Cloudphobia – are you afraid of clouds?

Almost every sci-fi anime about huge robots (and underage lolitas piloting them, but I digress) features a scene where the robot is manouevering wildly between hundreds of rockets flying in space, smoke trails tracing curvy lines behind them. I have sometimes asked myself a question – why hasn’t this become a motive of a videogame just yet? Wouldn’t it be cool to dodge myriads of rockets and fire kabongazillions of bullets in the sky balet?

If you ever had similar thoughts, here is your game: Cloudphobia is a classical 2D shoot’em up like the ones we used to get in the good old times, featuring giant robots and anime schoolgirls. Note: my first connotation when seeing the title was the vision of someone who totally hates Final Fantasy VII and its main protagonist.

As for the game itself, there are a few interesting twists to it – player cannot allow enemies to pass them and slip through, as they can damage the mothership, there are markers showing were the enemies will arrive and there are missions in which you pilot a robot that carries a sword instead of the gun. Yes, giant robot with a sword – quite neat, eh? Where Cloudphobia got me, however, was in the level where player is guiding their robot between hundreds of missiles swirling around. Sure, the gameplay is essentially a 2D affair, but the beautiful animated background gives the game some depth and sense of scale. Also, it’s damn pretty in movement, as you can see in the video below:

You can also see a more anime-ish trailer here. Once done, go check the game homepage: there is a two-level demo begging to be downloaded and since Cloudphobia is available in digital distribution, it’s easy to buy a full game immediately after trying.

[Found via AVClub]

Harpooned

I love Japan, I really do. But despite many things that make it great, Japan also has its dark sides. One of these rather dreadful things is the Japanese approach towards whaling. I wouldn’t be mentioning it here on Barts News (this is principally a game blog after all), were it not for Conor O’Kane, a man who has chosen a rather unusual media channel to draw people’s attention to the issue: he made a PC game about it.

Called Harpooned, the game is in fact a clever satire disguised as your average shoot’em up game. Player controls a whaling ship, killing whales and collecting their meat, while taking care not too shoot protesters. All this is accompanied by sarcastic messages such as “scientific bonus” taking a jab at Japanese explanation that this cruelty takes place just for scientific purposes.

As player progresses through the game, more whales get harvested for scientific research and fewer of them remain in the sea. The comments between the game levels will be saying things like “Our research shows that there are less and less whales in the area – we must kill more of them to find out why it is so” until finally there won’t be nothing in the cold waters but scientific vessel and icebergs…

Average player will be able to complete the game in couple of minutes, but it is not really so much a game but rather a statement disguised as a game, a way of drawing attention to the real-life problem. Therefore I couldn’t really say that its brevity is a handicap, on the contrary – average player will be able to reach the end of the game before they get bored and witness the empty cold sea themselves. I think this was intentional in order to make an impression on the player – it certainly worked in my case.

It’s also worth noticing that the production values are high for an indie game made by one man – from pretty graphics, through blood effects, to sad music, everything is polished and carries a sense of style. There also is an online score board for the best whalers scientists.

Download the game at Harpooned website (there is also a Mac version available) and if you can’t spare five to ten minutes to complete it, at least have a look at the trailer below:

Now, will anyone make a similar game for Taji dolphins?

Barts’ Short Bursts vol. 1 – a bit of everything

I really do need to find some more suitable title for this (such as Gnome’s Decker’s Delight Links or Bytejacker’s Indie Rapid Fire): there are so many things worth bringing to your attention and so little time to write about them. Therefore, I have decided to make posts with a compilation of interesting links and tidbits that don’t quite qulify for a full post, either due to my chronic lack of time or because they are just a small curiosity. Here goes the first bunch:

No country for old pigeons.

Owl Country is a little indie title that I have found on TIGSource, but can’t recall how. It’s just pure magic of teh internets, I guess. While the game itself is a bit of a one trick pony, it has a great intro, amusing gameplay mechanics and big game makers could learn a lot from its authors when it comes to creating atmosphere. Be sure to watch the awesome trailer !

A true classic

Other not-so-indie game that caught my attention is in making is a remake of a retro hit we all know and love: R-Type. Check the trailer here – notice how the player can switch between 2D and semi-3D view, really neat. Another game these guys are making is Lode Runner remake, which makes me instantly like them, even if their website looks like prepared by a ten year old with an outdated HTML book (their Facebook page is a bit better). Sadly, this game is going to be available only for Xbox 360.

Penny Arcade noticed the existence of Poland in their comic strip. I love PA and this one is quite funny, but I need to point out that syfy would rather mean spots (as in nasty case of acne) and syphilis would be commonly called syf, which also means something of low quality or not nice. Always a nitpicker, Barts is.

There are also two quite interesting flash games that I would like to recommend for your gaming pleasure – Virus 3 and Bloody Day Out. They are both about logical thinking and planning a couple of steps ahead. The first one involves infecting a system of geometrical shapes as a virus and requires carefulk planning to infect the whole level within designated moves limit. The second one is starrring a cute little Death cutting through fields of equally cute critters. The trouble is, Death is bleeding out while doing that, so player needs to plan their moves carefully. Bloody Day Out is an excellent time-waster ad I heartily recommand it.

Did you know you can play hundreds of NES games online? I didn’t, so when I first learnt about Virtual NES website, it cost me a good hour or so spent with Belmont, Mario and others. Also, contrary to abandonware sites (mostly illegal), the owners of the site have gone to great lengths to prove their website is legal. Definitely worth a look, especially for other retro freaks out there.

Indie Spotlight: Project Aftershock

Among the myriads of half-baked Indie games and mediocre clones of commercial releases only few things manage to catch my attention while still in development hell and even fewer secure my ADHD-like attention span long enough to warrant a mention on this blog (Aquaria did, for example, but it was a rare case). So when I say I’m interested in seeing what becomes of Project Aftershock, you know that I am serious.

The game looks like Wipeout meets Fallout kind of thing. Seriously, it’s not that easy to create convincing vision of future that is both crumbling and hi-tech – what I have seen so far seems to manage to do that quite well. The project is based entirely on OpenSource tools, namely Ogre3D, Blender and Gimp, which already makes me like its authors.

Go on and check the official development blog (hey, they also use Blogger!), game photo stream (where from I nicked the above screenshot) and development thread on Ogre3D forums (if you’re technologically inclined). There is also approprietly high-def video showcasing one of the game tracks.

I hope the guys will make it – if the manage to keep gameplay on par with the visuals and finish the game without spoiling it, I think I could even be convinced to pay for Project Aftershock. That’s a lot of “ifs”, but I do wish them good luck and will be checking how it goes every now and then.

[via Blender Nation]

Free game, free music – with bonus Beagles

I love free things, games and music and I adore Beagles. So this post fuses quite a lot of good things in one, namely a game appropriately called Rescue the Beagles.

It all started with me browsing lists of best free indie games of 2008 (available here). I have ambivalent feelings toward free games, since in general the vast majority of them sucks. Being a cheapskate from the third world country, however, I still occasionally dig into the piles of poo and every now and then dig out a little jewel, such as Every Extend, N or Gnome Carnage for example. I still prefer to go through the lists that someone already sorted for me, lazy bastard that I am.

This time there were not that many titles I cared enough to try, much less play for more than five minutes – nevertheless Rescue the Beagles managed to catch my attention, hold it and provide enough fun not only to play but also to write a post about it, so you can appreciate it as well.

The game, created for procedurally generated content games TIG competition, revolves around, you’re right, rescuing the Beagles (hey, you’re still a great crowd!). There’s some story, if you really must, but the objective is simple – catch all the stray dogs before evil scientists get them.

I like almost everything in Rescue the Beagles, excellent choice of colours, randomly generated levels, minimalist sound effects, sweet retro pixel art, catchy background tune. The only thing I pretty much hate about it is the difficulty level – the game is unforgiving in truly 8-bit spirit. That or I have grown too old for arcade games.

Below you can watch someone playing the game to get an idea what it is all about:

As a cherry on top this cake, the stylish retro soundtrack is totally free. There’s the initiative of creating database of free indie games music and tunes from Rescue the Beagles is one of (so far rather few) game soundtracks available.

Download game music here and the game itself here, you can also check other games by Nenad Jalsovec.

Many passengers of Nostromo

If you have been following this blog for a while, you probably noticed that I don’t really have a thing for online flash games. During last three years I have just recommended two of them: N (note to self – write about N and N+ soon) and Flash Element Tower Defence, so it comes as a bit of a surprise that I will now recommend the third one.

Called Evacuation, this wonderful little gem puts player in command of a spaceship invaded by aliens, his job to open and close gates of different colours in order to vent aliens into space. Simple? Simple, yes, but brilliantly executed.

I should have opened the pink door…

Delightful graphics reminding me of 16-bit era, sweet music, cute sound effects – it’s all there. Add randomly generated levels (getting harder and harder along the way, but different each time) and you have a game that has eaten my precious work time more than I would admit to. There’s nothing more to write on the subject – Evacuation is totally awesome, just go and play it already!

Everyday Shooter versus Super Stardust Portable

Everyday Shooter (ES) and Super Stardust Portable (SSP) – these two shoot’em ups appeared recently on Playstation Store and I have tried them both, so here comes the inevitable comparison for all those unsure which one to buy.

If you have read what I had written on the second game (in short: yay! shooting!), you might suspect that I will be biased. Rightly so, I totally love it, but my preference should not influence the comparative evaluation brought to you by yours truly – or at least so I tell myself.

Origin:

- making its first appearance on PS3, Everyday Shooter was a strange indie game developed by Jonathan Mak that got picked up by Sony on Independent Games Festival and received generally warm welcome. It then got ported to PC and later on to PSP as well.

- a younger brother of Super Stardust HD, critically acclaimed old-school shooter with amazing graphics for the PS3, this is a PSP port of SSHD. Quick googling reveals that Super Stardust HD was a spiritual sequel to Super Stardust which itself was a sequel to Stardust and so we go back to good old Amiga days.

Graphics:

- strange shapes move and shoot other strange shapes, with strange shapes appearing in the background. It’s all pretty, colourful (although mostly in a toned-down mellow way) and varied, but too abstract for me. However, if you dig Kenta Cho’s shooters, there’s a strong chance you’ll like the art direction of ES as well. Lack of anti-aliasing is noticeable and there is some pixelisation.

Everyday Shooter

- the following words come to mind: classic, good-looking, sparkling, vibrant, colourful, futuristic, smooth. Oh yes, very smooth indeed, the framerate is excellent and never slows down, no matter how many particles, explosions, enemies and other things. It looks good on screens, but it looks incredibly well in motion.

Super Stardust Portable

Audio:

- soundtrack to ES consists of guitar chords, ambient sounds and other acoustic noises. If you enjoy boing boing PLINGGG bdoink! as your musical background, you’ll love it, otherwise it will get on your nerves quite easily. I should mention that the sounds in ES are tightly coupled with gameplay and visuals, so if you make a chain combo by destroying tens of enemies at once, you’ll be rewarded with a cascade of guitar chords.

- from the very first moment when you hear the bombastic introductory music making you feel like a space soldier just embarking on a mission to protect your home planet, the musical score is just spot-on and very fitting, even if number of tracks is limited. Excellent sound effects make shooting rocks and space-things very enjoyable and in many cases player can realise something is happening off the screen (enemy vessel approaching) just because of specific sound.

Gameplay:

- strange shapes move and shoot other strange shapes… sorry, I already wrote that. Each level has a theme to it not only in terms of graphics, but also in terms of enemy types and rules, to the point where some reviewers describe ES as a collection of minigames (which is totally wrong, in my opinion). These sets of rules are changing from level to level, and as you gain experience, you will gradually notice patterns that govern the behaviour of some more tricky enemies, patterns that can also evolve sometimes. I know this description is a bit fuzzy, but trust me, this game is a bit fuzzy as well.

- Asteroids on steroids pretty much sums it up. There are some tactics in SSP as well, such as knowing when to escape a circling swarm of enemies with a dash or how long to wait for a pick-up bonus in order for it to boost other weapon than it initially would, but the core gameplay is shooting A LOT and having eyes around your head in order not to hit something. Enemy types are mostly similar in behaviour, the variation coming from being forced to use different weapons on different enemy types. Switching between them in the heat of battle is really tricky.

Wrap up:

- If you are some weird tree hugger, excuse me, I meant indie game lover or you simply happen to like abstract, quirky aesthetics, coupled with discovering strange rules while simultanously shooting , you will draw your perverted pleasures from Everyday Shooter. Weird visuals will flow in the rhythm of guitar chords and you will reach your gaming nirvana, although you might be as well indulging on LSD while playing a game of darts.

- If you are a retro gamer who remembers rapid fire buttons on Amiga joysticks or a die-hard shoot’em up fan, the odds are you’ll prefer Super Stardust Portable, a game in which the key to survival is mashing fire and littering space with myriads of bullets. Bright explosions, powerful music, shooting till you drop – if that’s what you are looking for, look no further.

A word of warning, too: if you played any of these games in their first incarnation (PC or PS3 one), you might find that there is nothing new here and be disappointed with lack of bonus content and/or control issues and/or limitations in presentation layer. If you are looking for some fix for those moments away from your PC/PS3 on the go, though, these titles may feel familiar enough to overlook their little shortcomings.

Also, I remember playing Everyday Shooter on my PC and being annoyed by its high difficulty level. No such feeling here, which probably means that it has been toned down somewhat for the PSP version. As for the difficulty of Super Stardust Portable, in December I actually got a cramp from playing the game too much and later injured my thumb. This goes to show both how frenetic and addictive it is.

So there you have it. Both games are great, but they are also very different. Which one is the best choice for you depends on your personal taste and kind of gameplay you prefer. In my case the winner was (and still is) Super Stardust Portable, but this is a very personal and subjective thing. I highly encourage you to give them both a try in order not to miss anything, but if you have just ten dollars in your pocket itching to be spent on downloadable title, then perhaps the above comparison will prove helpful.

Blobby Volley PSP (with bonus anecdote)

Long time ago there was a game called Blobby Volley available for PC. It was crappy two player volleyball match between two colourful jellies. That’s about all that could be said about the game.

Its main advantage was that it didn’t have virtually any system requirements and also it didn’t require internet connection to be played. Hence, two players could compete on one computer, even if the hardware was very old – useful for those boring laboratory classes where pairs of students were put in front of lousy computer for long hours. Other than that particular case, I feel pity towards people who play this for fun.

You can download it from here or here, newer version is available here (for Windows, MacOSX and Linux). This link leads to a fansite the members of which obviously have too much time on their hands and very peculiar sense of what digital entertainment is. But then again, to everyone their own porn.

All right, so the game is old and crappy (although apparently some people do like it, but then again, some people juggle geese) – why even bother? The reason I am bringing this little, umm, thing to the light of day is that just recently a PSP port showed up (link to news, link to download). Okay, I hear you say, so now we have a crappy port of a crappy game, so why bother again?

Well, first of all, like I mentioned before, some people enjoy this game. It actually is fun for a short while and having it on PSP might let you pass couple minutes while waiting in a queue to dentist’s. Not many interesting homebrew games arrived on the platform recently, so this one will have to do for a moment. At least give it a try, despite my complaining.

But the real reason for me to write about this game is a little anecdote from old times when I still was a student of telecommunications.

Introducing two heroes of the story:

• Cyril – blonde white guy with blue eyes, terrible acne and addiction to porn, always downloading new kinky movies, very likable, known by everyone, generally fun to talk to;
• Pablo – half Spanish, half Polish, with huge mane of black hair, addicted to computer games, grumpy, lazy, but despite that also really likable;

Both of them would almost never leave computer lab (albeit due to different motivations,) both of them would play countless hours of Quake II and Starcraft, both them would be local masters of Blobby Volley.

After some dialogue that started innocently, then heated up and escalated, they both decided to have an official match to settle the difference concerning who is the best Blobby Volley player once and for all. The whole Telecommunications group gathered to watch the clash of the titans, the epic showdown which would establish the champion of computer lab.

Someone spontaneously assumed the role of commenter and added voice-over to otherwise silent match:
– Pablo dodges Cyril’s attack…
– Cyril remains cool…
– … now he’s attacking in a cold fashion…
– …doesn’t show any emotions…
– Pablo on the other hand is feverishly struggling…
– … fighting desperately…
And then someone loudly added:
– …in order to preserve his species!

Bam, the whole tension went out of the window, everybody burst out with laughing. I don’t remember who won, but I do remember everyone laughing out loud. Pablo totally hated the line about him preserving his species, which would of course be thrown at him every now and then ’till everyone got bored.

Okay, so maybe this is not that funny to you, but at the moment it was simply brilliant and frankly, this anecdote was the first thing that popped into my head after having seen the news on PSP port of Blobby Volley, so of course I had to go and share it publicly.

Cat, princess and the airstrike!

Out of nowhere (OK, not really – check here) I was struck by this game :

…and to think people say they don’t make original games anymore!

The game in question is Garden Gnome Carnage – download it here. Give it a chance and watch at least until you see the above screen. Trippy!

Aquaria

Just a short post to present a game the development of which I have been following for quite a long time ever since first reading about it on John Bardinelli’s blog (whose slideshow with screenshots I have shamelessly stolen, see below) : Aquaria.

Aquaria is beautiful, slightly eerie and makes me recall Ecco the Dolphin. It’s trancey and looks like the kind of experience that would grow on the player in a way similar to Flow. The guys behind it are Derek Yu and Alec Holowka – you can read developers’ blog here. Have a look at the screenshots (thanks John!) and at the video, to see how it looks in motion :

I really can’t wait to see what comes out of it!