Jasper Byrne’s Lone Survivor is one of the most unsettling games I’ve ever played. In spite of it’s 16-bit style graphics, it caused genuine discomfort in me at times. Sadly, it is punctuated by a limp ending that can leave more questions than answers.
I suppose this is as good a place as any to put a SPOILER ALERT.
As promised in episode 80, here is the Home mini-spoilercast. Proceed with caution as Mike, Eric, Alex and Kurt spoil this indie horror title.
This week, we present on hour long conversation on Jasper Bryne’s Lone Survivor. This show includes spoilers so you should play the game before listening (if you care about that sort of thing).
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This time out, the boys are talking all things indie as they go on about Indie Game The Movie, FEZ, Trials, Lone Survivor, Skullgirls and more! The album of the week is kind of the FEZ soundtrack by Disasterpiece!
Listen to it here or check us out on iTunes!
Hey, hey loyal readers! Wrestlemania is this Sunday, so we here at onthestick.com are going to hit you guys up with a pile of (mostly) videogame and wrestling related content. To start off the week, I figured I’d take a look at an indie wrestling game. A rare breed, indeed!
“Thou shalt not walk left.”
As commandments go, there are certainly better known (and more logical ones) out there. But the regulation in question doesn’t spring from the old testament, as hard as that may be to believe. Rather, it comes from Tower of Heaven, a PC indie platformer that’s had its fill of players running willy-nilly wherever they please. Or standing on yellow blocks. Or touching the butterflies.
If you combine the two pieces I previously wrote for our Indie Games feature, you’d have a fairly accurate description of Knytt Stories: it’s a Metroidvania, it has good music (although each song is short and doesn’t repeat, which is a bit annoying), a few areas of the game are heavy on atmosphere, and it has an open ended story. The only truly notable aspect of the game proper is that you never really gain any true offensive abilities and spend the majority of the game platforming around enemies and the environment rather than fighting enemies or bosses. It’s a short (only a few hours) but solid game. Everything works well, but at the end of the day, there’s honestly no reason why I should even be mentioning this game.
So why does KS merit an entry in our Indie Games feature?
Mount & Blade is so good we brought in a specialist to cover it. Thanks Will! I haven’t played a ton of the game, but the combat in M&B lays bare the inadequacies of the melee fighting in every other role-playing game. Not that anyone crows about the sword fighting in the Elder Scrolls games or anything, but this tiny company in Turkey made a game that throughly undresses all the big boys when it comes to riding horses and hitting dudes with sticks.
Limbo is often compared to a title we mentioned early in our Indie Games feature, Braid. It makes sense. Both are puzzle/platformers that were originally released for Xbox Live Arcade. Both have a unique look and feel to them and both feature some amazing audio work. Sure, sounds pretty similar. In reality, the games couldn’t be any more different. Anthony said in his take on Braid that Braid is “about thinking”. Well, if Braid is about thinking, then Limbo is about feeling.
Super Crate Box is like an adorable golden retriever puppy with chainsaws strapped to all of its limbs: it’s cute and you want to play with it, but you know it is going to hurt you very badly if you do so. The game with the excellent name is the work of a Dutch studio called Vlambeer, which is also a pretty excellent name. It’s a simple arcade-style game in the single-screen, score based vein that is colorful, funny and brutally difficult.
I can say without doubt that Escape from the Underworld is the best Indie Metroidvania to ever be made in MS Paint. Not exactly a bold statement, but a true one. What the game’s art lacks, it makes up for in clever ideas. Well, okay, clever idea. Singular. But it’s a good one!
Redder is rad little science fiction themed platformer designed by Anna Anthropy, the woman who made Mighty Jill Off. Much of the game’s basic design is taken from Metriod and the opening shot, a spaceship (in this case, low on gas) slowly descending onto alien soil, is really nice homage to that series. The protagonist, a little dude (or lady) in a space suit, hops out of the ship and the player assumes control.
Today’s entry in our month long love fest is about Braid, poster child for pretentious indie games everywhere. Why? Because it’s about manipulating time and today is Groundhog’s Day, I guess.
Every day in February, we’re going to post a new article about an indie game. We’re playing fairly fast and loose with the definition of the word indie, so expect to see free flash games, PSN/XBLA games, XNA creators club games and pay to download PC stuff. Today’s entry is about a fantastic Russian developed game called Hammerfight.
