Indie Annie & the Basement of Games

Minecraft, in all its blocky splendor, (for the six people left in the world that haven’t heard of it), could be best described as virtual legos. Really awesome virtual legos. Sure there are monsters and different dimensions and tamable wolves, but think back to when you were five and building on your living room floor. If you weren’t using your imagination to spawn monsters and scenarios, you were a sucky child. So “Notch” over at Mojang did what any decent human being would: He created a (popular) way for adults to get away with continuing to indulge their favorite childhood obsession without needing a visit from Chris Hansen. And just like in the world of infinite possibilities that is Minecraft, such is that of FortressCraft: Chapter 1. 

It is rather surprising that it took as long as it did for a clone to pop up on the XBLIG marketplace. FortressCraft, which debuted yesterday after a lengthy waiting game, is essentially Classic mode of Minecraft, with some tweaks. 

The first and most notable difference would be the look and feel of the game. It’s more crisp, the moon actually looks like a moon, clouds look like clouds, and the snozzberries taste like snozzberries. Is that a plus? Depends on who you speak to. Some of us prefer the more “vintage” look of Minecraft. FortressCraft is still a block-after-block setup… it just looks a bit more updated. Don’t ask me for technical terms. I was an English teacher, not a computer geek. 

A major difference is in the controls. Of course, this chapter does not feature the “crafting” aspect that we all know and love (though it is planned for future chapters), so the necessity for more simply doesn’t exist. All you can really do is build, destroy, select blocks, change your avatar’s expression, and of course jump. As a light Minecraft player having had relied on a keyboard/touchpad for so long, I find the navigation end of FortressCraft infinitely better.  I’m not much of a computer gamer, and my APM is embarrassingly low. This makes so little sense because I can type 70+ words per minute, but I’m just not trained for keyboard domination. In Minecraft’s defense, I could use a program to custom map the commands for a gamepad. Despite that, it’s not natively supported and since I’ve started using Macs, I’ve gotten lazy. 

One of the suckiest aspects of the game is the sheer fact that you can’t swing your pickaxe. It just hangs out there, teasing you. But this in itself begs the question… who cares? You’re not really mining anyway, because you have unlimited resources, so what’s the difference? It makes it less realistic? You’re fabricating a world out of blocks on an Xbox…. quit your whining (this, coming from someone who was disappointed in this lack of a feature). 

You can’t die or lose hearts… but as I traversed the world of FortressCraft, I’d continually hit a point on the map where the screen would go fuzzy as I tried to go further. It would bounce me back into a “safer” point on the map. I guess it’s the same principle as hitting the end of the road in Pleasantville. At one point, when I tried to enter the Matrix-like glistening strands of un-rendered map, my screen went completely fuzzy and I was informed that I “was eaten by a grue, Press X to respawn”. I pressed it (furiously) with no success. 

Is the grue like “the nothing” from Neverending Story? I didn’t see any monsters. I just kept trying to push the boundaries of the map. 

So, I’m not great at this game. When I had guests enabled, a bunch of block hooligans kept surrounding me with bricks (as if I don’t know how to get out). I can build houses. I especially like the trampoline block. I really don’t know why I can play this game for hours on end (and yes, I have, in the 24 hours I’ve owned it). Multiplayer is awesome, regardless of the friend server issue. It makes it well worth the 240mp pricetag. 

Despite all that, I cannot explain why I am still sitting here playing it when I need to be revising my design homework. Especially when there is NO REAL GOAL here. You build what you want, that’s it. What the hell is so intriguing about this? If I wanted to, I could create life in my uterus, yet I’d rather spend the better part of a full day arranging blocks that I CAN’T EVEN TOUCH. This is madness. This… is Fortresscraft.

…Chapter 1.

Rating: Drinks with Marion (4 Stars)
Pros: Addicting, simple fun that is reminiscent of Minecraft, only on your 360. 
Cons: No pickaxe use, no crafting (yet), finding relics is harder than I thought it would be. 

Two laser tag games debuted the week of October 20th, and at 240 MSPs a piece, I was only going to buy one.

I went with DigitalDNA’s Avatar Laser Wars because of the obvious Star Wars rip off cover art. As you might suspect, I’m a nerd for that too (even if I think Star Trek is the infinitely better franchise). Also, aesthetics-wise, the screenshots for ALW simply looked better. After playing the trial of the other game, I stand by my choice.

I love laser tag. However, I cannot stress enough how bad I am at FPS games. As a result, any time I play one of these games, the people around me get frustrated. Despite my crushing inability to navigate quickly, I actually love shooters, and actively play FPS games until people get sick of my antics… and oh yes, there are antics.

You are immediately thrust into online play. If you’re as lucky as I was— the first thing that will happen is you get sniped. Just as if I were playing Halo or Call of Duty, these people are considerably better than I am, and waste no time racking up points against me. As I wait to respawn, I curse at the screen and wonder if there’s voice support (I can’t find my charger for my wireless). 

It’s got a great science fiction feel to it and is very similar to trudging down the hallways of Galactica. The battlefield is multi-leveled and large enough for you to remain well hidden if necessary. There is a basement, a control room with a walkway above it, and several tunnels and side rooms to escape into. In the dark recesses of the bottom floor is an industrial pathway that ends abruptly. There’s a similar tunnel of nothingness on an upper level. There is only one “map” to traverse, which is only slightly limiting. 

There are a nice bunch of power-ups, most of which have a catch-22 effect. This keeps the game fair if you ask me. If you’re going to “cheat” by using abilities you wouldn’t have in real life, at least the other players will be able to tell. If you happen upon the location power-up, you will set off an unmistakable series of beeps that get higher in frequency as you approach a target. Hyper-speed sounds like whooshing air while you use it. The shield and stealth have their own little fancy noises, too. This is particularly helpful if you’re a lowly, cheating bastard like myself. Let me paint a picture for you…

I dressed my avatar up in a banana suit. I made my way to one of the barren side rooms, the one without a second level entry for optimal concealment. I situated my avatar in between two machine-like blocks that were just taller than myself and aimed outward. I shot my laser a few times into the air, like Keanu Reeves at the end of Point Break, or that scene in Hot Fuzz when they rip off the end of Point Break….A few moments later, I heard them sound back. I responded. I heard the locator beeps go off… and in a blaze of fury, they came charging through the room, right past me. They had seen me, because it’s kind of fucking hard to miss a fucking banana, and headed back towards me. I shot them, and the sweet, merciful ding that lets you know you hit someone rang out. I was victorious. And then they were upon me…

I KNOW how aggravating I must be to play with, but there are only two options for players with my lack of skill when it comes to games like ALW. Either play by yourself (borrrrinnngggg) or get your ass killed repeatedly while hoping for a lucky shot. I opt for the latter. Once in a while, I get it. Technically that’s my brother playing with my account, but you get the idea. 

You can’t play by yourself in ALW unless absolutely no one else is playing. There will be times like that, and you can rack up points, a paltry 1 instead of 10, by hitting avatar shaped pop-up targets. It is identical to practice mode, but affects your score (which is nice). 

I like Avatar Laser Wars for a couple of reasons. Primarily, because people that are fairly awesome and dominate the leaderboards can still fall victim to my horrible play tactics. The odds are in favor of players that know what they’re doing, but even the most asinine of participants can have fun. I do not feel as if it is too hard to continue playing because everyone’s kicking my ass. I still get a good couple of shots in, including one for the developer himself. To his merit, he got me soon after. 

Secondly, it’s steady, fun gameplay. It’s a shooting game. You kind of can’t lose with that. The nice variety of power-ups and the ability to unlock more guns adds a great dynamic so that you want to continue to rack up those points. 

Thirdly, I can play with my banana suit on. Something about a girl dressed up as a banana wielding a gun just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

What about its flaws?

Well, though I shouldn’t complain for an indie title that’s moderately priced, I’d like more ground to cover. It’s a small drawback for an otherwise awesome game, but I get bored. Remember, I have gaming ADD. I’ve also gotten a handful of errors during gameplay, which (unless they count before the match is done) have shaved a few points off impressively low score on the leaderboards. 

My main complaint is probably unrelated to the game at all, and it’s rather just my own inability to get used to FPS controls: I constantly get stuck! Behind boxes… inside the triangular shield structures (specifically one in the control room that is partially under a walkway). It doesn’t matter. If there’s a way to get stuck, I will. And I HATE that. 

Regardless, if Avatar Laser Wars were a $59.99 title at Best Buy (and had more levels to offer to merit that kind of price tag), I’d pick it up in a heartbeat, because I LOVE TO SHOOT THINGS. 

Rating: Drinks with Marion
Pros: Engaging, fast-paced multiplayer awesomeness, you can shoot your best friend and not feel bad about it.
Cons: Lackluster single-player option, could do with some more levels.  

The first indie game I downloaded was Techno Kitten Adventure because the title alone made me crack up. Ninety-two obsessive game purchases later, there is only one game that I consistently come back to on a daily basis: Tunescape.

If you have been wondering why it takes me forever to get these reviews up, it’s likely because I am playing Tunescape. All I really needed to see was “But beware of Meteors and Black Holes!” in the description, and I was sold. I will play any game that has anything to do with space. I love sci fi. I would actively try to lucid dream so I could turn my subconscious into a scene from Battlestar Galactica (it didn’t work). So, space games are my only realistic option, save becoming the next Sally Ride.

Only, Tunescape winds up not being very space-oriented apart from the few topical facets… so why is it yet another example of an independent game that blows most boxed releases out of the water? Even it its simplicity it is far more intoxicating than games with mind-blowing graphics. 

You control a small orb, collecting multicolored shapes and the occasional star that emit from a large black semi-sphere that moves around the perimeter of the screen . You are to avoid red meteors and large black holes (which, even I have to admit, I’m not exactly sure what they do to you). As you collect more and more, lines within your orb grow more and more solid, indicating your level for each “power”. “Blue” gravitates all shapes and stars toward you. “Yellow” provides a temporary shield. “Green” is a speed boost. 

The music, provided by Kevin MacLeod, ranges from addictive trance to soothing Soundscapes channel fare. The levels vary in difficulty, sometimes adding new variables to make it harder; meteor showers, having to control your orb by dragging it on a chain from a smaller orb. You can play with own music. You can even play the credits. 

It’s simple, yet it’s anger inducing. When I came within a few points of the third diamond on Gamma, the string of curses used likely originated in the depths of one of those black holes. Multiplayer is great, and is the only way I can get through some levels. The music, even if you play for an hour straight, doesn’t feel repetitive. Your orb flies about smoothly and the flying asteroid shapes provide a satisfying cereal crunch.

One detrimental flaw is that it seems impossible to use the custom music function.  I get an error every time. I do not know if it is the track (only have one saved to HD for space purposes) because I haven’t bothered to investigate as I tend to enjoy the already included tunes. 

The only way to improve this game is to make it free, even though 80 MSPs is much less than this impressive game ought to be. 

Rating: A full crack of the whip
Pros: Unique, addictive and challenging. 
Cons: I STILL cannot get the hang of the chained orb usage. 

In my haste, (and also in part thanks to my preference to playing other people), I made a rookie mistake. I didn’t play through the entire game before I opened my big trap. I’m not afraid to admit it, because I already have stated that I suffer from gaming ADD in the first review I made here, but nevertheless this particular situation merits a mulligan.

Embarrassingly easy? Perhaps for a short while, but it does gain some aggravatingly near-miss related momentum. The rating stays the same because I can’t play this game for six hours straight, but it’s still fun as hell. If it were me, I’d want a little more dynamic interaction than just a response-time challenge for an XBL title. These are the type of games I enjoy most on my iPhone. But, let’s remember the incredibly economical price and the novelty of getting to bring the “Too slow!” insult to a whole new avatar-friendly level. 

I’m not a fan of avatar games. Simply put, if I wanted to see a digital version of myself as the main character of a game, I’d learn to code. Despite that, I like fighting games so I downloaded Avatar Showdown blindly.

Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, it is not. Despite this, how could I not appreciate a game that has a dramatic promo video intro featuring blatant sarcasm and Brian Peppers? 

The premise of the game is to hit “A” before your opponent. Your avatar and your opponent stand motionless in a dojo, awaiting a momentary flash of satori… indicating it’s time to disperse all your pent up energy into a wild, Dragonball Z animation style moment of rushing fury down onto the A button.

While playing against the computer is embarrassingly easy, the true fun of Avatar Showdown is found in the two player mode or their online matchup. I have yet to lose to the computer. Against my brother, you’d have thought we were playing high stakes table games in Vegas. There is nothing like challenging a friend to a round and crippling them with your vast abilities to press a single button before they do. 

I had to wait a good ten minutes before someone else joined the match I hosted in the “Online” section, but when I did, it was great to beat the shit out of the pale gentleman donning a tophat in the first match. He beat the shit out of my librarian-looking avatar in round two.

There’s not much more to the game, admittedly. The sarcastic text that appears with challenger avatars in 1P mode is amusing, and the developers have smartly created opponents of currency, like Kanye West and Super Mario likenesses, sprucing up the repetitive goal. 

The design is neat and clean, which is important to me. Some other indie games have menus that are impossible to read, are ill-placed or don’t have menus at all. JForce succeeds in making a rather simplistic game look like it’s far, far more.

There’s a neat little “Meet JFORCE” area, which I appreciated as I always like to read about who creates the games. They include a preview of their upcoming game, but it is unplayable. 

For a buck, it’s worth the download. Sometimes you need fluff in your game diet.

Rating: A tip of the fedora
Pros: Simple fun, online capabilities, only 80 MSPs
Cons: The novelty wears off instantly if you have to play with yourself. 

Normally I’d give a proper review even for the most disappointing of games, but as Zenfar’s Mayan Countdown has absolutely no redeeming quality whatsoever, I’m just going to spoil the mystery for you. You control a Mayan symbol that spins clockwise from a fixed point on its border, in hopes of unlocking four messages… or “insights” to what will happen in 2012.

Here are the four insights:

“Spaceship or Submarine to Atlantis”
“Kneeling Ergo Chair”
“Drinking Straw”
“The Long Count Ends in 2012”

That’s it. Sorry, Zenfar. You may need a drinking straw to suck up the remnants of your score.

Rating: Adios, Satipo
Pros: You can beat the entire game in the trial
Cons: Horrible controls, aesthetically a nightmare, absolutely no replay value whatsoever.

Imagine being whisked away to the world of open seas, the sun on the horizon, speeding boats….unicorns and the occasional “Waiting for Tonight” video style laser explosions of merriment and ecstasy, right in your own living room… for only a scant dollar.

That reality is possible today, my friends. 

Indie developer xMONOx released “Techno Kitten Adventure” earlier this month, much to the delight of meme-whores everywhere. The description alone sold me. “Navigate a kitten by jetpack, fueled by hopes and dreams, through a fantastical world of techno music.” How could I not purchase this blindly? 

The moment the game loads, unidentifiable wedges of rainbow lights flutter across the screen… UFOs and speeding boats appear and speed by. Small groups of birds, flocks of shooting stars explode into your field of vision. WHAT IS THIS MADNESS? 

A lone kitten, waged with the task of operating a jetpack (if George Michael Bluth had a hard time, imagine this wee feline), struggles to maneuver around ill-placed polygon after polygon, that for whatever reason appears in his path alongside the land of the rising sun. 

Just as your high score is racking up to an impressive six figures, you dip too fast and hit the border, erupting into a blossom of stars! DEFEAT! 

Admittedly after a few rounds, the novelty starts to wear off, and you wonder if there’s anything left to the game… or if it’s another vicious cock-tease of infinite proportions like The Impossible Game. 

An innovator in kitschy success, TKA is a must have simply because sometimes, there’s just nothing better to do, and it’s simply funny to play. The sheer stupidity of what you’re doing is entertaining in itself. 

The one song on repeat, Sea of Love by DJ Hixxy, seems painfully similar to the tactics behind Robot Unicorn Attack (which features Erasure’s Always), but the repetition is exactly what provides the foundation for this novelty game. I don’t know when intentionally-corny came became a signifier of awesomeness, but let’s hope it doesn’t bring back a resurgence all the crap that reminds me of my childhood.

It’s not something I would play all day, every day, and it’s certainly not something I play often, but knowing I have it in my library for when I’m up at 4am and don’t feel like playing something challenging or involved is comforting. Techno Kitten Adventure is like a carton of Ben & Jerry’s for my brain.

Rating: Tip of the fedora 
Pros: Mindless, slapstick entertainment at an unbeatable price
Cons: After 45 minutes, you may want to re-enact the kitty scene from Drag Me To Hell

I’m a game slut. I am not embarrassed to admit it, most games don’t hold my attention for very long. I can lose hours (…okay, days) playing, but then I have to switch to something else to satisfy my needs. Nevertheless, once in a while I’ll come across something that I not only want to finish… but need to finish. This is true of Kaleidoscope, an enormously fun indie title from Morsel that was released in February 2010. 

At first glance I might have overlooked this gem, as it is overly cute and reminds me of a Mr.Men/threadless love affair that takes place on Kashyyyk… but after ten minutes of gameplay, I was hooked. 

At only 240 MSPs ($3 USD), it’s not going to set you back much, and it’s cheaper than a Zune Marketplace movie rental. 

The backstory is that the once lush world of Kaleidoscope fell victim to a “horrible outbreak” that “drained all of its color”. All the common folk flee except for Tint, the adorable little walking Hefty bag that you control, who opts to stay with his grandparents. 

As you jump around the world, you collect pigments (Blue, Yellow and Red) which are not only primary colors, but conveniently match up to the remaining action buttons on your controller. Blue is a speed boost, yellow is a Princess Peach-esque hovering function and red is a temporary shield. If you use your “powers”, you drain your reserves. 

This may seem a little cheesy to hardcore gamers, but screw them. This is a fantastic game. My favorite book (and animated movie) as a kid was The Phantom Tollbooth, and I have relished the part when Milo takes the conductor’s baton and brings color to the world for the day. The color and music connection goes one step further— as you amass certain amounts of pigments, another layer of music is “unlocked” as a new layer of color is added to the background. 

To complete a level, you must seek out the lost colors until the last two levels, during which you have to close black holes. There are multiple ways to solve each of the earlier levels, providing extended gameplay for unfortunately short adventure. One really can’t complain for the measly price tag, though. Though I finished the game entirely over the course of three evenings (I was interrupted by my brother wanting to play That Orange Guy), it could have been finished in one, and that is my only complaint. Needing more levels is probably the best flaw a game can have. 

While extreme violence is a selling point that panders to most audiences, myself included, this well-organized and designed game doesn’t need so much as a weapon to be entrancing. While you do have to lightly touch Murmurs to colorize them, it’s more of a love-tap than it is a painful squashing. 

All in all, I’d love to see more from Morsel. 

Rating: A full crack of the whip
Pros: Classic platformer feel with a modern look, nonviolent, creative incorporation of environment to advance
Cons: When I got to the Memory Lane and realized that was the last stage, I almost didn’t play it because I wanted more to look forward to