the platform became unlit due to a faulty move by the player, the orb would fall into the void, never to be seen again.
One thing that immediately impressed me about Closure was that there were a few quick symbols representing keyboard keys to instruct the player how to play, but it in no way, shape, or form babied the player on exactly how to go about doing things. There were initial moments of confusion in which you had to test a few things to really understand what was going on. This gave me a sense of accomplishment and made solving the various initial puzzles feel more like a game than a tutorial.
I am still far from completion of this game, but I can say it has been thoroughly enjoyable thus far. I am now complete with all of the puzzles which were inserted to help educate the player of the game, and am now embarking on the harder puzzles which I may get occasionally stumped on. Nothing too terribly frustrating has come yet, though. For any indie game junkies out there like myself, I highly recommend you give this game a try, especially if you have already played and enjoyed Limbo.
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Sep 8th, 2012 at 18:46:02 - The Binding of Isaac (PC) |
The Bind of Isaac is a “Zelda – esque” rpg game with randomly generated scenarios. It is a 2d game with a cartoon - like style made by an indie developer. It is and rpg-arcade game hybrid due to its unique layout as far as genre is concerned. The premise of the game is that you are playing as Isaac, a child tormented by his evil, overzealous mother. God tells his mother that she must kill Isaac as a sacrifice to God to show her devotion to him. She responds by getting a butcher knife from the kitchen and proceeds up the stairs to Isaac’s room with intent to kill him. Isaac knows what to do and in his panic removes the carpet from the floor of his room which reveals a trapdoor into a scary basement.
The game than begins as you Isaac are trapped in the basement (which is much more like a dungeon) with the intended mission of escaping his evil mother and ultimately the basement. Each room in every game you play is completely different as while room themes are consistent, all contents such as keys, treasure, enemies, and obstacles are all randomly generated. This makes the game infinitely replayable and enjoyable. The reason this works is because aside from the random generation, the content of the game is a massive and expansive list of neat enemies, treasures, and other collectables. The game is divided into five different “depths” of the basement, where you will fight a boss at the end of each level to continue on to the next “depth” which all increase in difficulty via the power of the enemies. As far as boss fights are concerned, you can expect to fight relatively easy bosses initially such as Lord of the Flies and work your way up to killing Mom and possibly a run-in with the Devil himself!
This game has been made available in previous Humble Indie Bundles and is still currently available via steam, so I highly recommend it you pick it up as it is relatively cheap and definitely an enjoyable experience for anyone who loves Zelda games.
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Aug 30th, 2012 at 16:23:45 - Limbo (PC) |
As a true indie game enthusiast, I always begin my gaming session with great anticipation when I see screenshots for a dark and eerie game such a Limbo. Only after the first 15 minutes of gameplay, you could tell that the game was trying to accomplish something much greater than just innovative platforming puzzles. Overall feel of gameplay to create an unfamiliar experience in the dark and eerie world which is Limbo was equally as important if not more to the developer. The music in conjunction with horrifying misty shading for the games interwoven parallax backgrounds created a mysterious feel only making me eager to play and explore more. This may explain why I completed the entire game in one sitting! It was simply extremely hard to put down due to the overwhelming environment.
In addition to the environment driving the game, gameplay was also extremely enjoyable. The game’s puzzles hard excellent difficulty scaling and design. I have tons of experience playing puzzle – platformers and regardless this games content still felt fresh as opposed to the usual regurgitated puzzles. Even experienced platformers will get stuck playing this game and will definitely be required to think…however will (hopefully) solve eventually and will prove to be a more rewarding an enjoyable experience than a frustrating one. Many puzzles took advantage of the unique environment and after playing for a while began to logically make more sense to the player while at the same time not feeling stale. Each level (or rather segment) the game had provided for unique puzzle one-after-another.
I would love to in detail go into my praise over level design individually, however I will not as I do not wish to spoil the experience for any potential readers of this. Defiantly pick the game up and give it a try. It’s only $10 on Steam and I believe has already been on sale for even cheaper in the past. It’s even been in a previous Humble Indie Bundle: “Humble Bundle V”. (Which you should ALWAYS buy…any price you want to pay, great indie games, AND money goes to charity…what more could you ask for?) So that pretty much sums everything up…great game 5/5.
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benward has been with GameLog for 11 years, 7 months, and 29 days |
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