Lithium Leaf

Link: http://homepage3.nifty.com/alexholth/

Bootfighter Windom XP SP-2 a game by Y.Kamada. It's a mech brawler where the characters are inspired by Operating Systems.

You get to choose from a number of versions of Windows and Linux in the form of robots. And the developer's preference over the two is quite clear. As Linux robots are all glowing and are tremendously overpowered with respect to Windows robots, there's a few versions of Windows that are glowing and are also overpowered with respect to the rest. There are 8 Windows robots and 4 Linux robots. The one the game is named after, Windows XP, is pictured in the screenshot above. The one bellow is Cymbidium Linux. There's also 2 player faces to choose from, less angry cat pictured above and more angry cat pictured bellow. Alright they have names, the less angry cat is named Ace Cat but I cannot read the name of the second cat.

Okay, lets explain a bit of the gameplay.

There's 5 modes of play you can choose. The first one is a simple brawl, you fight against 2 enemy robots that respawn everytime you kill them (as a different kind of robot), the aim of this mode is to kill as many robots as possible, rise your score and make it to the leaderboards. The downside is that since it's 2 against 1, they will split constantly attacking you from both sides of the screen. You get 3 lives yourself, after that is game over. The funny thing is that if you choose a either Windows Millenium or Windows 98 you get 6 lives because they are so underpowered.

The second mode is training. You get a punchbag that doesn't do anything to test your robot against. The third mode is team battle. Which can be renamed as War, because there's about 20 robots per team (you can't change the settings). The 4th one is called Blitz Tactics, plays similar to team battle, but there's a lot less robots per teams and you get 2 battleships per team, which work as respawn points and can be destroyed, but they are not defenseless eihter. The last one is online mode, which I haven't tested yet mayorly because my computer is quite old and when things get busy in either the 3rd or 4th mode it panics and runs at about half a frame a second.

Let's go on to the control scheme, which is a bit complicated at first specially if you aren't used to PC gaming. To move you use the arrow keys tap them repeatedly for a quick dash to dedge stuff or approach your enemy. Z jumps and uses the boosters to fly around, if tapped repeatedly you robot will dash in the air, there is a bar for the booster's energy (the orange bar) so that you cannot fly or dash the whole time, one you touch the ground it refils quickly. X is used to fire weapon 1, which is usually a simple gun. C pulls out your sword and swings it. V is used to shield, but while you maintain it it drains energy from you boosters, so you cannot guard the whole time, you can guard in the air but as you use the same energy bar for flying and shielding, it decreases the time you can be guarding. A shoots weapon 2. S changes the target you have locked on. D shoots weapon 3 and F shoots weapon 4. The power of the weapons increases as their number increases, weapon 4 being the most powerful and can sometimes kill enemies in one blow if used well. But the more powerful the weapon the longer the cooldown time, showed in the botom left hand corner of the screen. The weapons have an energy bar as well (the blue one), the more powerful the weapon the more energy it drains, I believe to prevent you from using all the powerful weapons at the same time.

Your score is written in the top-left corner, along with the ammount of robots killed. The ammount of lives left is pictured next to the energy bars. There is no life bar to know when you are going to die, instead the orange numbers at the left-bottom side of the screen tell you how much armor you have left. When it reaches 0 you die.

The visuals are quite outstanding with a lot of nice laser effects and a lot of effort has been put into the robots. The music is cool too but gets quite repetitive.

Overall, it's a fun game and if your computer can run it without problems you at least should give it a try.

Download the game.

Source: Kobedenshi

Notes:
To play the game you will need the .NET framework.
There is a thread in the author's page to make requests, you can add them in English and they will be translated to Japanese.

Link: http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/tp

Jimmy's Lost His Toilet Paper is another monthly game by Petri Purho. It's a stage-based puzzle platformer where you must help Jimmy get back his precious toilet paper.

The control scheme is quite simple. The left and right arrow keys are used to move left and right, up key to jump and down key or shift to hold on to the toilet paper (and to stop it rolling in or rolling out) doing so is necessary although it will severely hinder your jumping and running abilities. Space restarts the level.

The aim of the game is quite simple, just obtain all the toilet paper in each stage. This is simplified because the toilet paper is unbreakable, and can be used as a rope sometimes. The only way you might "die" of sorts in this game is by making the level completion impossible, which might happen in a number of ways, from trapping you toilet paper under a box or by making it go around a platform you cannot reach.

In conclusion, Petri has again achieved to bring out an interesting and fun game this month. He has also achieved inventing light gates that only allow toilet paper to go through them, those were my fovarites.

Download the game.

On a related topic, congrats to Petri on becoming Judge for the IGF 2009.

Link: http://maglog.jp/gamesoft/Article278123.html

Blue Comet is a 2D shmup with 3D graphics developed by 1st year students from the Kobe Institute of Technology. The game needs a little bit of polishing but it is great fun to play.

The gameplay is just like your average 2D vertical scrolling Danmaku, just without any powerups. From time to time the game will make use of its 3D graphics and change your perspective, sometimes just for a sequence, sometimes to defeat enemies. There are two shits to choose from but they are identicall in terms of bullets and speed, the only difference is visual.

The control scheme is simple, Z shoots a rather weak machinegun, X shoots missiles and C shoots purple enemy-seeking rays. The later weapon drains from an energy bar at the right side of the screen which refills over time. My computer didn't allow me to press Z, X and C at the same time, so I just kept to the missiles and rays, but that is personal preference. The game gives you 3 lives and unlimited credits. Unlimited given that you want to spend 3000 points.

You will probably find yourself dying rather quickly, because the screen gets filled with stuff at all times. Most of it will be your own bullets, but these will hide the enemies' shots which only increases the number of times you die.

Go to download the game.

The Tokyo Game Show is getting its own IGF of sorts. It has been announced that during the evening of the 10th of October The Sense Of Wonder Night will be held. Ten games will be put into the spotlight. These games will make innovatations in the areas of user interface and interactive storytelling.

Games must be sent to the event's selection comitee by the 31st of August. The games to be shown will be announced the 16th of September. Keita Takahashi will be part of that comitee.

Although the number of games sounds small to me. I can only hope it just keeps getting bigger in the years to come.

Sources: Kotaku, Wired, GameSetWatch

Original Announcement: Tokyo Game Show's Japanese website (2)

Link: http://maglog.jp/gamesoft/

I have recently have found out this blog. Which belongs to the Kobe Denshi Senmon Game Soft Bunya, which stands for the Kobe Electronics Speciality Game Software Branch. Or as they call it in their videos, The Kobe Institute Of Technology.

I have found out that they are showcasing a lot of freeware games, which I believe most (if not all of them) were created by students, as you can see in this long list. I really look forward to trying out these games. I had never heard of any of them.

Above is the picture of one of them, called Tank Tank Revolution! the game is quite polished but straightforward, you move with WASD and aim and shoot with the mouse. The game consists of a few missions that you have to clear to proceed. Mostly consisting of you and your tank against 40 or 50 other tanks, the screenshot above shows the first mission in the city. The buildings can be knocked down by your missiles. And although the enemy AIs need a bit of polishing (they sometimes get stuck in the map borders. The game is worth a try.

Here is the full list of games.

Here is the Kobedenshi youtube account with all the videos of the games.

Link to download Tank Tank Revolution!

Just yesterday cactus released two new games, Retro 4 and Life Is A Race. Retro 4 is a visualy interesting arena shooter and Life Is A Race is an entry to a GMG (stands for Game Maker Games) competition called This Game Is Art.

Retro 4

As said, Retro 4 is an arena shooter. You take control of a black orb that has to shoot down multy coloured rectangles that fly at you. You move using WASD, aim using the mouse and shoot with the left mouse button. The game starts off quite easy, as the ammount of enemies is quite low, and it also helps that your bullets are homing (although they die off quite quickly after they're shot). But it will soon get quite busy and the enemies will appear at a faser rate than you can shoot bullets at.

When you kill an enemy it increases in size before dissapearing, filling almost the whole screen. When you are killing enemies constantly it creates an interesting visual effect. Looking like you're going through a worm hole. The music is quite fitting too.

Life Is A Race

Life Is A Race is a quick mini-game. In which the aim is to tap the left mouse button as fast as posible. Beating it won't take you more than 7 seconds really. But it is worth playing at least once. And I don't want to spoil anything now. So go check it out.

Download these games.

Source: IndieGames Blog

Link: http://www.mazapan.se/games/Swarm.php

Swarm is a racing game with swarming behaviour created by team Mazapan for the Swedish Game Awards. The team is made up of: Kian Bashiri, Henrik Nåmark and Carl-Johan Sevedang. The in-game music was done by Callecuttar (Gorillala).

Swarm is a mobile game. I have a pretty old mobile phone and I was still able to run it. So I'm pretty sure almost anyone can.

The control scheme is quite simple. 2,4,6 and 8 to move horizontaly or vertically. And 1,3,7 an 9 to move diagonally. The game plays like a race against time, you control a swarm of pixels and have to get to a checkpoint (Placeholder Graphics) before time runs out, when you get there your time is extended. As you progress through the game you will find other cool features of the game. For example forks in the read, called Design Decisions, where the route you take has an effect in the level layout and graphics of the game. These roads the game has split up into never come back together, which means that the game will have a lot of possible unique routes. The game also has more standard features that most racing games have. Such as speed-ups.

The gameplay is very fast, and you will find yourself colliding often, but it is not really penalised. The first portion of the game is used to familiarize with the pixel controls, and you are not timed. Only when you get to a certain point the coundown starts. The Beta's difficulty is hard, it was done so to make the players unable to finish the game in one go because the game is only at beta stage, and is still very short.

The graphical features of Swarm are simple. But the transtitions between graphical styles in the Design Decisions are impressive.

As for the sound. My mobile phone is, as I said, old, and couldn't manage to play any music.

Download the beta.

Link: http://maglog.jp/sb/Article317502.html

Anyone remember when I talked about Shooting Game Builder last time? I do. And I remember nor being able to run it. The guys at Big Download weren't able either. It said that it couldn't find a file named d3dx9_30.dll.

Recently I googled that name. And found a bit of info about the file. Including a long list of solutions to the problem. I fixed it. And tried to run Shooting Game Builder. To my surprise it worked.

Well, at first, instead of the text you see in the screenshot, all I got was ?????? and &%*[ in its place. I changed the language for non-unicode programs to Japanese. Similar to what had to be done to play Yume Nikki. Restarted, and it was quickly fixed.

Shooting Game Builder is in Japanese. So there's quite a bit of a language barrier. Hopefully, it will be translated. Because its looking hot!

And hopefully I'll get some more time fiddling about with it. And post if I found any cool features.

Download Shooting Game Builder.

Link: http://www004.upp.so-net.ne.jp/x_xgameroom/

Eden's Aegis is a vertical scrolling danmaku by Japanese developer x.x.

The gameplay is very standard, arrow keys to move, Z to shoot, X to drop a bomb, S to pause and C for a special shot that drains from a bar but recovers quickly over time. You have 2 characters to choose from, each one with different shot types. Your characters can take more than 1 shot before dying, as you character guards automatically (there is an option to disable this, though).

I am not entirely sure how the guard system works, but I believe you can only take in 3 shots before you die.

When you kill an enemy it drops blue orbs. Which will give you more points.

Eden's Aegis is a game quite polished visually and highly detailed.

Download the game.

Link: http://cactusquid.proboards99.com/index.cgi?board=games&action=display&thread=91

BlockOn is a new platformer by cactus. The aim of the game is to beat the stages by collecting the red balls, which will open the door leading to the next stage.

The gameplay is unique, with the game just giving you the position of the red balls and the door. Before the level starts, you are asked to place the platform where you will be standing. You have to make the levels yourself. After you have set all the platforms, you press space and see how the game places all the enemies and traps by itself. Its a very unique style. Although sometimes unfair, since it may place 2 enemies in a tiny space. And the game has a tendency to make spikes just below the red balls. You can still collect the red orbs, but it can be a pain.

You can sometimes make judgement errors, and set platforms too high to reach, to fix that you have to restart the level and alter the placement of the platforms.

Overall, the game is great and unique. Although a bit short.

Download the game.

Source: The IndieGames Blog.