Zakia
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« Reply #13 on: January 28, 2009, 02:40:26 PM » |
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I have several articles that I would like to publish somewhere and this site seems decent for my causes, along with Indiegames.com. Still waiting to get a indie game writer position at a site, as I would like to continue writing on Flash/Indie.
Here is some content from Casualtygamer.com, a site I left after the focus shifted to next-gen. I was the only actual main-indie writer when I left (Though I used to be the main flash writer), so I had to cover some bases first. Chances are you don't need these but I'll put these out there anyway because I don't want to waste 'Em. Feel free to use these.
----------- THM spotlight:
Treasure Hunter man is an action-platformer mixed with aspects of Zelda games. You find a island that supposedly has a bunch of treasure, and you hunt for it. Simple. The goal of the game is to get a bunch of treasure. To do so, you have to explore the island and put up with a weird antagonist. There are a couple of puzzles in dungeons but nothing too brutal for you to handle, although SEVERAL items can be missed and you have to backtrack.
[More] The gameplay is decent, but I do have a few rants. Heart containers sometimes aren't given after bosses (This is probably to maintain difficulty, but I think they can come up with some heart fraction system similar to Zelda) to some dismay, and upgrades come at a unpredictible pace. Stabbing in midair is a chore and once you get the glide ability it gets hard to throw your boomerang up after a jump. There can be some insane lag in certain areas which causes your actions to lag by more than a second.
Overall Treasure Hunter Man is a decent experience on-par with the average indie game, and can be a good experience with a positive attitude. ----------- Jumper 3 spotlight:
Jumper 3 is a huge leap in quality over previous games by YoMommasMamma. While some parts are reminiscent of his past works, there are several large changes. There are gold coins instead of level goals, lowering the challenge a bit down from excruciating. Medals are also a feature for beating levels really fast. The game maintains YMM’s specialty mixture of platforming, reflexes, and puzzles.
[more] The goal of the game is to get to the other side of the screen and get as many coins as you can. On levels there can be quite some variance, from lazers to falling spikes. The big catch to this game is as you progress, you find new Ogmo’s. These are different forms of Ogmo, and have different abilities. For example, the first 2 colors, Green and Pink, can grapple and float.
All in all Jumper 3 is a must play for most fans of Inide platforming looking for a challenge. It’s made by a wonderful developer and has some surprising depth
----------- Spotlight: 7 Minutes
What would you do if you had 7 minutes to live? This is a unique platformer that will question your instincts and pressure you to the max
[more] This game is very, very hard, but fortunately you have unlimited lives. Sometimes you will have to knock some spikes down with one try and pass the area it unclogged, ect. There are several hidden paths ect that will take you a second to realize. As such, you will find several dead ends and meaningless deaths before you find the real way to do it. Something worth a note is this game could be scary for children. There are also several flashing things, so I HIGHLY reccomend you don't play if you have had seizures before.
----------- Spotlight: ROM check fail!
For those not Tech savvy, a ROM is Read Only Memory. Several retro games for systems like the NES use this format for it's games. Rom Check: FAIL is based on the premis that you have a corrupt ROM. The game flips out constantly and mixes several aspects of NES games up, like map sections, music, enemies, and the player.
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The goal of the game is to kill all enemies on screen. Each character that you will control has the same attacking ability as in the game. Mario jumps on enemies, Link moves around and stabs, ect. The game really outdoes itself in the aspect of keeping everything similar to the original NES games.
The game itself is quite fun and has just the right difficulty. You'll have a blast playing this game, especialy if you know alot of the games being immitated. My only complaints are that the game window is rather small and the flickers between transitions might cause seizures. The game is relatively simple and has no real reason to be installed. Still, RCF is a great experience for retro junkies.
----------- Full review: Cave Story
To be honest, I wasn’t expecting Cave Story to be so good. It looked so simple that it would have been a subpar platforming RPG. I think we have all underestimated a indie developers potential, as this gaming experience rivals pretty much any extreme-budget hit.
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You start out viewing Kazuma ask for ‘Sue’ to help him. Apparently sue is part of the Mimiga race, which are like cute rabbits. A psychopath doctor is taking mimigas from the village for his wicked experiments and is trying to use enraged Mimigas to bring a apocolapse on the real world.
You play as a nameless cyborg warrior, suffering amnesia. You join up with Sue’s family and other friends in order to take down the doctor.
Pixel manages to create some solid storytelling and keep your mind busy. The story creates a nice depth and incentive to move forward. Everything you do will affect the story, and in a few cases, who lives. You can chose to save 2 people in the game, and by saving them you make the game a bit harder and get a better payout.
You control yourself with the arrows, press Z to jump (Double tap to use booster, a Item you get mid/late game depending on choices) and press X to fire (Hold to charge the Spur). The game controls very well, It’s like a mash of early NES megaman platforming with the fast shooting action of Metroid.
You can have up to 5 weapons, and can switch between them with A and S. A neat part about this game is how you can chose to trade in your low-power starting gun for a medium power gun early game, with a additional weapon for a niche use gun midgame, or a epic chargeable gun endgame. There are some more situations on weapon-trading that I’d like best that you discover yourself.
Most weapons differ greatly, for example the Nemisis is strongest when it has the least experience, the bubbler which can spray bubbles, including exploding ones, and the Snake, which can move through obstacles.
Each weapon can be upgraded for 3 levels, by collecting gold triangles (Experience) dropped by enemies. The higher the level the stronger the weapon (Exept for the Nemisis, which is reversed), but you also have to be careful, being hit reduces your experience. There is no exact way to “Level-up” or “Get stronger” in the game, almost any weapon can be used just as good if the player has some nice skill, but your weapon choices will depend upon preference. Speaking of skill, Cave Story requires a steady growth of skill, the game can get insanely hard if you are slacking. Examples are simple enemies from the beginning of the game will get more annoying in the sense of flying right over you, shooting things, and being hard to hit.
Any person who has played some classic RPG’s like Ys and Zelda will know that you have to look for things and do favors. This is present in this game, you may be hunting for bomb ingredients or puppies, it doesn’t matter. Cave story follows most RPG traditions. One thing it doesn’t, is the bosses. You will have very unique bosses that sometimes come at completely random times. No boss is nescessarily the same, you have to take each one down a different way. This adds a fresh feel to this game, you’ll never know what’s next.
Even the music is good. It’s got a nice retro feel, maintains the game’s character, and just fits in extremely well.
The game is presented in a nice retro fashion, pixilated and full of character. Everything is lush and well designed, down to the bare basics. The characters all have a unique style, and have unforgettable personalities (Curly). One thing I can’t forgive is people bashing this game for it’s graphics. If you are looking for next gen graphics, don’t look here, and appreciate it’s own style instead.
All in all Cave Story is a blast to play. It’s easy to get into, hard to master, and just reeks of retro goodness. Throughout the game you will classic things to remember, and you will love the game that brought unity to all our favorite games. This game is extremely family friendly, there is no blood, although I’d imagine some parts of the story will be hard for kids to understand. If you are a parent and your child has interpretation and normal gaming skill, this is a great game.
----------- Review: Kaipuu
The first thing on my mind was LOVE. I LOVED the concept, the music, the integrity. HATE came after love. I hated the lag, huge saving times, and the time spent tediously hunting souls.
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Kaipuu is a beautiful gamemaker game made by the awesome indie developer Virtanen (Who made ‘The Manipulator, another gem Colin checked on). The game is set in a bleak world where you have to find 400 souls and all your lost emotions to be reunited with your love. The game has quite a original style with the gothic writing and black-and-white coloring. Regardless how bland it may seem it's still intresting and enviorments are well done. The music is quite fitting for the mood, and changes depending on which area you are in. As the intro suggests, the game is highly centered around the love-hate relationship. There are white and black suns, each will change your current affinity to one of the two. Each mood has certain abilities, gained by finding your emotions around the map. You need all your emotions to get all 400 souls.
The game is easy to pick up and has minimal difficulty, exeptions to endgame where you have to spend ridiculous time hunting for the last 50-some souls. The map is pretty sizable but not too much that you can't handle. It's pretty neat how hate and love have different playstyles, it's almost as if you change your game suddenly. Each side is evenly balanced, though it may not seem like it depending on if you have lots of emotions for one side.
A small closing note for this game is that it is VERY computer instensive. It may take a few minutes to save and most old computers will experience some lag. I suggest you download this instead of playing on YoYo games.
----------- Review: Spelunky
Indiana Jones has been favorite movie of my friends. They just can’t get enough. While one was goggling about it, he came across Spelunky, a game designed to stimulate a rougelike feel in a platformer, and stimulate quick reflexes instead of epic memorization (Or you can label your keyboard) of all the commands. It did this, and more.
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The game is basically a journey through caves, looking for treasure and ect. On the way you will find several enemies and traps, like arrow shooting statues and snakes It’s a mangable amount and enough to keep you on your toes. There is a large learning curve, but once you get it down, you’ll be able to progress smoothly. You start out with a small leather whip (No chain-whip upgrades). Along levels you may find some nice rocks for throwing, or possibly scavenge a arrow from a failed trap. There are also several weapons you can find/buy that aren’t thrown, such as a shotgun and Bow. The combat system is part of the learning curve, you may have a hard time adjusting from the ridiculously long Castlevania whips back to your leather whip. Along your arsenal you have bombs and Ropes, you can carry these without your hands. These sort of help you when you get stuck, or just want to nab a lot of buried gold. I highly suggest you only use these when needed. Flares are sort of secret (Not explained in the tutorial) and can be summoned by pressing F. You have 3 and these are just sparkling rocks until you get in the dark areas.
Now for the levels. These are randomly generated, similar to Nethack, and can contain lots of different things. There are occasional spike pits and steep jumps, so I suggest you press and hold down before jumping into unknown areas. Falling damage and accidentally activating arrow traps are your 2 biggest enemies.
There are 4 worlds, each bearing slight difference: World one is a cave (Levels 1-4) World 2 is a underground jungle (5-8) World 3 is a Icy cavern (9-12) World 4 is a temple (13-16)
Each level has a bit of gold and gems laying around, as well as chests crates, and pots. Crates may contain artifacts, like compasses and weapons (Pretty much anything, but it is rare) while the others I listed mainly contain gold. Gold can be spent in random shops, which can offer various other things. If you try and bring something out of the store or shoplift, the owner will attack (Just like Nethack). If you aren’t daring enough, you can always go in to a craps shop or kissing parlour (I found one, but it was way to expensive. I think it’ll sell the girl if you buy her) If you get REALLY good, you can find a tunnelman to make shortcuts to certain levels. Unfortunately, you have to reach the destination 2 times to find him, and he's very expensive (First job is 100K). If you're having trouble, that may help.
On a closing note, you can pick up a blonde woman and throw her around. I believe she is pretty much invincible, so she is equal to a moving rock (She freaks out if you throw her). If you take her to a exit, you get a free heart refill at the end and some extra points. She’s classified as loot.
All around, this game makes for one solid and unique experience. The creator delivered everything he promised, and I’m sure you will have some good times with this game. I recommend you play it, and don’t let the high difficulty hurt you, everyone goes through it, be it Spelunky or Nethack.
----------- Over 9000 year old review: Robokill
At first sight you will be amazed, but does this game hold up? As a first note, the graphics are a huge feat to what people have seen to date. Robokill contains nice, sleek graphics with a futuristic industrial look. However, this game is so graphic intensive I will guarantee you will probably try lowering the quality to make it run faster. For now, we are impressed, so lets go to gameplay.
You are a robot on a 2D overhead map. The game is a exploration game that is similar in style to Zelda, hunting around for keys etc. As you progress you take on missions, equip items, and kill robots (Duh!). The system is solid, you have shops, maps, and more! Overall Robokills gameplay is amazingly fun.
Although you'd think you just need to change your oil, Robokill actually has a exp and level system, as well as shops and cash. As you level, you can use new items and have better innate stats such as damage and shielding. The RPG elements may use a facelift, but they certainly meet expectations. Althoug sadly the menus are terrible. Buttons are so tiny you will barely notice them and cannot look at them on the fly. Shops are completely unorganized and hard to find specific weapons when they all are school-bus yellow. Messages are terribly tiny, and overall things need to be much bigger.
A thing I would like to note is the full-version purchase. For around $10 you can buy missions 2 & 3. This is a great deal, and definitely will be well spent. When you buy it, you don't get a product code, rather, you can use your e-Mail instead, which is quite convenient, and I definitely suggest the purchase of the full version if you are into this type of game.
Although even without the full version the first mission is long enough to do outdo most flash games. Overall, I give this game a 9.3/10 A definite candidate for a cult classic, executes old formulas very well.
----------- I used to write several game guides, and I had a unfinished game guide for Iji. Although there is no real need for game guides in Indie, they still can be made.
Pacifist/Secret Guide: Iji Iji has been a fav recently, as it just blows me away. There are several secrets and Pacifist extras some may miss, which makes this game insanely deep. Read on for them after the break.
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Secrets:
Nanofield Reboot/Reset points: Duck and press CCCCZ. Crack and all your points are removed, whiel you can redistribute them. This is very useful.
Save Dan (Spoiler, please highlight): Don't use the trapmine when you get it. Save it for the end of Sector 8. Before the very end, peek a bit ahead and see if you see Dan. Set the trapmine and move on. If you did this right, Dan lives and replaces the Koton in the Sector X control room.
Bannana gun: Located in sector 9 near a poster. Shoots bananas and takes one ammo from every kind.
Mia's ribbons: These are scatter through the game, have a bit of info on Iji's family. If you miss one I believe you can't find more. 10 ribbons are in game, 1 in each sector. Posters: There are 10 spread through the levels. Finding one unlocks it's pic in the extra menu. 1 in each sector.
Pacifist extras (0 kills):
The Truce/skip Krotera (Sector 3): Don't kill anyone and when you enter sector 3 you will get a event. Move through the level without shooting, kicking, or colliding with Tasen and the soldier from before will Kill Krotera.
Ammo Refill (Sector 7): Head up to the phantom reaver and take 2 lifts. Teleport and collide with the tasen from earlier. For 8 nano he will give you 10 ammo for all guns.
Skip Iosa (Sector 9/X (Deep Sector): Move on like normal and the assassin kills Iosa at the end of her fight if you are pacifist. Saves the kill.
Massacre (Sector X): Combine the MPFB Devastator Cyclic & Fusion Ignition System, the level 10 weapons for each race (Requires Crack Lv10). After teleporting to the Restricted area, the massacre should be to the left.
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