Official Indie and Free Games Thread!

[Gendo Ikari]

Chokotto Daiya Runba! is a little game with procedurally generated levels that seems to be, to my knowledge, fairly unique, with maybe just some similarities with Gussun Oyoyo. The little girl runs automatically and the player must make way for her by moving columns of blocks vertically. There are often monsters blocking the passage: two or more of them must be aligned, so that they transform into diamonds to be collected. You can never die from a fall (the screen wraps around on the top and bottom) but beside contact with the monsters, the girl can be killed by the scrolling. Fairly simple but very fun, frantic at times, to be played just for score.

[Gendo Ikari]

Capsized is a 2D platformer starring a goofy astronaut. Along with a few companions, he's stranded on a very hostile planet where native tribes, animals and even some plants are out for their blood. Beside the usual weapons (one even creates a small singularity), the man has a gravity hook to both cling on ceilings and move objects around, and a "gravity ram" than can be used similarly to a rocket jump too, only with no damage. He has a jetpack but fuel is limited.

The game is a real treat for lovers of 2D graphics, sprites and tiles look hand-drawn, colors are plenty, it's gorgeous. It's weaker with animations, though: as it often happens with today's 2D games they are limited, almost Flash-like, and it's quite evident with the bigger enemies.

Levels are expansive, with simple objectives and a lot of hidden places, but I found the controls to be imprecise at times, and some weapons are weaker or stronger than they appear: the energy bazooka, in particular, has a feeble sound but you can easily hurt yourself with it. On the other hand, it's clear that the basic strategy consists in luring enemies in places where you are at advantage. As with many games where they are featured, the physics are quite fun to use at your advantage but they can get in the way at times, especially in tight places or when you have to put weights on buttons (the rage!).

I found it to be a little overrated, but still fun while it lasts.







Also check a video of developer Alientrap's next game, Apotheon. While I have doubts about the gameplay (does it use the same engine as Capsized?), the art direction alone is a reason to wait for it.

[Gendo Ikari]

Farsh is a very original puzzle game made by a young Iranian developer - the title means "carpet" in his language. In a minimalistic environment, the carpet rolls and must find junction points, from which it can be unrolled and rotate platforms; the ultimate goal is to reach the exit cube. While simple to control, it's by no means easy, and may even be discouraging for some. It deserves recognition (it won a prize at IGF 2013) for its unique gameplay and theme.

An iOS version of the game has been released this year.

[Gendo Ikari]

Studio Bean's Basketbelle is a bizarre mixture of action and sport that takes place in a cardboard-like world. THe player character has to find his sister, abducted by strange blob-like creatures, using the power of Basketball them (sounds a lot like Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden...). Beside some increasingly surreal one-on-one matches, there are some platforming sections where scoring a point opens the exit; you'll also fly at some point. While the mechanics are simple and fun, they are also quite simplistic, and the large size of the player's sprite does not help precision. On top of that, the game's very short. Worth a shot for the art direction and the mechanics, just don't buy the blurbs in the homepage - it has a cute story but nothing special.

[Gendo Ikari]

Bit of War is a NES-styled demake of God of War, turned into a platformer with goofy, almost cute sprites. While just a parody at first glance, the story is much more developed that expected and, the biggest surprise, follows the original, over-the-top premise David Jaffe had for GoW3: Zeus is killed at the end of the first stage and Kratos goes on to confront Norse and Egyptian deities who seek to take advantage of the vacuum left without their Greek equivalents. I expected something more from the last boss. The game can be played online or downloaded.

[Gendo Ikari]

Paradis Perdus is a short atmospheric game set in a very stylized floating island, made of flat polygons. At first it seems you can just look around, then you realize the environment reacts to your presence, and not in a positive way: you bring corruption and destruction, every place you walk on withers away and is eventually destroyed completely. Leave through a portal or keep exploring at the price of destruction, your choice (there are also some gems to collect but I never managed to get them all in time); you are very likely to end up falling out of the island. Fascinating but never went beyond the available version; I would have liked the starting point to be randomized instead of having to go out of the cave every single time.

[Gendo Ikari]

Crawl takes some inspirations from old dungeon crawlers and is quite surreal - this adjective fits since it casts the player in the role of a mental physician entering the dreamscapes of patients, which justifies the blocky visuals on a narrative levels. Movement is grid-based and turns are of 90 degrees only; verbs must literally be found around to get the abilities to interact and fight. Despite the limited movement, reflexes are often needed, and this is a cause of frustration in some circumstances. Be careful with what resolution you choose in the options - for some reason, on my PC I had to use the lowest one or the mouse cursor would not reach the bottom part of the screen.

[Gendo Ikari]

Superficially, Katabasis may seem one of the glut of horror games on the trail of Slender - that's a wrong impression. It has even less gameplay than those, as it's basically a long walk through the environments, so it's more of an "interactive experience". However, I really appreciated how it builds the atmosphere without loud noises or cheap scares; in exteriors, only "natural" sound effects are used. The setting is somewhat original, as it's the Urals mountains in Russia, where a father, on a trip with his estranged son, does not find him anymore and, while looking for him with just a torch, stumbles in what seem sacred places of the ancient local populations. The first inspiration for the author has been the tragedy of Dyatlov Pass, which has led to many speculations over the years, but myths and traditions of the local Mansi tribes play a large part too. My only serious warning is about some technical problems - once I fell into the river, ended up on an "inexistent" shore, and had to start over (no savegames or checkpoints).

[Gendo Ikari]

Brand-new Fire Point is a platformer starring a firefighter, tasked to save people who cause fires in very stupid ways. The water hose attached to the fire truck has limited lenght and range, so he has to use the ladder and find fire axes, extinguishers and other ladders on-site to rescue the people (and cats), also taking into account that at set times, flames become higher and spread around. The level is also not finished if he's not safe himself. The fires can be completely put out but the goal is always for the minimum people required to come out safely.

The "pseudo-physics" of the ladders are often inconvenient, you need to set them with the right angle so that you can climb them, but also need some pixels over a ledge so that you can grab them again. Once you get used to that, the game is fun: the first few levels (the selection screen is appropriately represented by a row of matches) are simple but they quickly become more complex, as you cannot just jump into action, careful planning of your moves is required. With a dozen levels (plus a secret one unlocked after the ending) it's over in 2-3 hours, but I found it a time well spent.

EDIT: a warning about a technical issue of the game. On startup, you may get an error for which the game is playable but has no sound. As recommended by the readme, I rebooted the system and this time there was sound.

[Gendo Ikari]

Lair of the Madhat is a Hack & Slash game starring anthropomorphic animals: a rhino (warrior), a weasel (ranger) and a deer (mage). The gameplay is quite simplified: each character, beside the basic attack, has three special abilities, each with its cooldown time. There is no inventory or stat management, and weapons are equipped by dioscarding the previous ones. The camera is also fixed. Despite its simplicity and shortness, I enjoyed the game; it can be played in two, and the graphics are quite impressive for such a small production, of note is the death animation of skeleton enemies, whose bones collapse around with the help a physics engine.

[Gendo Ikari]

Super Splatters is the PC port of XBLA game The Splatters. A peculiar variation on the physics-based artillery genre, it casts cute blobs tasked with the destruction of small explosive pods, which detonate on contact with blob liquid of the same color. A blob begins to disintegrate upon impact but there are several techniques to alter the physics and achieve a better spread, like the flip maneuver, which literally inverts the direction the blob is going, until it has enough mass to be "coherent". It's also possible to begin with a small jump before performing the real shot, and several stunts achieve better scores, shown as audience - the entire game is put in the context of an imaginary blobs' TV show, with a "Splatter TV" option that leads to a channel of replays players can share.

Some tutorials explain the basis of gameplay, the basic moves and controls are in fact few but allow for really crazy stunts; it's one of those easy to play, hard ot master games. I also really dig the animation, the fluid physics, and the overall claymation-like look. Highly recommended.

[Gendo Ikari]

Tirkiss - Princess Shade is a doujin game from a few years back that's described by its developer as a "Danmaku Action RPG". By holding the Attack button you can shoot long-range projectiles (different depending on the currently held sword) but magic energy is limited. This changes during boss fights, as they take place in some magic plane where shot energy is limitless, a necessity since they throw barrages of projectiles, effectively turning these battles into arena shooters.

Even without this good gimmick, the game would still be a solid Zelda clone, very intuitive despite the language barrier. Among the small but very appreciated features are the ability to collect all the gems on a screen by simply swinging the sword twice, and a great acceleration of dialogues and cutscenes by just holding the Menu button. Allocating skill points to raise the character's stats is also very simple, since it's done while sleeping at inns.

Unfortunately no amateur translation exists, probably because the game is quite obscure; it can be finished, but it's a shame because it brings a nice twist to its genre. There's also un upcoming sequel called Princess Shade Revision.

[Gendo Ikari]

Asterion is a French (with English subtitles) first-person surreal game made with UDK. The player character wakes up in a room in the middle of a large house that seems to be built among floating rocks, with long bridges connecting them. The voice of an unseen sister is constantly heard as he checks the rooms, until he is told someone is waiting downstairs...

The environments, while not particularly detailed, show good mapping and texturing, with some highly evocative views. It may have been a short and atmospheric interactive story if it wasn't for the very ill-conceived, useless action element: you are attacked by guys dispatched with what essentially is a bitchslap, you can't die but every time they hit the visual becomes confusing, they can easily surround you while it's hard to hit them. This makes the experience immensely frustrating, wasting the game's potential.

Also thumbs down for the complete absence of any option; since I tried the game on a PC less powerful than my usual one, I had to fool around with the game's .ini files to lower the graphical quality and get a better framerate.

The official site looks to be already dead, so here's a download mirror.

[Gendo Ikari]

This is only a WIP but I found it in the same channel as that Asterion trailer.

Narcosis is a survival horror with an underwater setting. Details are scarce but the setting alone is potentially awesome, putting the player inside the relict of a sunken ship, with an advanced diving suit that may still not be enough to protect him. IMO the implementation of action elements (if any) will be what makes or break this project, hoping it gets done.

[Gendo Ikari]

Nugget is a fun platformer with minimalistic graphics, based mostly on squares and rectangles; thanks to zoom and multiparallax, they are used very efficiently, to the point of creating a pseudo-3D effect in some areas. The characters are also quite expressive despite being just squares with eyes. Beside the usual jumping, the player can switch between three different planes in the foreground/background, and it's not restricted to fixed points, as it can - and sometimes must - be done while jumping too. This makes way for some excellent level design, although the whole game should not require more than a few hours. Still recommended, and with some nice music to boot.

Originally the game was free but with an editor and the source given for a small donation; just yesterday, the author released the whole package for free.