Quick Fix: Screenshot Saturday 11/29

A Quiver of Crows
Developer: Sheado.net
A Twin-stick Shooter Set in a Grim World Cursed by Demons and Ghouls
Learn more here

Urban Galaxy
Developer: Urban Galaxy team
Sci-fi MMO in an urban theme
Choose your path and conquer this Megapolis of opportunities! Develop your skills and your career as alliances and hatred dynamics constantly change.
Learn more and play here

Star Command Galaxies
Developer: Warballoon
The next chapter in the Star Command saga
Real time lighting, crew desires and planets
A more open, dynamic and exciting Galaxy to explore.
Learn more here

Robots Ate My City
Developer: Andrew Morrish
Destroy robots with your camera and use their parts to upgrade, from the developer of Super Puzzle Platformer
Learn more here

Skytorn
Developer: Skytorn team
Centuries after a mysterious cataclysm tore the world apart, humans have taken to the skies - ferrying their kin in airships, searching the remains for artifacts and survivors. Explorer Nevoa ventures out across uncharted islands, left floating in the sky. Alone and armed only with a shovel, she is determined to carve her own path. Skytorn is a procedurally generated action adventure game, set in the ruins of a fallen world.
Learn more here

Life Was Hard Back Then
Developer: Tristan Dahl
A roguelike strategy game where the player manages a small village through many generations. The villagers must struggle to protect themselves and their children against wild animals, cruel bandits and an unforgiving climate. As time passes, the children grow up and are able to fend for themselves and eventually, their children. Below is the first iteration of the female villages at various ages.
Learn more here

Gearend
Developer: SolarLune Games
A 2D Metroidvania about a little robot that explores the ruins of a long forgotten facility in search of the other members of his small robot family.
Learn more here

Hypt

Developer: EmpI Studios
Hypt is a game that uses reflection as its primary game mechanic. You use it to defend yourself and reflect projectiles back on attackers.

Learn more and download the demo here

Jobchanger Brigade

Developer: Pidroh
A fusion of boss battle oriented 2D platforming with classical RPG jobs
Action RPG + Dynamic Jobchange + Hard Boss Fights + Crafting + Online Multiplayer

Learn more and play here

IOS Review #91: Sunburn!

Title: Sunburn!
Developer: Secret Crush
Platforms: IOS Universal
Price: $2.99
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This is it. Your spaceship, in pieces after a catastrophic asteroid impact. Your crew, drifting helplessly through the void, doomed to die a slow death as their oxygen depletes. And you, their captain, with a jetpack and final promise to keep: no one dies alone. That's Sunburn in a nutshell.
Now despite the morbid tone, Sunburn is actually a whimsical lighthearted platformer about diving into the sun. If I had to compare it to the other games, Sunburn would be akin to a precision platformer meets Lemmings, with a dash of the movie Gravity. Each level consists of planets and other hazards around a red sun(s), and it's your mission to reach your fellow crew members so you can die together. Rescued members trail behind you, linked by an elastic tether; it's not long till you have a lengthy tail of astronauts in your wake as you weave between fiery asteroids and escape black holes. Levels grow quite complex and sprawling, with obstacles such as glass orbs that break after a few impacts, rotating lava planets with patches of safe ground, and rocky planets that drift when you land on them. Using your jet pack, you must navigate through zero g, while also keeping track of your limited oxygen meter; each jump costs oxygen, forcing you to consider the most effective path between planets. Thankfully, the controls are simple and responsive, allowing you to rotate and boost effortlessly around hazards. The colorful pixel art and humorous dialogue from your stranded crew members round out this fun challenging experience.

Sunburn is a fun physics platformer, turning what could have been a dark morbid premise into a bright cheery game, complete with great level design and solid controls. You can purchase Sunburn for $2.99.

Quick Fix: Screenshot Saturday 11/22

GRAV
Developer: Bit Monster
In GRAV, players will explore massive procedurally generated worlds and have endless adventures in a hostile universe. They will discover planets constructed with a unique variation of oceans, mountains, plains, and canyons. 
Learn more here

Blues & Bullets
Developer: A Crowd of Monsters
Blues & Bullets is an episodic noir story, where the player will need to survive thrilling shootouts, dark investigations, difficult decisions to make and unexpected story twists in the skin of a former detective who struggles with his own demons trapped in a decadent city.
Learn more here

Blood Will Be Spilled
Developer: BLWBS dev team
Blood Will Be Spilled is a western-themed 2D action platformer from a small Slovak indie studio. A story of blood, bounties, revenge and chitin
Learn more here

Codename Ro.N.I.N.

Developer: dwCrew
Codename Ronin is a deathmatch game featuring futuristic robots fighting each other with swords. We are considering features such as coop zombie mode, parkour style movement and other cool stuff but we want to keep the core of the game as a pure action, fast paced deathmatch.
Learn more here

PC Review #112: This War Of Mine

Title: This War of Mine
Developer: 11 Bit Studios
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Price: $19.99
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A popular franchise once stated "War. War never changes". Maybe so, but for the people caught in the midst of the conflict, everything changes. This War of Mine explores the horrors of war from a perspective not explored in the medium till now and delivers one of the most tense, gripping, and bleak experiences I've played this year.

Games like Call of Duty and the like tend to use war for the spectacle, creating big action set pieces from the chaos. You'll never see the war ravaging the country where This War of Mine is set, but its effects are ever present. A gutted war-torn city, all pencil-sketched shadows and ruined structures, reeking of desperation and hopelessness, as explosions thunder and flash ceaselessly outside.

This War of Mine is not fun. It's grueling. Unrelenting. Oppressive. You start each playthrough with three survivors. Sometimes one or more might already be sick or wounded. Sometimes it might be winter at the start, meaning fuel and heat will be utmost priorities. The game is divided into two phases: Day, where you're confined to your base because of snipers outside, and Night, where you can venture out and scavenge for supplies, The daytime hours are when you can maintain your survivors and home, crafting new tools and workshops, building defenses against looters, or simply keeping your group alive by making sure they rest, recover, eat. You're always on the back foot, always just barely eking out a miserable day-by-day existence; even when your group finally is healthy and has a good amount of food stored, there's always the sense that it can't last long.

Once night falls, you're free to travel to other locations with one survivor, while instructing the others to rest or guard against raiders. These places range from homes and apartment buildings to schools and hospitals, and each scavenging run is a slow intense affair. Similar to 2012's Mark of the Ninja, environments are cloaked in shadows, only areas in your line of sight being visible. New unexplored areas are foreboding, never knowing who resides within or if they're friendly or not.

Even when you're equipped with a knife or gun, combat and violence in general feels like a last resort. Not simply because guns and ammo are a rarity or because you're untrained, but because you don't want to kill people or steal from them. A lot of games have moral choices or meters telling you if you're good or bad, but honestly, they've always felt artificial to me. In This War of Mine, there are only murky grey choices. Your actions matter, not just at that moment when you're desperate enough to kill and steal from people who are just trying to survive, people trying to keep their group alive just like you are, but also in the long term, as doing morally questionable things weighs on your characters. Building a radio or finding books and cigarettes can only distract and keep them occupied for so long. Survivors grow depressed, listless, broken, perhaps even suicidal.

If anything, that's War of Mine's greatest achievement: the way it makes you feel bad for crossing that moral line or makes intruding onto another group's home feel weird and wrong. You don't want to turn away children asking for help, or steal medicine from that elderly couple, or kill those people for their food. But your group is sick, and starving, and you desperately need fuel to stave off the winter cold, so you must.

The days go by. Winter comes and goes. As the war worsens, places that were once safe havens might be overtaken by bandits. Barter, scavenge, do what you must to endure. This War of Mine is the kind of game you might only be able to play in short sessions, due to the overwhelming bleakness and depressing nature. It can be slow and tedious and monotonous, but that only works in the game's favor, establishing a grim "We just need to last another day" tone. This War of Mine is not a fun game, but it is one hell of an engrossing, compelling, and atmospheric experience.

You can purchase This War of Mine from the game's official site, Steam, GOG, and Humble.

The Watchlist: Desolus

Title: Desolus
Developer: Mark Mayers
Platforms: PC
In development
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Desolus is a first person adventure and puzzle game where the player controls a black hole called the singularity. The player uses the singularity to attract elemental particles to navigate a hostile environment 

Otherworldly art styles and environments are always a joy to experience and going by its early screenshots, Desolus promises plenty of those. Exploring the titular alien structure, your main defense is the ability to summon a powerful singularity, This miniature black hole can be used both offensively and defensively, allowing you to absorb enemy projectiles and other abilities, but also explodes eight seconds after being created. Working around the singularity's short lifespan, you'll need to defeat hostile inhabitants and solve timing-based puzzles. For example, navigating around deadly turrets while figuring when and where to place singularities so that you can avoid projectiles and escape the ensuing blast radius. Described as "Portal meets Metroid", Desolus will introduce new singularity abilities as you explore a variety of atmospheric landscapes.

Desolus is early in development, still in pre-alpha with about 30% of the game's content done. You can learn more about Desolus on the developer's TIGForum devlog, as well as the game's site and Twitter page.

No Money, No Problem: 7DFPS 2014 Edition Part 2

I posted about several interesting 7DFPS entries on Saturday, but with 146 games, some were bound to be overlooked the first time. Here's another list of cool, polished, or just plain fun entries from this year's 7DFPS

Paint The Town Red
South East Games' Paint The Town Red is a gory brawler, with a block-headed artstyle that probably brings to mind Gravity Bone. Trapped in a pool hall, use whatever you can grab to survive as long as possible: your bare fists, knives, chairs, and more. The copious blood and cool details like smashing a bottle against a wall to create a makeshift glass blade makes Paint The Town Red an enjoyable experience. The developers plan to expand the game into a larger release; you can vote for it on Steam Greenlight.

Duality
Duality is a dimensional-swapping stealth game. Using the otherworldly prism in your hand, you can move between worlds, taking advantage of barriers and pathways that may only exist in one dimensions to avoid guards and hide from their line of sight. It's stylish, tricky, and definitely worth checking out.

Shootmephrenia
Set in an shadowy landscape of mirrors and alleys, you have one goal in Shootmephenia: shoot yourself. At first, the task is simply, merely ricocheting the bullet between surfaces, but soon you'll have to make desperate leaps over the dark void to catch your projectile. A visually stylish and challenging first person puzzle game.

Motor Money Crash!
A simple fast-paced shooters. Race around the arena, blasting deady cubes with your turret and pistol, and jump off ramps in your jeep. Not very complex, but worth a try

War of Toys
Toy soldiers fight to the death with all manner of weaponry across a massive living room. The shooting is responsive and War of Toys feels quite polished for a jam game. The toy soldier theme allows for interesting level aspects, such as climbing a desk to reach higher ground.

Exposure
A cool multiplayer-only game that's essentially an abstract take on Predator. One player is a visible Hunter armed with traps and the ability to see footprints, the others must avoid him as an invisible Hunted. Really nice particle and lighting effects, and the concept makes for some tense matches.

God Complex
Red vs Blue...meets Giest (or Ghost Trick). Jump from soldier to soldier to influence the war between red and blue soldiers. Pretty simple, but fun, with some nice Unreal Engine 4 visuals

IOS Review #90: Zengrams

Title: Zengrams
Developer: Andreas Boye
Platforms: IOS Universal
Price: $2.99
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There are numerous puzzle games about manipulating colors, and many games about forming and reshaping figures, but Zengrams combines those two concepts to deliver a fantastic minimalist puzzle game, perhaps the best I've played since Blek.

Zengrams excels at taking a simple mechanic and exploring it in myriad challenging ways. Each level provides a collection of shapes and an outline of a figure; you must manipulate the shapes to fit the outline. Where Zengrams stands out is its use of color. Overlapping shapes of different colors results in each shaded area becoming its own shape, while like-colored shapes merge together, allowing you to seamlessly combine and split shapes into new figures. Honestly, the GIF below demonstrates the concept in a more succinct fashion.

'Simple to understand, difficult to master' aptly describes Zengrams' puzzles. Not only must you be mindful of how and where you place shapes, you also have a limited amount of moves for each level. The early stages ease you in, but soon the challenge ramps up, due to shapes merged or offset in tricky ways or the number of moves you can perform. It's the kind of game where you'll spend 30 minutes on a puzzle, trying it this way and that way, and then came back an hour or a day later with a fresh approach and realize the solution was staring you in the face this whole time. The obvious solution isn't always the correct one, forcing you to think of more concise and efficient ways to complete puzzles. Each new level invokes that sense of "Is this even possible...", and finally solving a particularly challenging level feels so rewarding.

Zengrams' minimalist presentation is merely a stylish facade hiding the challenging nature of its puzzles and the seamless way shapes merge makes each of the game's 70 levels a satisfying experience. You can purchase Zengrams for $2.99.

Quick Fix: Screenshot Saturday 11/15

Splasher
Developer: Splasher Game team
Splasher is a 2D platformer featuring paint
Learn more here

Extract 237
Developer: Project Extract
Extract 237 is a first person/third person Sci-Fi adventure survival game set inside a massive creature. You play as Dr Winters a lone survivor from the creatures attack on her research vessel. As you try to survive and escape from the creature’s innards, you meet other characters and encounter strange monsters that inhabit the darkest depths
Learn more here

Odd Bot Out
Developer: Martin Magni
Odd is not like the other robots. After failing a standardized test Odd ends up in the recycling bin. Help Odd escape the robot factory using building blocks, electricity, and physics!
Each level presents a unique challenge. Construct a bridge across a gap. Ride a robotic centipede. Build and drive a car
Learn more here

101 Ways To Die
Developer: Four Door Lemon
101 Ways To Die is a physics-based puzzler with a twist.
As the assistant to the morally corrupt Professor Ernst Splatunfuder, you must help recreate '101 Ways To Die' - a book full of delightfully gory death recipes for dispatching your foes in the most stylish ways possible! 
With an arsenal of deadly tools at your disposal, find the most violent and brutal ways to maim, slice, burn, explode, rip and impale the lab created creatures known as Fodder. Don't let them escape!
Learn more here

singmetosleep
Developer: acatalept
singmetosleep is an atmospheric, exploration-based interactive narrative. Vast minimalist forms, a stark color palette, and an evocative soundscape.
There are no real monsters.
Not really.
Learn more and download the demo here

Untitled Game
Developer: Alexey Abramenko
A “kickass shmup title” from the developer of Intrusion 2
Follow the developer on Twitter for updates

IOS Review #89: Framed

Title: Framed
Developer: Loveshack
Platforms: IOS Universal
Price: $4.99
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I've been anticipating Framed for a while. It's the kind of game that encapsulates everything I look for a quality mobile experience: an interesting concept, smart use of touchscreen that goes beyond an UI cluttered with buttons and icons, a compelling aesthetic. And thankfully Framed lives up to the hype, delivering a polished puzzle game.

Yes, Framed is a puzzle game first. There's a wordless noir narrative and it's an engaging wonderfully artistic experience, but it's first and foremost about the puzzles. The concept is so simple and yet explored masterfully; a man fleeing the police through the panels of a comic, briefcase in hand, and you must rearrange the panels to change the context and help him escape. Run headlong into a cop? Order the panels so you turn a corner or climb a ladder first. There are constants - ladders and stairways make you descend or ascend when you reach them, approach police from behind to avoid them or knock them out, etc. - and new elements such as rotating panels and reusable panels add complexity. The puzzles hinge more on trial and error and experimentation than hard logic, but the trial and error in Framed is fun, due to the seamless permutations that result from different panel orders.

Framed is a short experience (my playthrough lasted around 90 minutes), but don't let that brevity dissuade you. Framed is a shining example of quality over quantity, between its atmospheric art style, jazz soundtrack, ingenious design, and challenging puzzles.

You can purchase Framed for $4.99.

No Money, No Problem: 7DFPS 2014 Edition

Another year, another 7DFPS. Last year brought us some really unique experiences, such as SuperHOT, Beyond Perception, Probably Archery, and many others. Here's a selection of interesting entries from this year's Seven Day FPS Challenge. You can browse the full list of entries here.

SHIFT
Developer Shawn Beck's last game was the hectic reflex-testing Velocibox, and his 7DFPS entry combines that game's style and speed with some dodge-heavy shooting action. Armed with dual rapid-fire cannons, SHIFT challenges you to race through mazes of tight corridors, teleporting through laser gates and deftly evading turret fire. It's fast, frenetic, and fun.

grepr
grepr is a sci-fi stealth game, where evade guards and collect data as a small drone. Able to stick to surfaces and leap across vast distances, you must avoid enemy line of sight or take them out by colliding with their weak points. It's a short game, but the visuals and acrobatic stealth gameplay makes it worth checking out.

Endless Express
Endless Express is a short game about exploration and time. You missed your train; now you must take the connecting trains to get home, traveling between varied stations. Holding the Left Mouse button brings up your watch, allowing you to keep track of what trains are coming and going based on the timetable at each station.

Frail Shells
Frail Shells is a game about war and life after war. It's a short yet thought-provoking experience that delves into PTSD

Strange Gravity

If you're familiar with games with Galcon, then Strange Gravity won't feel too alien. The concept is the same: eliminate your enemies by moving your forces and strategically capturing planets. But rather than the 2D style of similar games, Strange Gravity puts you in the middle of the action, directing fungus to defeat the unstable red growth before the sun rises. Simple controls and an interesting take on a well-known concept makes Strange Gravity a game worth checking out.

RADE
A hectic dog-fighting game as you shoot down blimps, jets, ships, and more across a sky filled with arcing projectiles. A simple but fun spectacle.

Where's Tango
Where's Tango is essentially Spy Party for one. Armed with your sniper rifle and dossier of information, you must figure out who your targets are from a list of information, such as skin color, behavior, and more

Quick Fix: Screenshot Saturday 11/8

Yes, this is somewhat belated

404sight
Developer: Retro Yeti Games
404Sight is a first (or third) person playground runner with the aesthetics inspired by Mirror's Edge added to the level revealing of Devil's Tuning fork, equipping the player with a foresight ability to reveal helpful and harmful areas within the level. It shows players what it'd be like to be in an environment where the hidden fast and slow lanes are apparent, but only if they have the right tools. It takes a bit of planning to plot a course through an area full of hazards, especially if the corporations themselves are actively trying to impede you.
Learn more & download an early build here

Plague Mark
Developer: Plague Mark dev
Plague Mark is a single player, non-fantasy rpg game with roguelike elements. It takes place in 13th century Poland while Black Plague is roaming through whole Europe. Player takes control over party of 4 adventurers that go on a quest to gain fame, riches and most important - to survive.
Learn more here

Legends of Pixelia
Developer: Sima Games
Legends of Pixelia is a retro style action RPG featuring beat ‘em up and roguelike mechanics.
Learn more here

Slain
Developer: Wolfbrew Games
A side scrolling pixel based Gothic puzzle adventure.
Learn more here

No Money, No Problem: Impulse

Title: Impulse
Developer: Mark Zhang
Platforms: Browser
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Yes, it's that time of year again. More than 600 games were submitted for IGF 2015 and that means dozens of interesting and intriguing indies to discover. One such game is Impulse, an unique take on the arcade shooter, revolving around pushing enemies with powerful shock waves rather than shooting them.
You control a sphere, trapped in increasingly claustrophobic arenas, hemmed in by the dark walls of the Void. Enemies encroach from all sides - homing spears, exploding tanks, and other varied foes - and thankfully, the Void is as dangerous to them as it is to you. Without any means to damage enemies directly, you must outmaneuver the incoming shapes and force them into the Void with your short-range concussive blasts. This twist on the usual shmup gameplay puts the focus on movement and positioning, as you consider the angle of your blasts and deftly evade the growing hordes to set up multi-kills and increase your score multiplier. Impulse is challenging, fun, and offers a lot of content between its main campaign and practice mode, complete with bosses to defeat and a Hard difficulty to truly test your skills.

You can play Impulse here.

The Watchlist: Orphan

Title: Orphan
Developer: Windy Hill Studio
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One
Releasing late 2015
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It started as any other day. And then they came.
In Orphan, you are a young boy left to fend for himself as an alien race invades the earth to eradicate humankind. There's not much else to do but run, but along the way as you evade enemy forces you may discover the way to halt their attack and save humanity before it's too late!

Inspired by War of the Worlds, Another World, and Blackthorne, Orphan is a game about surviving an alien invasion. Taking place over a single night, you play as a young boy surviving and traversing extraterrestrial-infested wilderness. From the screenshots and GIFs, atmosphere is key here; raging forest fires, foggy swamps, pounding rain, dense woodlands, crawling with alien mechanics, as your child protagnist flees the onslaught. However, these invaders aren't invisible and you won't be defenseless, able to use the machines' weapons against them. While the shadow art style may bring to mind Limbo, the developer has stated there won't be physics puzzles in Oprhan, just a young boy fighting off aliens across the countryside. 

Orphan is still in development, with an estimated release sometime in 2015. You can learn more about Orphan here and follow the game's development on the Windy Hill Twitter page.