Introduction without that much relevanceThere is in Italy a guy called Simone Bevilacqua (saimo here in the forums), he's not only and indie developer, he's the INDIER developer I know, even if he even doesn't care that much about the indie scene, contests or prizes, he care about making games and chatting a bit with him you can almost see how pride of his latest game he is, and you'll think how he's right, once you've played the demo.
His latest game is called BOH, a name that in italian makes people laugh. Whe use to say "boh?!" when we're higly in dubt, something we can use instead to say "i really don't know!"
Ok but why is this guy the indier developer i know?
BOH is one of the most niche titles i've ever had the pleasure to play.
It not only looks like a classic from the Amiga 500 times, it play like a classic from that era.
It's a difficult game that always ask you to come back for more, because every time you play you'll made it a little further, almost to the end of that damned dungeon.
He started to code this game on Amiga, then he ported it on Windows and Mac.
At this point, he had a dream. He wanted to see his game boxed, sold in a physical format, with a 25 pages long manual with delicious pixel art printed on almost every page.
So he started to self produce physical copies with the help of a little publisher that never published videogames before.
Basically this dude made a game for Amiga (and PC\mac of course), out in 2009, and he's selling it in physical copies.
(Also his next game is a commodore64 game, not a game that uses the c64 palette, a game that actually runs also on a commodore64).
This is the indiest thing I ever saw, I mean it in the way of doing something without thinking too much about what people wants or they think to want, and basically everything, from the game to the packaging, is a pure act of love.
Let's talk about the game dammit!Now speaking about the game itself, this game is very very good, but not for everyone. Even if it can be played and enjoyed by everyone with a bit of patience this game is a love letter to retrogamers.
You move a tiny character inside biggers and biggers space dungeons (or even fantasy ones, but i'll talk about that later) and your mission is just to make it to the end.
The game uses a tile based dynamic lighting system, and a very fancy stuff that makes all the world around your little space marine rotate when you navigate the rooms.
You can collect different light sources and gadgets, like a short\long range enemies detectors or automappers that complete for you the minimap of the current floor.
Even with gadgets like that the game feels claustrophobic, and you'll be better to play it running over the corridors instead of blasting everything until you're trapped in a room with dozens of critters and bigger evil creatures.
The fact that the game spawn infinite monsters at you, triggered by certain events, makes the game itself looks like a cursed trial to your sanity, you will feel the anger of the game levels against you. It's like running inside pixelated places in the hands of a supernatural presence: The Evil Master.
Each mission has an Evil Master you need to evocate and then defeat, his ghostly presence will appear and disappear as you try to hunt him down, while all the screen flashes.
Finishing a mission in hard mode after beating one of them and all his minions is very rewarding, and maybe it's only because i have a fetish about dungeon crawlers but i'm in love with this game.
Now Saimo lets you buy it in digital download form: unluckly the shipping outside Italy is costly so he needed to try this solution as well, keep in mind that if you'll like the game you'll be able to buy the boxed version only paying the difference later on, and if you take that one from the start you will have immediate access to the download too, so you can order it and wait for the package arrive while already playing the game.
I really suggest you all to play the Demo, that runs on PC\Mac and Amiga OS, a Linux port is under consideration too but the game already runs flawlessy under Wine.
I'm sure even the only Tougher and Tougher mission on the demo will keep you busy for a while, i haven't still managed to complete all the floors (each phase is harder than the previous one). The full game offers a lot of different missions ranging from very easy to very hard, and it's really a blast.
Finally, the game also offers to you to make your own levels with a smart system of text files. You really don't need any fancy level editor even to do very complex stuff.
You can also mod all the graphics and sounds, and both the demo and the complete version ships with different themes, i enjoyed a lot the C64 one, that changes the game palette to look like a Commodore 64 game, and the Castle one, that makes the game a fantasy dungeon crawler, changing both graphics and sounds.
This is surely a game i'll play in pills, for a long time
http://www.bohthegame.com/this is the default "scifi" theme, notice how the rotation is not your fake average GM rotation that rotates also the pixels, the game uses the CPU for everything
and this is how the game looks like with the Castle theme, i love it
edit: Holy flooding Batman, this post is way longer than i've expected!
Player
