So when Paul Pridham tweeted about EGGNOGG, including the download link for EGGNOGG, a few people found that it hits an empty spot rather nicely.

Before you start shouting out, “clone,” (though it is) and throwing other accusations at EGGNOGG, it was made for this year’s TOJAM as a little tribute. So yes, we can allow this one because it’s not malicious in any way or an attempt for a developer to make money off something another game does. That’s how we sort these things; it’s tricky business.

Being as EGGNOGG is meant to replicate Nidhogg as best as the developers could manage in the three days that TOJAM granted them, those familiar with what Nidhogg is all about won’t need it explaining to them and should just grab the download, grab a mate and head straight into the action. For everyone else, I suppose it’s best summed up as a two-player, arcade-style, competitive fencing game. I don’t think that really sounds as exciting as the end result is, though. So head on into the game and hope to be surprised, but before you do that, I have one piece of advice: check out the readme file to look up the controls, as if you don’t know them, you probably won’t use the full range of capabilities your fighter has.

What makes Nidhogg special, and therefore EGGNOGG too, is its focus on nuance and reactions. Players can strike at each other in a number of ways, with the most common technique being to lunge either to the head, the body or the lower-half of the opponent. To avoid being struck by a lunge like this, the other play can attempt to match their sword to the right height so that they collide, or they can simply dodge backwards out of range.

Beyond that are a number of moves that are a lot riskier, but are more impressive and can really rile up the crowd, if you have one watching you play, such as sliding under legs, leaping and then striking with a downwards attack, or even throwing your sword at your opponent. The latter is particularly brave as that then leaves you without a sword, and so you have just your feet and hands to hit your opponent with until you’re next struck down.

I should also add that you don’t win by simply hitting your opponent, but this does give you an opportunity to move a step closer to it. The only way of winning is to move a couple of screens along, either to the left of right, depending on which side you start on. Only once your opponent is down can you do this, so don’t think jumping over their head and running for it is viable. You have to fight.

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Press Any Key To Live is true to its title. The player is invited to start the game by pressing any key that they wish to start the game. Using a heartbeat as a mechanic, the player has to press their chosen key in time with the rhythm of the heartbeat that runs along the bottom of the screen. Above this bar, where the heartbeat is played out, there’s a big space for an image to rest, and it’s here that the player will see the life of the person the heartbeat relates to play out.

Quite wonderfully, the images are all hand-drawn onto graph paper, which may stick out at first, but you’ll soon adjust to simply focusing on what the images are conveying. The first one is a baby, and then the second sees the baby grown up into a young boy, wrestling with a game controller. Not all of the images jump so much in time, especially the further you go on as the focus falls onto significant moments and turning points in the person’s life.

You transition through these images each time you press your key in time with the heartbeat, your key to life, I suppose. If you miss the heartbeat by being too late or too quick, there’s not much of a punishment; only when you do it several times in quick succession does it change something. What happens if you do press the key out of time in rapid succession? You kill the person, of course! It’s the same if you don’t press the key at all for three heartbeats in a row – they die. What you’re then presented with is a very brief obituary or a news clipping reporting their death.

You can kill the person through these methods at any time, and there are a few different death scenes, depending on how old and what stage they were at in life. I think this idea has more potential than what it has in this current form, actually. Not only could there be more death scenes, especially ones that were specific to what the person was doing in the last image, but I think you could further affect their life by missing a heartbeat too. By this I mean, let’s say you didn’t kill them when missing a heart beat, but they fell ill and were permanently affected by that. Sounds a bit sadistic, perhaps, but it’s interesting from a player perspective to interact with a dynamic system like that and to actually witness the fragility of this person through your very slight inaction.

Where Press Any Key To Win really comes out strong is its ending, though. If you manage to see the person’s life all the way through, which shouldn’t be hard as it doesn’t take long at all, you’ll see them encounter a problem that renders them in a hospital bed with their partner sitting to the side, head down.

When you reach this image, you’ll hear that the sound of the heart beat changes to one of a heart monitor. Just as before, you’re keeping them alive with your timely presses of the key, but there are no more images after this point. So after a couple of beats, you’ll probably realize that you have to make the decision that a number of unfortunate people have to make in their lives – to turn life support off. Perhaps you’ll sit there for another minute, pressing the key in time with the beat and hoping for the image to change, for them to show a sign of life.

But it doesn’t come.

At some point, you’ll have to come to terms with their death and stop keeping the beat going and the game running. You do it. There’s a pause….and then, “beeeeeeeep.” Game over. Poignant, and I’d say an appropriate end that is strikingly powerful, given the use of a simple button-pressing mechanic.

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Maia

Starting to look at feel like a game: maiagame.com/images/BlogScr… maiagame.com/images/BlogScr… #screenshotsaturday

— Simon Roth (@SimoRoth) May 18, 2013

Simon Roth’s been busy working on his sci-fi god game, Maia, which he likes to call “Dungeon Keeper meets Dwarf Fortress on a primordial alien world.” If you haven’t heard of the game before and are now having one of those “where do I throw my money?” moments, well, you’re too late for that. If you are one of the Kickstarter backers, then I do believe that an alpha build is on the way shortly.

You’ve got to love the look of the screenshots above, especially the second one, which I think is the game’s first-person view. Most of the time you’ll be instructing your colonists from above, like most strategy games, but on occasion, you’ll want to whip down into first-person too. If you’re wondering, in Maia the idea is to excavate an underground colony due to the surface of the planet being far too dangerous. So mining, construction, feeding, defending and entertaining your colonists is what you’ll be spending most of your time doing.

Go To Hell Dave

#screenshotsaturday @screenshotsat Night club level from British point-and-click game Go To Hell Dave twitter.com/GoToHellDave/s…

— Go To Hell Dave (@GoToHellDave) May 18, 2013

You haven’t heard the name “Dave” said properly until you’ve heard a 35-year-old lady with a Birmingham (Brummy) accent scream it across a street to a guy who immediately winces. “Daaaave!” Dave is the kind of normal sounding name for a pretty typical bloke. It’s as normal as you can get. And that’s why Falchion Games have decided to call their main character just that in their point-and click-adventure game, Go To Hell Dave.

In the game, you play as Dave, who ends up in a car crash, which causes him to arrive in hell during a time when Satan is missing and the whole place is falling apart. You venture through the nine circles of hell with Dave, with plenty of British humor scattered about, and many other silly takes on British-isms. One of the floors is an English council estate. Because here in Britain, we don’t take the piss out of ourselves enough, to be honest. Falchion Games want to make the sure they do that.

Pulsar: Lost Colony

PULSAR: Lost Colony – SS119 – The new Suite #screenshotsaturday #gamedev twitter.com/LeafyGames/sta…

— Leafy Games (@LeafyGames) May 18, 2013

This little studio from Pulsar: Lost Colony caught my attention, and I was quite surprised to find out that the game is an online multiplayer first-person shooter. I think it’s because you don’t often see such attention to detail in games of this type, especially if they’re fast-paced. This is what I’d expect from a game that allowed the player a chance to take their own time and explore, and not while they’re on the hunt around a level looking out for enemies. It’s good to see that level of care being taken.

Looking further into the game, I find myself liking the concept more and more. The mulitplayer shooter is complemented by the game’s setting on a spaceship. Players fight to gain control over it, and a match can be won if the Rebels kill the Agents’ VIP. There are airlocks across the ship that allow players to exit the ship, float around in space, and then re-enter at another airlock. There are rooms that provide certain functions in the ship, such as the Oxygen Room, which provides breathable air, and the reactor, which provides lighting. If you have a skilled Operator, then they can move in and sabotage any of these to take that function away and add an extra dynamic to the gameplay for everyone. To me, that sounds very interesting and should, as the developers plan, add some interesting emergent gameplay that will help define Pulsar in the genre it sits in.

Lunch Packer 3000

This brings back some memories! Honestly, I’ve no idea, nor is there any clue, as to how Lunch Packer 3000 has turned the act of packing your lunch into a game, but I can only hope that it will be a physics-based challenge that sees you trying to cram everything in and then put the lid on properly. I remember having a lunchbox so small that I could barely fit a carton of orange juice in there. What is the point in a lunchbox like that?! My sandwiches were always so squashed when I got around to eating them, and the jam made it look like a murder had taken place.

“Beautiful Mess”

I love when I screw something up in my rendering code and it results in a beautiful mess. #ScreenshotSaturday twitter.com/louroboros/sta…

— Lou Acresti (@louroboros) May 19, 2013

I want to see more and more glitchy and broken screenshots in Screenshot Scrutiny, because more and often or not, they tend to be highly fascinating and often very beautiful, and it’s a shame that game development is tailored that they’re then resolved and forgotten. Share how your game came to life and the beautiful messes that you made along the way! Here we see Louis Acresti with a prime example of how great these kinds of screenshots can be.

The Wild Eternal

That game I’m working on, #thewildeternal? here’s a pic! So foggy. #screenshotsaturday twitter.com/CaseyGoodrow/s…

— Casey Goodrow (@CaseyGoodrow) May 18, 2013

Casey Goodrow is merely at the teasing stage of the game he’s making with Scott Goodrow, The Wild Eternal, but oh, how intrigued I am already! What you’re looking at above is the first screenshot from the game, which Casey says showcases some of the mechanics they’re playing around with at the moment. Before you’re able to guess what they may be, you’re going to have to know what kind of game this is turning out to be.

First-person exploration is the focus here, as you might have guessed already, and this is a sub-genre that’s been emerging as of late, and has been coming up with some of the most beautiful moments I’ve had playing a game. It can really distil the simple beauty of form, whether it be artificial, virtual or tactile. In The Wild Eternal, we’ll be treated to a foggy landscape full of hills and surrounded in nature. But it’s dark, which, combined with the fog, makes it very easy to get lost. And that’s the point of this particular exploration game. You’re supposed to get lost, so then you can find your way.

The Legacy of Barubash

We have added elite mobs recently. dropbox.com/s/ce1wrdnnexjk… #ScreenshotSaturday

— Kactus Games (@KactusGames) May 18, 2013

Kactus Games seem to be hard at work on The Legacy of Barubash, which is an action-RPG they plan on releasing for Android devices, including OUYA. It’s to be released in chapters, with the first taking place within the sleepy hamlet of Denham. So you’ll start off with pretty typical environments, such as farmland, forests and swamps, to explore and battle creatures. For the non-OUYA devices, you’ll be able to cast spells using gestures, or you can use an on-screen thumb pad to manage the same moves, which is the system that will be adapted for the upcoming console. Naturally, the art is what stuck out to me about Barubash, but something else that stood out is that Kactus are donating 20% of the funds from Barubash to Medicins Sans Frontieres and other charities. A very good gesture if I’ve ever seen one.

One-Way Trip

still finishing backgrounds but here’s a rebel fighter from game 2, to be titled “one-way trip” #screenshotsaturday twitter.com/mfrauenhofer/s…

— Michael Frauenhofer (@mfrauenhofer) May 18, 2013

I’ve permitted myself to already anticipate Michael Frauenhofer’s next game, despite it currently being in early development. You may remember my chat with Michael about his first, which was the remarkable Demon Chic. Considering his attention to alternative voices, I can only hope that some of that ethic will make it into this next action-RPG of his.

Toryansé

Little adventure game I’m working on now has a website: toryanse.co.uk And a screenshot: #screenshotsaturday twitter.com/holyfingers/st…

— Nick Preston (@holyfingers) May 18, 2013

Toryansé has just been announced, and the website set up by Northern Irish developer Nick Preston. It is to be a point-and-click adventure game “about a woman in the midst of an existential crisis who follows a mysterious stranger she meets on the train home.” The focus is on the woman’s thoughts of the character she meets and the environments she passes by. But, naturally, there will be plenty of items stowed away, and puzzles connecting to the use of them. Interestingly, Nick describes it as “language agnostic” and is telling the story through illustrated thought and speech bubbles.

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I’ve teamed up with good friend and fellow YouTuber Jesse Cox of OMFGCata to bring the world a brand new web series called “The Greenlight!” Every Saturday, Jesse and I will spotlight a game currently on Steam Greenlight that deserves to get those thumbs up.

Check out our video on Megabyte Punch below, and if you like what you see, go and vote it up on Greenlight. If you want to try it out for yourself, then there’s a browsed-based demo to try.

Megabyte Punch is a sidescrolling action platformer with a lot to offer you. Your goal in the Adventure mode is to protect the Heartcore of your village against the Valk Empire and Khoteps as they send in bots and bosses to destroy it all. As you would have seen in the video above, you get to control your own fighting bot and swap out your parts with those of your fallen foe. Each of the parts you obtain across your journey have their own abilities and strengths, such as the gun arm for keeping your distance, drill arms for drilling through the terrain and powerful hips for a special pelvic thrust attack that sends your enemies flying across the screen.

The controls and combat in Megabyte Punch are spot-on. Everything flows very smoothly from moment to moment. It’s particularly satisfying when you’re able to kick the enemies at high speed straight into a wall, which causes them to explode and bust a hole in the terrain. Generally, the destruction in the game really rounds out the action. And it really comes into its own in the Versus mode, which is where you can go up against your friends or enter a single-player tournament, which is what I did in my video this week.

So, check out my playthrough below and take note of the friendly competition I’ve set up. See if you can beat me; it shouldn’t be hard.

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Speaking to Tim, I was able to round up some answers from all three of them to the questions I had about their return to a game whose roots are over two decades old. Of course, given the nature of Contraption Maker, a game about constructing ridiculous machines to perform menial tasks, it seems to fit quite snug into the current gaming landscape, if you ask me. Look at Minecraft et al; part of the appeal of these these highly popular games is the ability to create wacky structures and machines.

So if you ask me, Contraption Maker is slipping this type of puzzle gameplay among the right player base at the right time. But let’s take a look at what Spotkin have to say on the matter!

Statik: Why have the original team behind The Incredible Machine decided to work on a spiritual successor? Is it out of passion and/or seeing a gap for this kind of experience again?

Jeff: It’s a combination of both. Incredible Machine was always one of my favorite games to have created. Even though it was a success back in the day, Sierra never gave it enough support because it wasn’t as popular as titles like Where in the World is Carmen San Diego. Because of that, there was never a chance to improve upon the game past TIM 2. All future releases were basically just graphics and interface updates.

Jon: In addition to occasional fans always calling out for a real sequel, now really feels like the best time for this game. Crafting-and-building-type games are becoming more popular, and it’s much easier to build up communities that allow for sharing creations.

Statik: How true is Contraption Maker to The Incredible Machine, and where have you taken liberties?

Jeff: Contraption Maker will have a very similar feel to The Incredible Machine, but we have learned a LOT about user interfaces in the past 20 years. We loved how eclectic and whimsical the original was, and that is something you will definitely find here. We want to focus on the fun little characters that really brought life into the original games. That said, we aren’t slaves to the past. A lot of decisions in TIM were made due to the technical limitations of the time. If it makes sense to update something, we are definitely doing that.

Statik: The physics engine is no doubt a big component of the game, so what kind of features does it have, and how is this tied in to the gameplay?

Tim: Kevin Ryan, who was the original programmer on TIM and cofounder of Dynamix, is now working with us to create Contraption Maker. Kevin started with Chipmunk Physics as our core physics library; it is a fantastic physics library for indies. However, Kevin has made critical additions to it for Contraption Maker.

One of the biggest challenges from a technical side is getting puzzles to reproduce the exact same results across different computers. For example, you might see the smallest amount of difference between the way a ball bounces off a walking cat due to minor fluctuations in the physics calculations. This is perfectly acceptable for most games, but in Contraption Maker it is really important for the parts to be able to reproduce the same results so puzzles will always react in the same way as intended by the puzzle designer. Kevin sat down and wrote his own custom trigonometry functions and physics layer based upon Chipmunk – not an easy undertaking – so that the physics in Contraption Maker would be deterministic.

Jon: From the gameplay side, I should add that we focus very closely on the puzzles and how they interact with physics while we work on the engine. If the physics get too real, it can make a puzzle or interaction not as fun, so we must pay close attention to the way the physics so that we can use it to enhance the gameplay, rather than become the focus.

Statik: How do you go about designing puzzles for a game like this that potentially allows so much player freedom?

Jon: Designing good puzzles is a lot harder than it seems. Players will always have the freedom to solve it as they please, but they are limited to the parts you allow them to use. You have to keep in mind that players may find a different way to solve your puzzle, but that is ok, and actually really fun! A good puzzle must have structure, and it should give you a great “aha” feeling when it is solved. It’s not a good puzzle if you give basically a blank canvas and make them “solve how they want.” Puzzles like that fall more into a “community challenge” category, where players can be creative and show off.

Statik: Are you including other game modes outside of puzzles that allow players to interact with the game and its tools in other ways?

Jon: The main mode besides solving puzzles is the “Maker Lab.” This is where players can design their own puzzles, but that’s not all. If they aren’t into making puzzles, players can just make something really cool that they want to show off to everyone. There is also a background editor and animator for players that want to create fun places for contraptions to exist in (which can be shared, just like puzzles).

Tim: We have a lot more planned as well; this is only the tip of the iceberg. We really want to create a game that is both fun and allows players to express their creativity.

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The combination of what Andalusian is calling a Thief-like stealth game with the open-world elements of Shadow of the Colossus and Morrowind is interesting enough. Add in the likes of master absurdist Marcel Duchamp and the sinister psychedelic of industrial act Throbbing Gristle and you’ve got a whole lot of weird to work with. Other influences include the written work of William S. Burroughs, whose Dadaist cut-up technique (the act of rearranging a text in order to create a new one) will be worked into the actual gameplay. As players explore the world, fragments of your journey will become interspersed with undiscovered areas, crafting new and unique spatial experiences.

This abstracted interaction will be extended to other elements of play as well, allowing players to eavesdrop on conversations and steal words as they materialize on the screen. These words can be used as distractions when needed. “Guess it’s just RATS,” says a character in the trailer. Imagine snatching RATS from mid-air and sending it out in a swarm of malformed word-mice to side-track your foes. Or just pitching the words back like a projectile. Just my own guess at how this will work, though I can see this mechanic being good, no matter what.

Information on the game’s story is vague, so far. You’ll play as what Andalusian is referring to as a “fragile, weakened being recently arrived in a strange world,” a dystopic world crafted in the essence of J.G. Ballard and the disturbed theatrics of Antonin Artaud. It’s a world that will react to you as much as you react to it, re-structuring itself according to your behavior. In-game missions (if we can call them that) will focus on infiltrating urbanized areas, “sneaking in, kidnapping a target, then finding a way out.”

Keeping close to the spirit of Thief, accomplishing these tasks will not be a linear feat. You choose your own path through levels, sneaking, back-stabbing, trap-laying, and even “ghost[ing] your way through without leaving a trace.”

The game will also feature a full-length, dark ambient soundtrack, which is something I’m personally pretty excited about.

The game is slated for a mid-2014 release, and I’ll be keeping a close eye on this one as more information is revealed. For now, a quote from the developers: “Approach everything in the order and manner that you choose – but take care; carelessness has its consequences.”

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What you didn’t know is that puzzle game design actually works quite well when combined with horror. I’m not talking about how Amnesia: The Dark Descent combines horror and puzzles, because it treats them as separate entities. The environmental puzzles tend to provide a slow-paced break from the chilling and more intense horror moments throughout Amnesia. But Kraven Manor takes puzzles in one hand and horror in the other, and then locks its fingers together tight.

Think about it; when there’s horror being rained down upon on you in the form of a creature or monster chasing you, the one thing you don’t want to be doing is having to solve a puzzle at the same time, right? That’s what happens in Kraven Manor a number of times, and more so the further you dive in.

My favorite aspect of the game is how you work your way around the mansion. In the entrance hall is a large table, on which a small-scale model of the entrance hall sits. After entering the first room that shoots off from the hall, you find another model. This one is of a wine cellar. After some actually quite immersive events involving the whole mansion shaking with convincing creaking and rumbling as if it were alive, you can then place this new model on the table and connect it to one of the doors on the entrance hall model. As you might suspect, this is accompanied with a big rumble, and the wine cellar then actually appears in the mansion relative to the model.

“The player must explore the depths of the manor to find miniature models of rooms and carry them back to an increasingly elaborate puzzle. Wherever the player adds a model onto the scale model, the associated room moves and appears in real space, waiting for your arrival.”

The statue isn’t the thing that impressed me the most, though. It’s the other things that the developers have worked into the game when you have your back turned. Whole rooms will switch around and change as you do a 180 on the spot, or close a door and then open it. The mansion feels as if it’s playing with you to the demand of the statue that chases you. You can almost get lost within just two single rooms that spin and swap with others. And while you’re doing this, the statue is creeping around in the dark, or just teasing you as it crawls out of a doorway and leaves a trail of blood.

Accompanying the puzzles and the horror elements is a mystery for you to solve regarding this bronze statue, the bloodied manor and William Kraven, who the building is named after. You read notes and documents that depict grisly experiments. Photographs are described to you in raw detail of murders and torture, and sometimes, they reveal revelations about this place. It’s intriguing enough to keep you interested, alongside the ghosts that sometimes float by and the sounds of the old house itself.

Go and grab the demo of Kraven Manor and you’ll see what I mean. It feels remarkably well designed and stands out among the crowded horror genre, which is impressive, given how many games are being released under that umbrella nearly every day.

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“I plan on making games that explore themes of BDSM and other sexily perverted things (because I can).
I also plan on exploring surreal weird ideas and images that I have no idea what they mean, but fascinate me regardless.”

Yes. Explore the things that fascinate you with your games. I hope that everyone does this, and that they manage to realize their vision with style. I also love that Ryan wants to create games about things like BDSM, simply because he can. Another “yes” from me.

But the game he currently has in development doesn’t quite fit in with this ethos, as he admits himself when saying that it’s “fairly tame in terms of weirdness.” His hope for Mibibli’s Quest is merely that it is deemed “good,” which, I suppose, is what most people aim for. And looking at the trailer that he’s released for it, I’d say that both “interesting” and “good” will be words I’ll be using when writing about it once it’s been released.

Really, you should just watch the trailer at the bottom of this page in fascination, as that will be able to serve you up a better idea of the game than I could ever hope to. So feel free to do that.

If you’re going to stick around, however, I’ll take the opportunity to pull out some aspects of Mibibli’s Quest that we can see in that gameplay trailer. Most obvious to me is the dream-like quality to the many levels we’ll be treated to a quick jaunt across, along with the enemies that inhabit them. There are a lot of crazy and imaginative ideas in here, especially for an action-platformer that seems to resemble Mega Man in terms of how it plays.

I see a book worm that admits it exists merely as a visual pun. Platforms made of bits of various famous statues that depict naked people. A monochrome fish that traps its victim in black-and-white photos in exchange for color upon its body. An arena that spews out arrows as if a giant rhythm game and punishes with explosions and death for failure to match the moves. A little stick person cranking up a speaker that the player defeats by sending out pink slugs that slither up the walls and explode.

It’s quite the range.

But then there’s a lot more than that too. Looking at the rest of the trailer, the humor seems scattered throughout, and the variety of video game parodies and borrowed gameplay ideas that are then mixed to combine something slightly different are abundant. Shmups and fighting games are most prominently blended into this bizarre landscape, breaking up the otherwise abstract and strange environments that make up the rest of the levels.

The characters that you meet along the way also have a bit of thecatamites in the way they speak of things. Take the one guy with the top hat who says, “I say! There is nothing more cherished by a man than his hat! Oh-ho-ho! There is no truer truth.”

Mibibli’s Quest just has that aura that the games I tend to enjoy the most have. It’s a world that makes sense only to itself and takes all aspects of our surroundings and gorges on them and spits them out, all inside an abstract and nonsensical game.

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Ghost Song is a 2D metroidvania that will be released as a browser-based Flash game, and the forums in which the development progress is being updated are already spewing with plenty of complimentary things to say about it. First off, the graphics and animations are smooth and appealing, with a focus on purple, greens and blues to add a noticeable dark aesthetic. Players will able to explore this sci-fi horror world at their own discretion; however, some areas will need certain items or abilities in order for them to become obtainable, as is the case with Metroidvanias, typically.

“Ghost Song is a ‘Metroidvania’-style game with an emphasis on atmosphere and exploration.”

Of course, a big part of the game is exploration, and with that comes battling enemies, which you’ll be able to deal with quite adequately, given the range of weapons you have at your disposal. The developer went into detail on the NeoGAF forums:

1) Regular cannon (the basic gun, the ammo recharges if you haven’t fired in a few seconds. You can upgrade this many times, and the bullet gets bigger as you do. It can also critically hit. Finally, you can get a charge burst upgrade to charge it up and unleash a huge blast)

The rest are “special weapons,” which all use special ammo, which does not recharge on its own.

2) Ionic blast (in this video. It’s an all-purpose blast gained early in the game, with bonus damage to mechanical. The organics I use it on clearly aren’t devastated by it)

3) Scatter bomb (you lob little bombs that fire bullets in a spray as they bounce about, and then explode)

4) Banshee scream (room-clearing move, high ammo cost)

There’s also a Ghost Dash ability that you can use to propel the character through the air at a fast rate. When you do this, the character loses their solid matter form, and for a split-second, becomes almost like a liquid, so they can then use this move to avoid damage and pass through solid objects.

Interestingly, the design philosophy takes cues from Super Metroid’s minimalist method of story telling, relying on the environment and player observation to give a sense of the story. Interestingly, the boss battles in the game are optional, so if that’s not something you enjoy partaking in, then you can just ignore the larger bosses and carry on your way. This design philosophy fits in with the influence from Dark Souls, specifically how the game hid richer parts of the experience away behind fake walls where extra parts of the world existed, but could easily be missed by the majority of players.

Ghost Song is currently in development, and there’s no indication of when it might be released, but given that it’s looking pretty swish right now, I can’t imagine it being too far off, though I do know the developer states that some things are temporary. I thought to show the game off now because a gameplay video has been posted, albeit it’s hidden from public view. But if we’re not too loud about it, then many we can get away with it, so shhh!

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To calm myself, first I’ll just explain who Pixeltruss are. For starters, there are just two of them, one of whom, named Tommy Salomonsson, works as an app and web developer during the day and works on games at night. And the other is Simon Stålenhag, who is an artist and composer with a passion for robots and dinosaurs. Together, they previously made Metro Siberia, which has over 9 million plays.

Their new game is called Ripple Dot Zero, and while the screenshots don’t make it look like much, you just wait until you see the explosive and very exciting trailer. I mean, describing it as a 16-bit era action platformer in which you play as a penguin called Ripple that comes with large sneakers and a jetpack power-up as you run, jump and make use of many other verbs across deserts, jungles and strange underground structures and abandoned cities in the sky, while doing battle with strange life forms, may not sound that exciting.

No, wait…that sounds brilliant!

You know what? Screw it. Just watch the trailer right now. Look, I’ll put it right below for you, and then we’ll meet up afterwards so I can expand on what you saw and explain the game a little for you, okay? Right, here you go, then. Make sure you have something to bite down on or something.

Did you see that?! Did you bloody see how that penguin swooped around, chopping everything and…and the explosions! AHH! Oh, and the jetpack power-up. Y’all love jetpacks, don’t you? And don’t even get me started on the music. Just don’t. I’m frothing already.

So, here we go – the lowdown. Ripple Dot Zero is going to be released on June 28th, and it will be completely free to play over on rippledotzero.com. It is a Flash game, if you were curious, and it features 20 Levels of what Pixeltruss describe as “running, bouncing, slashing and Gyro-Blade-throwing.”

You should have already heard the slick beats, or to use the developer’s words once again, the “pure fm-funk schmaltz.” They’ve really gone all out with capturing that 90s action platformer vibe, particularly those of the SEGA Genesis, and that goes much further than the detailed pixel art. Their plan was to capture the aesthetics of the 16-bit era games entirely, and proof of that lies within the creation of sound effects using FM-synthesis.

I doubt I need to tell you to look out for this one, but uh, LOOK OUT FOR IT! Very excited to jump into what appears to be a loving recreation of the games of my childhood. And nostalgia aside, this looks to be a high quality game with a keen attention to straight-up action, and sometimes, I just can’t get enough of that.

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The post Penguin Jetpacks Are Definitely In Fashion: Ripple Dot Zero appeared first on Indie Statik.