Hi there! I’m Trent from b1stable. We’re a young indie studio about to publish our second game, MOMENTUM.
I first wrote a game called MOMENTUM in high school around 1997 or 1998. I thought the game was pretty fun and cool since it’s only 2 KB in size. I decided to rewrite it and it turned out similar but a little different with a few additions.
The game is really simple. You fly a ship through a minefield and move up and down to avoid mines. You have nukes which will clear the screen of mines. For every 256 points you get, you gain another nuke. Your score which is in hexadecimal is NUKESxSCORE (concatenate the two.)
There are some unused bytes at the end of the executable file so I might try to squeeze in a thing or two as an update later. I think more sound would be one thing I’d like.
The game will launch for 60 cents on Steam on July 1st. Check it out at https://steamcommunity.com/app/1994810
Magic Gravity – it’s a 2D platformer for PC with the possibility of a change of gravity. The main hero is to reach the door to the next level facing various traps (fireballs, lava, bayonets, etc.). You will be also able to play on the Internet with a friend. In this multiplayer game, levels remain the same, but gravity begins to manipulate the second player, the first player has to avoid traps moving forward.
Nitronic rush has a pretty interesting story that I thought I’d share before I started the review. Some DigiPen students created a very early version of Nitronic Rush for a school project and decided to post their results online. Suddenly, they received massive support, backing, and encouragement. Powered by the internet, these students went on to turn this into an entire game.
Nitronic Rush is a survival racing game made by and published by Team Nitronic. Survival racing may seem like an odd term, but that is because you don’t really race against other cars in this game, you merely try to survive all the obstacles and make it out quickly. The game is quite good, and then considering the game was made by amateurs, mere students the quality of the work is just astounding. There are very few flaws, the quality control is perfect and it feels like the Team Nitronic only put their best work into this game.
The gameplay is fairly simple. There is a track, and you must race along with it. Obstacles are on the track and you must dodge them. Your car can also fly, flying is sometimes necessary, as some jumps can’t be maneuvered with just speed. Overall, it’s pretty simple. But some of the creativeness in this game is pretty intense. You must hop onto walls or sometimes fly through a bunch of obstacles, like the N64 Star Wars Millennium Falcon scene. Obstacles can be impossible to dodge, and trying to play without braking can get REALLY hard. There is also a very nice system of doing tricks in mid-air, where your car has jets on all sides of it, and you can use this to do a myriad of different tricks, all with different point values. Overall, the gameplay can be pretty challenging, it’s fast-paced and quite deep. My only concern is that after a seemingly short amount of time, everything gets too repetitive.
The graphics and sound in this game are what really make it great. With a world looking like it was straight out of TRON and heavy electronic music playing in the background, you really feel like a total badass flying around and going at a ridiculous speed. Flashy lights, bright colors and a general futuristic Las Vegas feel are always present. Any crashes or successful tricks are announced by voice-over, and the announcer must have hundreds of lines because very rarely do you hear the exact same comment twice in a row. Buckets of tears!
Nitronic rush is really about the atmosphere and the feel of the game. It is too hard to describe the game and how it plays in a review, because there is just a certain air of badassery, and it just can’t really be described with words. With the good graphics, good sound, and great and badass gameplay, you might as well check out the game, as it’s completely and utterly free to download, and it is definitely worth the hard drive space!
Conclusion: Nitronic Rush plays well, sounds good, looks good, but kind of feels too short and repetitive.
Cortex Command is another indie game from the nice folks at Data Reams LLC. While the game is incomplete, it has been released in playable alpha versions several times. It is a 2D platforming simulation game where objectives are carried out by “bodies” controlled from a distance by a brain.
Humanity’s technology has evolved so far that brains can be separated from worthless flesh bodies and can be sustained for long periods of time, being able to remotely control “bodies” from a distance. The player controls a brain, and at the start of each scenario it can call down various types of spacecraft to deliver whatever you select from the buy interface. The interface for selecting what will be drop-shipped down is a buy menu with a shopping cart. Once you select what you want, you pay for it with gold, the game’s currency, and then the specific drop ship of your choice will deliver your load.
You can buy various bodies that have their benefits and different costs, and equip them with a variety of different weapons or tools. Tools such as miners and shovels can be used to dig the fully-destructible land and scavenge for the gold that you need to support your operations. You can also equip your men with weapons to create your ragtag team of fighters which will be especially important, as most scenarios will require you to either defend your precious brain hive or attack the enemy.
The game has a very steep learning curve. Although there is a thin tutorial mission, (which is brutally difficult in its own way) you are left to figure out how to do things yourself. However, once you get the hang of things it is entertaining to set up your own base of operations and station your bodies, put workers to mining gold and drop-ship units in, controlling them individually from afar with your brain. (Protecting your brain is of the utmost priority if its protective glass case is destroyed you will lose.)
The biggest drawback to the game is the horrible controls and the clumsiness of the engine. The game runs awfully slowly and only if you have an extreme level of patience, you will probably give up after an hour. Walking your units around takes eons, and even the “speedy” jetpack is clumsy to control and is very weak, holding more than one weapon will likely weigh it down to oblivion. The number of effects and the sheer amount of physics going on at one time is impressive (Tactics such as using your dropship as kamikaze or using its rocket engines to burn your enemies alive are very viable), but the physics often glitches and your men and your enemies’ men will likely die from jumping on each other, or by being crushed by some dirt particles.
The game is a great concept but the execution lacks what it needs to become the best indie game. It could have been much better, and playing it is trying to build a stack of cards, unbelievably slow and frustrating. (But of course, as there are card house enthusiasts there are many who enjoy this game.)
Conclusion: Cortex Command is a unique 2D platformer with a plethora of possible tactics, although difficult to perform at times.
Demolition inc is quite the game. A brief synopsis, you are Mike, and you must wreck the earth. Sounds fun. Silliness will ensue.
This physics-based game is reminiscent of Blast Corps and Destroy All Humans. The storyline is simple, you are an alien who won a contract to level earth to create an intergalactic park. One thing German-based ZeroScale Game development has done right is how well the game is made. IT is done, complete, and doesn’t have many bugs. You can see that they put time into this game, and they did not just rush till they got a semi-finished product. And this is especially nice because this is an indie game and indie games don’t normally have this polish.
The graphics aren’t really cutting edge and miraculous, but realism in a game like this would not fit. The cartoony graphics really bring together the whole aesthetic and feel of the game.
The gameplay is fairly simple, follow the roads and knock down any building that you see, and you must do this quickly because the army is on its way. To knock down the buildings you use some pretty silly methods, like using oil slicks, glue bombs, and exploding cows. This all seems very silly and it feels like ZeroScale went overboard here on the Silly Scale. You have a few super attacks to use in times of need, but basically, all your destruction will be caused using good ol’ hit and run, smash everything with vehicles. Use cars and other objects to destroy and level the buildings. When debris starts falling, suck it up for some extra money and clean up the block. Clean up a block and flora and fauna start sprouting on it. Clean up every block and you clear a level. The game isn’t particularly hard.
The music of the game is quite good and matches the feel of the game well, but it can get repetitive at some moments. The physics of the game fit the game, they aren’t particularly realistic but they are just silly enough. The mayhem can cause many chain reactions as tiny bits of shrapnel trigger exploding cows and destroy buildings all across the map and start a huge explosive climax of alien demolition. The chaos of the game is quite entertaining.
Conclusion: Demolition Inc. is a fun cartoonish game, it isn’t particularly amazing but is good all-around and definitely worth a buy. No area is really lacking.
