Be-Rad Entertainment

Frozzd is a sidescrolling platformer.  It’s not just any sidescrolling platformer though - it has Super-Mario-Galaxy-like planet hopping goodness.  The graphics are very cartoony and the audio is poofy soft, like a pillow (a nice soft pillow, not a gross, wet pillow). 

You play as an astronaut hopping from planet to planet.  Your goal is to unfreeze blobby orange creatures called Mubblies.  As you go about your unfreezing process you need to avoid / attack any of the Frozzd (enemies) that get in your way.

Frozzd won YoYoGames.com’s winter competition so much congrats go out to the developer, Jesse Venbrux.

Game: Frozzd
Genre: Platformer
Website & Demo: Venbrux

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The Underside is a platform-adventure game claiming to be similar to the likes of Metroid, Castlevania and/or Cave Story.  It’s free roaming, but its gameplay will be a bit more story driven than said games.

The demo is pretty short, but the small amount of story in it is awesome juiciness.

Here is how it starts:

“In the beginning, the World was flat, and it was pure, and it was good.  From atop his Almighty Throne, The Universal King looked upon the plain, white landscape.
He grabbed his Almighty Paintbrush and with one mighty swing of his arm…
stroked layers of Life onto the expansive canvas…” And there’s more on the game’s website.  Click the link below.

Go to the Insignificant Games homepage to read more and download the demo:
Click here.

Cursor*10 is a fantastical flash game.  You really just need to play it to get the full effect, it’s better to figure out how to play it by actually playing it ’cause anything said about it might ruin the experience.

Play it here: NekoGames

Happy New Year!

GameTunnel has posted a list of the top 10 games of 2007.  Here they are:

2007 Top 10 Games of the Year

1. Aquaria
2. Depths of Peril
3. Venture Arctic
4. Immortal Defense
5. Knytt Stories
6. DarkSide
7. Mr. Robot
8. Galcon
9. Scavenger
10. Kudos Rock Legend

Check out the whole article here

There has been a serious lacking of posts recently.  2 reasons:

1.  I went to Vegas last weekend with my family.  We saw Love (the Cirque Du Soleil / Beatles tribute show), and the Blue Man Group.  Both were fantastic, but love comes out on top because it’s absolutely amazing, and it has Beatles music.  If I were a 16 year old girl my undergarments would have been thrown on stage.  Classy.

2.  My car was stolen.  Yes, my one and only, my whip, my baby.  Taken from me sometime while I was in a smoky casino.  All is not lost though.  The police called me this morning soon after they found it.  There were only a few minor setbacks such as having a busted window (it definitely rained last night), my Sirius satellite radio was missing, two binders full of CDs were gone, as well as my phone charger, fast trak and a hands-free phone device.  I picked up the car this morning and immediately took it to get the window fixed.  Now it’s almost as good as new, minus a cracked steering column.

But overall my week’s been pretty good because I didn’t have to drive down to work at all, and Vegas was fun.  It was my mom’s birthday so it was great to hang out with her.

Hope your car’s safely parked wherever it is.

Let the gaming posts resume!

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Democracy 2 is the sequal to the 2005 wallet acclaimed title of the same name (minus the digit, of course).  The game is a political sim putting you in the shoes of the leader of a fictitious country.  Your job is to keep the country balanced, running, and not blown up by terrorists.  To do this you must make important decisions each and every single day such as choosing whether or not to lift a ban on whale hunting.

Almost every day a new problem requiring your immediate attention will arise.  Before making a decision to “fix” the issues you will be presented with text arguments explaining both sides.  Luckily the text is quite enjoyable to read so it doesn’t feel like too much of a chore.

If you don’t like political sims it’s almost worth it to load up the game and listen to the music.  It’s so fitting for a political game.  The buttons could use some visual love, and the mouse was immediately noticable because it didn’t use my computer’s mouse acceleration speed so I was left with a slothy mouse.

But don’t let a slothy mouse scare you away, unless it happens to be a zombie slothy mouse.  Those’ll getcha every time.

Game: Democracy 2
Developer: Positech Games
Site de web: Here

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Aveyond 2 is a top-down RPG reminiscent of the old style SNES games.  To answer your question - RPG stands for Role Playing Game, not rocket propelled grenade, thank you.  But after loading up the game for the first time I thought I had been hit by the latter, died, and gone to heaven.  Aveyond is smooth as silk and gets you into the game with an amiable tutorial.  This experience was much different than when I loaded up the first Aveyond.  It was choppy, smelled like cabbage and didn’t play well with others.  Its sequel is definitely on the right set of tracks this time.

Inside the game the colors are pretty and the world feels full of life - except for whoever is looping the wind instrument.  Tell Amaranth there needs to be an option to have the flute play some other melodies, or maybe replace it with an instrument like a trombone, or a hobbit.

Where were we?  Right, the engine.  Aveyond uses RPG maker XP.  Even though the game is made using a pre-existing engine it sure does a superb job of getting you to think it would be easy to make your own RPG.  It’s the opposite feeling you get when watching a yo-yo champion, that just looks way too challenging.

Game: Aveyond 2
Developer: Amaranth Games
Download the demo here.

The humpsters is a 2d physics based fighting game.  The only thing you have to control during a fight is your laughter.  It’s comical, like a pigeon pooping on someone else’s cat.

Anywho, the object of the game is to build your monster by dragging and placing limbs onto your monster’s body, er head.  Same thing?  Well, for all intents and purposes, yes.  After you’ve created your humpster you get into the ring.  Grab a beer (or juice if you’re not of age) before starting ’cause you just need to sit back and watch.  Once the match starts each monster’s limbs twirl around and fling them randomly around the screen.  If your limbs hit your enemy you deal damage.  If you win the fight you also win their limbs, which you can then proceed to attach to your own little frankenstein.  Oh little frankenstein, you’re so cute and cuddly.

It’s great for a few rounds, but it’s an experimental game, AKA very short.  It’s also made by the guy who did crayon physics.

Game: Humpsters
Developer: Kloonigames
Website: Here

Synaesthete is an IGF finalist in the “excellence in visual art category.”  It’s a spawn from the digipen institute of technology.  The game is a hybrid rhythm and action game.  You move your character from room to room while fighting baddies.  The way you deal damage is by hitting j, k and l on the keyboard in time with the corresponding notes flying down the screen.

Before playing it I did not know it was already nominated for its “excellent visual style”, but when playing it I thought it was a little over the top, a few too many things happening on screen, you know, a little too busy.  Especially considering the fact that you have to pay attention to the rhythm portion of the game, which makes it pretty difficult to see what’s happening in the actual game world.  The truth to the matter is Synaesthete is full of pretty effects and brings a refreshing twist to the rhythm game genre.  Overall it’s worth checking out, but after three levels I couldn’t handle it anymore.

 (busy-ness)

Game: Synaesthete
Genre: Rhythm/Action mix
Developer: Rolling without slipping (I’m pretty sure)
Website: Here (demo)

It’s one thing when you’re able to draw on your computer screen using crayons, but to make a physics game out of it, wah woo wee woo.  Like many physics games out there you’re in control of a ball.  In this case it’s a crayon circle.  Your goal is to pick up all the stars on the screen by moving your ball over them.  There’s a catch, you can only manipulate your ball by drawing rectangles on the screen.  Once you draw a rectangle it turns into a physical object and gravity takes over.  If you draw your cubes in the right spots and you get your ball to move you may just complete some levels.

The deluxe version of Crayon Physics is a finalist in the 2008 independent games festival.  If you go to their website you can currently download the original version of the game.  Until the deluxe version is available for download you’ll just have to hold on to your panties and hone your skills with the basic version.

Game: Crayon Physics
Developer: Kloonigames