Family Business: Scott Brodie and Hero Generations

As has become somewhat routine, Rock Paper Shotgun alerted us recently to an upcoming indie title seeking funding on Kickstarter. An upcoming turn based strategy RPG with roguelike elements - stop me if you’ve heard this one before. But Hero Generations is something a little different from the norm; while a single character’s life is, in roguelike fashion, perilously short (predetermined to be so, in fact), Scott Brodie wants to give us the chance to create a lineage of heroes. As our heroes age and achieve greatness, they will have the chance to find a mate and carry on through their offspring, passing traits, goods and fame down from one generation to the next. Intrigued, I asked Scott if he would take a little time to tell us a bit more about the game and his plans for it, and he generously agreed.

EG: So, introductions! For those who don’t know you, who is Scott Brodie (beyond “independent game designer, programmer, and founder at Heart Shaped Games”), and how did you come to build Hero Generations?

SB: I've been a game designer for some time, and I've worked in most of the disciplines in games at some point along the way. Most recently I was a Producer at Microsoft Game Studios, where I worked on Xbox Live Arcade games for about four years (Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, Scrap Metal, Aegis Wing, Aqua, Snoopy Flying Ace are just a few of the games I had a hand in helping make). I decided to leave and start Heart Shaped Games, and I've been doing that for the past 3.5 years.

I started work on Hero Generations at the beginning of 2011, but eventually had to set it aside when my first child was born. In between I worked on a well-received collectible card game called Highgrounds (http://www.highgroundsgame.com), but I'm now finally in a position to revisit Hero Generations, and I'm really excited about the new direction.

EG: Before diving in too deep, let’s have the elevator pitch for the game, for people who haven’t seen the Kickstarter page yet. (Of course, once they’re done reading this, they should go check it out and learn more.) In 60 seconds or less - or the text equivalent - what is Hero Generations about?

SB: The best way I’ve found to describe it is "The 5-Minute Civilization." You play a rapidly aging hero that explores a procedurally generated world in search of fame and a mate to settle down with before you die. After your life ends, you continue on adventuring as your child, and that cycle continues on and on. I’d liken it to the offspring of Sid Meier's Civilization, Jason Rohrer's Passage, and The Legend of Zelda.

A tiny piece of what will be a big world.

EG: From the Kickstarter page: “Life took some surprising turns for me during Hero Generations' original development, and I was forced to put the game on the shelf in order to spend time with my then-newborn son and focus on other projects that could pay the bills.” Can you elaborate a little bit on the game Hero Generations was before, vs. the game that you want it to be now?

SB: Sure. The prototype is far along, and it actually was selected as an IndieCade Finalist in 2011. It was out on the web, and I got a lot of great feedback on how to make it better. It is a lot of fun for about 4-5 hours, but it really needed a lot more content to make the game infinitely playable. I also did all of the artwork for that version myself.

The new version really sets out to address those things. I’m working with artist Dominic Sodano to overhaul the art, and everyone seems to be as in love with his style as I am. We’re also going to add a ton of content, which includes an overworld you can explore to find all new tilesets and challenges (Volcano, Desert, and Island, to name a few). I’m also excited about supporting both male and female heroes. I’m really excited to get the chance to overhaul the game and make the great experience I know it can be.

EG: The concept of managing a limited timeline as a resource in a game is not a totally unique one, but the way you’re doing it here is something we usually only see in grand strategy games where you command a nation, not character-focused RPG’s. One year per turn seems like a really broad abstraction for a single character, especially if you’re just moving around a map. “This year, I walked into the forest” seems like a lackluster way to spend a year. What’s the plan for making sure none of the turns are “filler”, when there are potentially so few of them?

SB: Turns are really fast, so there isn’t really “down time”, but there are non-optimal paths you can take. But that’s okay to me, because a lot of people wander around life without a clear direction of what they want to do, so it’s a valid thing that players can do. The less-impressive turns are important to the overall interest in the game because they make the more-impressive turns that much more meaningful (i.e. you can’t have good turns without the threat of bad ones).

But design theory aside, most actions in the world are iconic of major events in a hero's life. Meeting a mate that you don’t choose is emblematic of a failed relationship. Building represents the year that was taken to plan and engineer the structure. Battles represent major encounters between the heroes of two civilizations. The game foregoes the in-between details so that every turn results in a meaningful event, and I think that’s ultimately how we get to an actual “5-minute Civilization” feel that I designed for.

EG: One of the parts of your pitch that I found fascinating was: “Meaning: The game system was built from the ground up to be an exploration of the themes of death, legacy, family, love,and more. The experience of playing the game I hope will be a surprising and thought-provoking experience, as well as fun.” That’s a pretty lofty goal. You talked in your second update (which I encourage people to go read) about some of the inspirations behind the game and your design philosophies, but I’m wondering whether the “ability” to become a parent in this game is really a choice for the player. It seems like having a child might always be the “better” option in Hero Generations simply because it lets you keep playing and get a better score - choosing not to would essentially be opting for the game’s version of suicide. Are you worried about boiling something that complex down to a game mechanic? Is there a downside in the game to the parenting option, or a situation where the game might reward a player for not continuing their lineage?

SB: The main reason you would decide not to have a child in the game is to maximize the number of years you can put into making your hero famous. When you choose to have a child in the game (with some rare exceptions) that also means your journey is done with your current character. Your fame “score” is locked in and you move on to the next hero. So the alternative is to be entirely selfish and focus on hitting as many quests as possible until your last years. I don’t want to give too much away, but there are some major quests in the game that require this type of full dedication to complete, but the payoff is big.

Age may take its toll, but it shall not dull this warrior's keen fashion sense.

EG: Assuming that the player does choose to establish a lineage of heroes, how will family dynamics come into play, if at all? Your third update included a gameplay video by UnstableVoltage, and it seemed like at this point in the prototype, picking a mate is mostly a process of trying to find the “best” option available to your fame level, and there seemed to be little interaction between family generations. Obviously, in real life, sometimes families don’t get along - sons don’t always like fathers, and family members’ goals don’t always mesh. Understanding that we’re not likely to get into Game of Thrones territory (or even Crusader Kings territory, necessarily), do you see any of the more complicated aspects of family dynamics working their way into the game?

SB: I actually think Game of Thrones isn’t a bad reference point to what the final version of the game will play like, in terms of family dynamics. There will be competition among you and the other families throughout the world. Specifically, if you have achieved the highest fame score in the world, your town transforms into a “Kingdom” type, and you and your descendants gain some meaningful benefits for achieving that. But this also makes you a target, and the other families will try to out do you and steal the throne back.

But as well, your family and culture play a big part in the game. You can be given special quests that your Parents want you to complete, and you can choose to follow what they want, or ignore them and chart your own path. You can also build up cities, and morph their culture based upon the building choices you make. It’s all ensuring that the choices you make in one generation will have lasting, meaningful impact on future ones.

EG: As you mentioned briefly above, the pitch includes lady heroes as well as gentlemen heroes, which I was happy to see. Will there be any functional differences gameplay wise between those choices?

SB: I think we’re still working out exactly how if at all the gender of your hero will affect gameplay. There is a rich design space there to explore, but we also don’t want to introduce too many special case rules, because then the game starts to get harder to learn and enjoy. If you back the project, I’m sure we’ll share our plans for this, and we would of course love to get your feedback on how to handle this part of the game.

EG: One of the eternal conflicts in procedural game development is the balance between game mechanics and plot. Do you hope to build Hero Generations into a game where players are making decisions for narrative reasons within crafted story pieces? Or do you expect that the game’s narrative is going to come primarily out of the decisions they’re making in the game’s mechanical systems?

SB: The game really shines as a “procedural storytelling” experience. We give you small flavor elements, and from those things you kind of build a world and story up in your head. The choices you make start to fill in a plot, and over time you get a nice arc that is usually worth sharing with someone else.

EG: Kickstarters are notorious for, let’s generously say, “rough” timeline estimates, and as stretch goals get unlocked (which seems likely here) those tend to get rougher. January 2015 is listed for Hero Generations - is that a date you expect is likely? Or was it a “we need to fill something in here” guess?

SB: I think the schedule is very achievable. The things that would move us off our timeline would be getting significantly overfunded. Ultimately, I’m not deadline driven; I want to build the best game possible, and we’ll take the time we need to make sure that’s what we deliver. The good news though is that we have a fun alpha prototype already, and we’ll be delivering a beta version of the game in the later half of this year, so backers will be able to get their hands on a version of the game pretty soon.

EG: Anything you’d like to tell people that we didn’t cover before we wrap up? The floor’s yours, say anything you want.

SB: I’d very much like to thank all of the people that have taken the time to back our Kickstarter thus far. And of course it would mean a lot if your readers would consider backing the project if they haven’t already. Thanks for the great questions!

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Thanks very much to Scott Brodie for taking the time to address my questions. If you'd like to learn more about Hero Generations, go check out their Kickstarter campaign - well on its way with over half the duration remaining - or their Steam Greenlight page and consider showing your support!

Paper Heroes: Colm Larkin and Guild of Dungeoneering

This week, I happened across a post on IndieGames.com (followed by another on RockPaperShotgun) taking a look at the upcoming 2-man indie show Guild of Dungeoneering. The product of Colm Larkin (programming) and Fred Mangan (art), Guild of Dungeoneering (like so many good things) originated at Ludum Dare, as part of their October challenge last year. A little bit RPG, a little bit more strategy, and a whole lot distinctive aesthetic, this one caught my attention fast and held it tight, even though it’s in a very early state. After I reached out and let him know that I’d tried it, Colm agreed to talk a little bit about himself and the game for us, and here we are.

EG: Thanks for joining me! Let’s start at the start. Talk a little bit about Colm Larkin, “Gambrinous Games”, and how Guild of Dungeoneering ended up in the October challenge at Ludum Dare.

Colm: Hi ErraticGamer! Thanks for having me round for a chat. Making games is something I’ve been interested in since I was a child and our family got our first ever computer in the 1980s. It was a ZX Spectrum+ with 128 KB of memory, and basically to do anything with it you had to write BASIC. Even if you had a game on a tape it still booted up into a BASIC command prompt and you had to type in RUN to play. Myself and my siblings would type in the BASIC code printed in magazines for simple games (aren’t game-making tutorials easier to share nowadays!), and essentially that’s what led to me becoming a computer programmer and having a deep love of games.

As for Guild of Dungeoneering, I can even go a little further back than the October Challenge. Really the concept started as a 1GAM game that I built in April 2013 called Dungeon Delver. If you play that you’ll see some of the same ‘laying out a dungeon’ gameplay that’s now in Dungeoneering. 1GAM is a bit like a gamejam on your own terms, each month, and for me participating in it really crystallised being able to finish games. Before taking part I had spent almost 4 years trying to make games in my spare time and only had a couple of abandoned projects to show for it. After 6 months of 1GAM I had finished 4 small games and really felt much more confident about cutting back a game idea to its basics so that it was finishable. When I saw that the LD October Challenge (‘Finish a game — Take it to market — Earn $1’) was coming up I decided to try my hand once more at a bigger game project. So in October I began creating Guild of Dungeoneering.

EG: Ah, the ZX Spectrum. I never had one of those, but my father and I used to program BASIC games out of the back of Boys’ Life on a TI-99/4A that ran off a cassette tape; I’m guessing that’s one of the aforementioned magazines where you got some of your early source code, too. It’s fascinating and inspiring to see how successful gamejams like 1GAM and Ludum Dare are at driving people to get their ideas out in playable form for future refinement.

So on that note, describe Guild of Dungeoneering a bit for us. What were your design inspirations, and what role do you want the game to fill? We’ve seen something of a ‘randomized dungeon crawl’ renaissance in the last couple of years, but Dungeoneering is taking a notably different approach.

Colm: Hah yes! There were whole sections of magazines filled with hundreds of lines like ‘30 GOSUB 180’, and a single typo meant nothing would work. Fun times! Design inspirations to me were playing games like FTL and Spelunky which took the rogue-like idea and ran with it. I wanted to make a game that scratched the same itch that they did, but in a more traditional turn-based fantasy way. I remembered playing a board game called DungeonQuest in the 90s where you placed down a random tile in front of your adventurer when you stepped into a new room - sometimes it was a dead end or a left turn when you dearly needed to go straight.

Don't go left. Don't go left.

Somewhere along the line I started thinking, ‘What if you don’t get to control the hero?’. It seemed like an interesting twist to the usual dungeon-exploration-romp. So I made it that you were in control of the dungeon instead: you draw out the map, you place monsters & loot, and you watch what your hero (aka dungeoneer) chooses to do. Sometimes people say the idea reminds them of the original Dungeon Keeper (lets not talk about the recent IAP filled reboot) - so I should say that in Dungeoneering you are on the side of the hero. You WANT him to win, you just can’t directly control him. Taking away one of the most important choices for a gamer (player movement) has led to some problems I’m still trying to solve - essentially how can I still make the game full of interesting decisions & conflicts?

EG: DungeonQuest! Yes. Some of those inspirations have come back around in the boardgaming realm, too, with stuff like Wrath of Ashardalon and Castle Ravenloft coming out from Wizards of the Coast. No new ideas under the sun, but we keep coming back to some of the good ones, thankfully.

Let’s not talk about the recent IAP-filled Dungeon Keeper indeed, but certainly the original is still a well loved title. The other game that kept popping into my head (and was further prompted by the “guild” aspect even though that isn’t built in yet) was Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim, from back in 2000. That game had you managing a whole town of heroes at once, while Dungeoneering narrows you down to one at a time. What kind of relationship do you envision the player having with the AI-controlled hero - do you think of Dungeoneering as a puzzle where the player is trying to leave the right trail of breadcrumbs that the hero will follow if laid out correctly? Or do you expect there to be conflict between the player’s desires and the dungeoneer’s? (You want me to go get that treasure, but I am scared of trolls and there’s a troll in there, etc.) I suppose those aren’t mutually exclusive if you lay the information out for the player, but you have a choice as a designer about how much you put on the table, so to speak.

Colm: Majesty certainly captured some of the frustration of not getting to control your heroes (oh god no, don’t go THERE, argh!) that I want to tap into with Dungeoneering. I’m hoping that even in failure or frustration there can be enjoyment. If your dungeoneer’s too stupid to avoid that nasty golem.. well at least he went down with a funny splat sound, and there’s plenty more adventurers in the tavern! I do want to avoid it becoming a full-on puzzle game, that’s just not where I see this going. Desktop Dungeons came out recently and completely nailed the bitesize puzzle-RPG. I’d have a hard time as a designer going too close to what they built. My hope is to make something where you have a tossup each turn between the cards you are given and your dungeoneer’s mood & unpredictability, and you just have to make the best of it. ‘Hm, the troll moved in between the hero and the treasure, but maybe I can lay down an alternative route.. oh no he thinks he can fight it, argh!’

EG: Cool. I didn’t intend this to be the Name Drop interview, so after this I’ll stop, but have you played Card Hunter? Is there a plan to work any kind of deck building mechanic into the larger framework of the game, since the whole thing is randomized based on card draws? Collecting items and monsters that would then have a chance to drop in your next run, etc?

Colm: I sure have. It has a lot of similarities to Dungeoneering, including the ‘just like a board game’ look and feel. I have to say when I first played it I was blown away by what they had created. The aesthetic, the throwbacks to D&D like their adventure module faux-booklets, the game itself. This was right about when I was planning Dungeoneering and I remember thinking “I’ll never be able to make something as amazing as this.” Then I had a look at their team page which is full to the brim with super talented people, including Richard Garfield (creator of Magic The Gathering). That made me feel a lot better! As for deck building, it is very tempting to include as I love card games that let you change your deck (I even made a drafting game for 1GAM). I don’t think I will make it as integral to the game as they did in Card Hunter, but I think a little bit of deck manipulation will be interesting. Say you improve your Guild to have a shrine to the goddess of luck - maybe that adds a ‘lucky escape’ card to your HOPE deck which might get you out of a tight spot; a small bonus rather than a game changer.

You guys have been great. Try the veal!

EG: Stepping away from the design for a moment, how have you found the process of actually making the game to be so far? I know you’ve got a devlog thread up on TIGsource where people have been giving you feedback; are you pleased with where you are at this point?

Colm: One thing I’ve found frustrating is my own slow pace of development. Around the middle of October when I decided to push on and make this a real, sellable game I thought to myself I might be able to get it finished by the end of December. I set a first milestone of the end of November for an alpha version that was rough but fun (say the kind of thing that would be played on Kongregate or Newgrounds). And here I am in February and I still haven’t got the alpha to that state! It really comes down to this being a spare-time project - I have a full time software engineering job. Progress is steady, but slow, and it makes it difficult for me to predict when I’ll have certain things ready..

On the other hand what has worked really well for me is getting people engaged with the game from the very beginning of development. Right at the start of October I wrote up a marketing guide for gamedevs that I then proceeded to follow pretty religiously as I worked on Dungeoneering. The key is to put yourself out there and start sharing what you are making - even when it’s embarrassingly bare-bones. This is where you get to leverage one of the best things about being a tiny ‘indie’ dev - no one has to vet what you can or can’t say! There’s no PR team turning what should be excitement (early, barely working builds & screenshots) into boring corporatespeak press releases. Secondly you can start getting early validation of your concept & idea, and even feedback on your playable version (bugs and all), which is invaluable. The main places I’ve been active are forums like TIGSource (including that devlog thread which I’ve updated every time I add to the alpha), Twitter (especially #screenshotsaturday), Reddit, Google+, and my own gamedev blog.

EG: Yeah, it’s a tough thing to put something early out into the world, but the benefits seem to be substantial when an idea catches on. How has the community response and feedback been for the game so far? Do people seem excited about the concept, even in its early stages? If you’re comfortable talking about it, have you received any design feedback that’s made you change or reconsider directions you were planning to head next with it?

Colm: I’m constantly on the lookout for design ideas and direction. I solicit a lot of feedback online, but I also attend local gamedev meetups here in Dublin almost every month - sometimes talking to people about what THEY are working on gets me thinking about similar problems in Dungeoneering. Game design is a hard thing to force, though. I take ideas & suggestions on board but generally don’t act on them straight away. These things need to rest in the back of my brain for a while, simmering away, before something emerges. Sometimes I get a suggestion so perfect I just jam it straight into the game though - a couple of weeks ago someone in Reddit’s feedback friday thread suggested making ‘your hapless adventurer’ react if you click him, or if you idle for too long, which was a genius idea to give him more character. The next day it was in the alpha!

I’m incredibly happy with the reaction I’ve received from the community. Many people have praised the concept, and many more the hand-drawn aesthetic and boardgamey feel. It’s one of the most encouraging things to me, when a stranger reacts positively to something you have created. I started offering pre-order purchases at the end of October for $5, when the game looked like this and had far less functionality than it does now, and even then a handful of people decided to support the game. To me that is amazing - I thought before I would get a single pre-order I would have to freeze the playable alpha and start sharing videos of progress rather than the playable version. I thought people would need the ‘early access’ incentive (pre-ordering would let them play the latest beta that only buyers had access to). But no, it seems that gamers really like supporting an interesting idea even when they really get little out of it. As one buyer put it (I email everyone to say thanks for pre-ordering) - it’s a ‘financial +1’ of support.

EG: That’s a good way to put it, and I think Kickstarter (which often doesn’t even provide an alpha to play with at the time of “purchase”) works off the same basic emotional feedback - people like to feel personally involved in the creation of things they want to see happen, even if it’s only through patronage. It can help grow a player base, funding, and a community all at the same time, which is a remarkable feat.

 
Don't feel bad, little guy. She intimidates me too.

EG: So what’s next? Is there a set of features you’re eager to get in for your next milestone? Are you thinking of growing the team, or do you expect it to just stay between you and Fred? Since word of mouth is already positive and starting to grow, any expectations on release - timeline or platforms?

Colm: I don’t plan on getting more people involved in creating the game, apart from perhaps for the music, as I’m confident we can get everything else done by ourselves. I want to focus on getting the alpha to a ‘fun but rough’ state next, then do some more marketing material like a gameplay trailer. From there I feel I could easily get through the Steam Greenlight process at the rate they are currently accepting games, but I have also considered going for crowdfunding to get an actual development budget (Greenlight + crowdfunding send quite a bit of traffic from one to the other if run at the same time). I’m from Ireland so unfortunately Kickstarter is still unavailable to me, and when I look at great games on Indiegogo the amounts they raise are just a fraction of their equivalent on Kickstarter, which puts me off it. I may end up just pushing onwards with my own trickle of pre-orders instead.

As for a release date I think mid-2014 is achievable, but it’s very hard to predict at this stage. A lot will depend on how much I want to include in the game, which itself may be guided by interest levels and expectations. Sorry for the fuzzy non-answer there! My primary launch platforms are as a downloadable game for PC and Mac (and hopefully Linux), with a freely playable web demo (like the current alpha). If the game is vaguely successful, then I want to publish it for iOS & Android tablets too - I feel the game will work very nicely on tablets, from its turn-based nature to the repeatable short gameplay loop (dungeon runs).

EG: Makes sense. Can I press you on what goes into the ‘fun but rough’ alpha? Will we start to see the ‘guild’ parts of the game working their way in, or is that still down the road? Further out, any thoughts about multiplayer, either real-time or asynchronous? Competing guilds, that kind of thing?

Colm: Absolutely. So I’m trying to nail the basic gameplay loop first: the dungeon exploration side of the game. I’m putting off all work on the Guild side til later so I can focus on making this part of the game fun by itself. Then I believe when I add in the more strategic long-term stuff it will be a multiplier on an already fun game. That’s the theory at least! So on my immediate todo list I want to add a win condition to dungeon runs (initially this will be ‘find and defeat the boss monster X’), I want to add an incentive to progression (to prevent simply farming the low level monsters), then I want to improve the dungeoneer’s AI (it’s incredibly basic and often frustrating right now), and finally I want to add new types of card to expand on the gameplay slightly (for example adding events like secret doors to the SEEK deck or pit traps to the DREAD deck). I feel once I get those things in I may be at my fuzzily-defined ‘rough but fun’ marker.

As for multiplayer, nope, I have no plans for any multiplayer at this stage. As a one-man-band I know to keep my scope incredibly tight to be able to finish the game so that’s definitely out. There can always be expansions or sequels, however!

EG: Always good to have a next thing to look forward to. Anything you’d like to put in before we wrap up? The floor’s yours, say whatever you want.

Colm: I guess I’ll close with a few links for anyone who’s interested in following Guild of Dungeoneering’s progress: there’s this regularly updated development log, a Facebook page, and my Twitter account @gambrinous. Oh and of course anyone who wants to try the playable alpha or pre-order the game can do so right here. Thanks for the chat - this was fun!

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Thanks very much to Colm Larkin for taking the time to so thoroughly answer my questions. If Guild of Dungeoneering sounds like your thing, follow the above links to learn more and consider showing your support!

Coming Real Soon: Retrobooster

Back in November of 2012 I got an e-mail from Terry Welsh, which is a name you might not know but you might know his work - Terry created Really Slick Screensavers, an open-source collection of very fancy, highly customizable screensavers. (They were - are - pretty cool and impressive; check out PC World's review here.) Terry did not e-mail me about his screensavers, however; he wanted to announce that he had, several months prior, left his employment at NASA to work full-time as an indie game developer on a project he'd seen about 2/3 of the way to completion and wanted to push hard to the end of.

What indie game does someone leave NASA to finish? As it turns out, a very pretty, tough-as-nails, physics driven, "2.5D survival shooter and cave-flyer, focusing on skill-based flying and enemy blasting". Terry e-mailed me again a couple weeks ago to let me know that his project was complete, and on February 21st, the world will get to play Retrobooster.

I got to do so a little bit early.

While this is not a review (I haven't finished the game and I'm not even really sure I can finish it), since Terry was kind enough to provide me with a copy I want to share my thoughts about the several hours I've spent exploding things and having myself exploded in zero-g.

As is probably clear from the trailer, Retrobooster is in many ways a very pretty game. Lighting and particle effects abound, and while the game controls entirely on a 2D plane, background and foreground details are used to provide a consistently impressive sense of depth (as well as to bring obstacles into and out of the playing field). I want to give credit for how much that depth does to lend solidity to the environment; when an enemy explodes and the light reflects not just on you and the ground, but also the rocks behind you and the ones behind those, fading back into space, it looks superb.

On the whole I would say that the environment design is more impressive than the "character" design - the player and enemy ships are largely functional, simple models, and the humans you rescue basically tiny stick figures - but nothing in the game is unattractive. Perhaps most importantly, when the action gets frantic (which is often), it looks great without dropping a frame.

Do not get caught in those gears.

What's it actually like to play? ...Complex. More than you might expect for what looks at first like a pretty simple shooter, and maybe even a little too complex, though it's certainly not so obtuse as to be inaccessible. Terry's put the game's instructions up here, and you can see at a glance that there aren't a ton of controls. Inputs for turning and firing forward and backward thrusters, shooting two weapon types, and switching between the weapons in those groups; that's it. Actually using them is where things get tricky.

Retrobooster is a heavily physics driven game. Which is great in a lot of ways, and should appeal to people who take umbrage when a space shooter doesn't account for inertia and let you spin-and-fire like a Viper from Battlestar Galactica. Well, you can totally do that here, and it feels great... until you misread the tight quarters you're in and smash into a wall again. Or you don't take into account the propulsion from firing your weapons, and end up backing yourself into a crusher machine. Or you don't go through a gate fast enough. Or you take a turn a little too wide. Or a gravity machine sucks you in and you fumble the controls trying to shoot it and reverse at the same time. Or, or, or.... Now, to be clear, all of those things are my fault! The game didn't cheat me, I screwed up. But just the act of moving around in Retrobooster is taxing, and the environment (enemies and landscape alike) is highly lethal. It can be stressful, especially when a timing-based puzzle makes you pull off several complicated moves in rapid succession.

The good news about that - and the reason I'm torn about whether to call it "too complex" - is that when you pull it off correctly, it feels great. This is a game that invites mastery, and tough-but-fair games are enjoying a lot of popularity right now. It seems likely that folks who love to dive deep into Spelunky or Rogue Legacy or Risk of Rain will latch on to the challenge of Retrobooster as a welcome test of skill. For me, I've found a few of the enemy encounters and puzzles to be more frustrating than fun... but none so much that I haven't pressed through them yet, and they aren't outweighing the rest of my enjoyment. I'm only a few hours in, though, so I expect it only gets harder from here.

Stuff blowin' up real pretty.

The challenge of mastering its systems notwithstanding, there's a lot to recommend Retrobooster as an entry in the action/puzzle shooter category. Weapon and enemy variety both feel good, and I have yet to get bored with the combat encounters at all. Rescuing humans (done via a cautious landing procedure that blends Choplifter and Lunar Lander) is a fun side activity that rewards you with much needed ship repairs and powerups. Levels range from tight action-filled corridors to expansive mazes scattered with puzzles, traps and one-way gates. The story isn't terribly compelling yet, but I'm still early in the game and I don't need much of an excuse to blow up alien robots. On the whole, this would be an impressive effort even if it weren't just made by one person, so the fact that it was is remarkable. I'm having a good time with it.

If the above sounds appealing, a demo for Windows and Linux is available here. The game's price upon release later this month will be $18, which I think is fair, though I have to admit I'm a little afraid it won't sell very well at that price. (There's a separate conversation to have about someone being able to work on a game for years, quit their job to finish it, release a highly polished product and have an $18 price raise eyebrows, but not in this post.) Pre-ordering now, however, is only $12, and it's hard not to recommend it for that amount if you enjoy the demo and want more of it. Thanks to Terry both for letting me know about the project a year ago and keeping me posted on its progress. Congratulations on finishing it up and getting it out into the world. Well done.

Friday Night Bytes - Web of Death

No, there isn't actually a game called Web of Death. Well, actually, there might be. Somebody Google that. If there is, that isn't what I'm writing about tonight. But I played a couple of web-based games this week that I found interesting enough to write about, and both feature death quite heavily, so here we are.

In the one, which actually IS called Dojo of Death, you will kill many, many enemies. In the other, Titan Souls, you yourself will meet your maker many, many times. One is about empowerment; the other, weakness. In one you charge towards inevitable failure; in the other you fail repeatedly hoping to succeed.

Okay, you get the point. Let's talk about some free games.

Released on Kongregate at the very tail end of last year (and recently covered by RockPaperShotgun, which is where I heard about it), Dojo of Death is a little bit like what you might get if Fruit Ninja were a top-down action game and all the fruits were people. Bad people who want to cut you. Using the mouse to run around the game's single room, every click sends you flying in the direction of the cursor, sword outstretched. Anything in your way is going to die, immediately. While attacking, you are an unstoppable force, and the satisfaction of slicing through an opponent (or a whole row of them) is considerable.

The counter to this, predictably, is that while you are not attacking, you are completely vulnerable, and a single strike will take you down. Archers will fire arrows and enemy swordsmen will charge attacks to fling themselves at you hoping to get in a killing blow. If you manage to strike them first, no harm done. But as time goes on, an endless stream of enemies piles into the arena, making it ever more difficult to keep track of where the attacks are coming from.

That archer's about to have a bad day.

It's a simple game, and there probably isn't enough depth here to claim that it pushes you towards any particular mastery. Hit everything on the screen before it hits you, until part of it manages to hit you. That's it. But it is consistently fun to watch the action ramp up on every round, feeling a little more pleased with yourself every time you split an arrow in half or cut down a row of three ninja at once who were about to slice into you. As the bodies of your enemies carpet the floor, the action becomes harder and harder to follow, and eventually you are overwhelmed. Once you are, a retry is just a click away. Keep this one in your bookmarks; you'll want to come back to it.

This is the best I've done. How long will you last?

On the completely opposite end of the spectrum, Titan Souls is a one-and-done affair - a game I can't imagine I'll have any interest in going back to, but one I'm glad I tackled. This one came to me from Giant Bomb's "Worth Playing" videos (thank you, Mr. Klepek). Patrick was a bit stymied by it, but it looked compelling enough to try, and it hooked me until I'd finished it.

Titan Souls was an entry in Ludum Dare 28, themed "You Only Get One." It's an interesting play on that theme, because you don't only get one life in Titan Souls. What you get one of is everything else. Your hero stands alone, with four inert structures laid out North, South, East and West. Four platforms, four titans. Where you start is up to you.

Each direction will eventually lead you to a single titan. Each titan can be destroyed with a single hit, if you manage to target their weak spot to do so. You have a single arrow with which to hit them - once fired, it must be picked up (or summoned back to you, a slow process that leaves you vulnerable while you do it). A single hit is all it takes to kill you, sending you back to the stone garden where you began. You Only Get One.

I'll save you some time. North isn't unlocked yet. Don't go North.

A little bit Dark Souls, a little bit Shadow of the Colossus, Titan Souls is a game of iteration. The first time you meet a titan you will probably die, and quickly. The second time you will learn something about its pattern. By the third or fourth time, you'll be ready to make attempts on its life. Eventually, you will bring it down and move on to the next.

Progress is checkpointed after each titan falls, and none of them are far away (though one is stuck behind an annoying miniature maze), so repeat encounters are quick to engage in and frustration is at least somewhat minimized. The game is shorter than I expected - even with the iteration built in, it's maybe a half hour affair - but the process of figuring out each titan's weakness and exploiting it was a rewarding one. The ending will either give you a chuckle or aggravate you, I can't really predict which. I was in the former group, though. Go find out which you are.

Mr. Brain-in-a-Jar here killed me a LOT.

So there you go - two free webgames for your Friday evening, one to experience and walk away from, one to keep coming back to. I hope either or both will be to your liking. Me, I'm headed back to the Dojo of Death to see if I can beat my high score. Those evil ninja aren't gonna cut themselves.

Early December Bargain Round-Up

Hi! Long time no see. Sorry about that. Work and theatre kept me away from gaming for several months.

The good news is, I got to come back to an absolute ton of great, cheap gaming, some of which I would now like to share with you. Obviously, Steam will run its official winter sale towards the end of the month, and all sorts of discounts will be available even on the AAA heavy hitters, but in the meantime, all of the following are excellent games that you can buy for just a few bucks as gifts to a friend, a loved one, or yourself, just in time for the holdays. Hooray for thrifty entertainment!

Savant: Ascent

This one was a total surprise that landed in my inbox last week. D-Pad Studio (makers of the fantastic-looking but sadly-not-yet-out Owlboy) have put together a game as a celebration of their friend and musician Savant, in which - as the titual character - you climb up the side of a perilous tower, besieged by enemies from all sides. It plays out as a bullet hell shooter, but with more freedom of fire and less freedom of movement than those games usually allow - Savant has only limited ability to dodge incoming fire, but can aim in a full 360 degree arc to take on his foes.

One of the most striking things about Owlboy is its retro-leaning but extremely attractive visual style, and D-Pad Studio has been no slouch in that department here, either. Savant: Ascent is challenging, fast-pased, excellent looking with great music, and $2. Two dollars! I was given a key for this by the developers but absolutely would've bought it myself. Get it on Steam, or on iPhone / Android if you want to play it on the go.

SteamWorld: Dig

Originally a 3DS downloadable title, SteamWorld: Dig is what you might get if you crossed Metroid with Dig Dug, and then again with Spelunky. A steampunk robot cowboy must dig deep beneath a Wild West town to find buried treasure and unlock the mysterious secrets of his past. If that combined with the trailer doesn't sell you, this one probably isn't for you, but I had a great time with it. On Steam for $8.

Tiny Barbarian DX

Long ago, I wrote about the original Tiny Barbarian, which was a lovely freeware action platformer re-telling the classic Robert E Howard-penned Conan story, The Frost Giant's Daughter. Then Michael Stearns Kickstarted a sequel, Tiny Barbarian DX, and I interviewed him about it. That sequel is now available on Steam for $6, and I have played it, and it is delightful. Controller-smashingly difficult in the final level, but delightful nevertheless. Highly recommended.

Eldritch

Fans of H.P. Lovecraft take note - this is the best Lovecraftian, randomized, first person stealth-based dungeon crawler I know of. ...It is also the only one, but don't let that dissuade you. Sporting some very low-fi, almost Minecraft-esque graphics, Eldritch still manages to generate superb atmosphere via some excellent audio and good creepy level & enemy design. Different every time you play but also less punishing than many other roguelikes, there's a whole lot to like here. Take note, though: while the trailer emphasizes action, you'll be sneaking around as much as you'll be stabbing and shooting if you want to survive.

The price is a little higher than some of the other stuff on this list, but is still just $15 on Steam, and some holiday-themed DLC appears to be on the way. Oh, and a warning: not all the enemies in Eldritch can be killed, and the ones you do kill, if you loot them, will come back. Not right away. But they will.

Risk of Rain

Unlike Eldritch, this one is insanely punishing. Also probably the loosest adherent to the "roguelike" definition, but it's still got the randomly generated levels, items and enemies, and the permadeath, which you will be experiencing a lot. Up to 3 others can join you for this, and you may need the help. Multiple character classes, unlocked by making progress through a list of objectives, all have different skills to work with, lending considerable variety to your approach, but the longer you survive the harder the game gets. The aesthetics of this one may not be for everyone, but I liked it a lot. Also on Steam, Risk of Rain will run you $10.

Nuclear Throne

Last roguelike on the list, promise! A top-down shooter. By Vlambeer, the guys who made Super Crate Box and Ridiculous Fishing, both of which are excellent. This one's in Steam Early Access, but it's quite playable and enjoyable in its current state for $13. Fast, silly, and challenging. Tara Long's interview in the video above (back when the game was called Wasteland Kings) does a good job of showing it off.

Hexcells

I see my descriptions are getting shorter as I go, but Hexcells deserves more than a couple lines of text. Puzzle games don't always click with me, but I've always had a soft spot for Picross in its many incarnations. Like the satisfaction one gets from solving a complex Sudoku puzzle, the high of filling in the last box of a Picross puzzle never gets old.

Basically a combination of Picross and Minesweeper, Hexcells layers exceptional aesthetic design on top of some great puzzle design that relies on logic far more than on guessing. With plenty of puzzles to solve and no real punishment for failing and trying again, Hexcells would be worth it at $10 or $15, but the game only costs $3. Three dollars! This one isn't on Steam, but it's totally worth it to go get it directly from the developer. Thanks to RockPaperShotgun for pointing me towards this one - without them I totally would have missed it.

Starbound

This one, I haven't had much time with, as the beta just started this week, but I know many people have been looking forward to it. If Terraria was Minecraft in 2D, Starbound is essentially Terraria in space. Explore a hostile, randomized planet, scrabble to build yourself a foothold, stock your spaceship, and take off to explore new planets when you're done with that one. I've only spent a couple hours in this but I can tell you that the look and feel are both great. Like a couple others on the list it's in early access, which means frequent patches and some missing content, but $15 gets you in the door if you're curious. Multiplayer is a big focus in this one, too, so feel free to bring a friend. It's dangerous to go alone.

He's probably friendly! (He's probably not friendly.)

So there you go. 8 exciting, inexpensive gaming options to help get you and your friends & loved ones through December and into the new year. Who needs a PS4 or an XBox One?

Teslagrad is Creative, Infuriating, Maybe Great

I love finding a new gameplay mechanic that makes me think "Yes! Why aren't more games trying this?", and this week I was lucky enough to find one of those.

I received an e-mail on Monday from Eduardo of Rain Games, an indie group from Norway that makes games that are "small, smart, simple and elegantly designed." Eduardo's message entreated me to take a look at their first offering, Teslagrad, currently up for voting on Steam Greenlight. After checking it out and finding the video enticing, I asked him whether a demo was available, and he was kind enough to provide me with an extended one. Before I talk about it, though, take a look at what got me excited in the first place.

For starters, the game is aesthetically sumptuous. The visuals are superb, evoking memories of the first time I saw Braid while easily establishing their own strong identity. The animation is clean and crisp, with lots of impressive background details, layers of parallax scrolling, etc. The trailer is a pleasure to look at, and the demo lived up to that promise nicely. Sadly the demo did not include any of the music present in the trailer, but the sound effects were well done and I expect the music will come together nicely in time for release.

As I'm sure you gathered from the video, the gameplay hook here is magentism. As described by Rain, Teslagrad is "a 2D puzzle platformer with action elements, where magnetism and other electromagnetic powers are the key to go throughout the game, and thereby discover the secrets kept in the long abandoned Tesla Tower." You can read the feature set on their Greenlight page, but it's clear that their goal is to create a seamless, challenging action-puzzle experience that engrosses the player through great looks and solid gameplay.

Does it work? ...yes and no. A few rough spots do stand out. First off, for me, I'm not sure that their "visual storytelling" is going to be sufficient to pull me through their entire game. They somewhat cheekily tout this as a feature, saying they know we're all "tired of all those words in your video games," but what's here kind of comes across as their being uninterested in telling a compelling story (or not having the resources to, which I would understand), rather than just wanting to keep it in the background. Atmospheric flavor text like "ancient Teslamancer technology" is cool and all, but aside from the game's initial motivation of "run from the people trying to kill you", I never got a sense for why I was supposed to care about this character, or how the world he inhabits works. Lots of stuff wants him dead, I'm clear on that, but that's really all they give you. Maybe that's all some folks will need, but I had lots of questions and got very few answers.

The controls, pretty critical for a platform game, could be tighter. They aren't badly designed, but proper gamepad support would go a long way towards making this a really enjoyable experience. After fiddling with the keyboard controls for awhile I ended up using Pinnacle to make a 360 controller profile, and that made things better, but still not as precise as I would have liked. Some of the puzzles, even the early ones, require tight enough timing that repeatedly failing due to what feels like imprecise input is extremely frustrating. Several sections had me re-doing even relatively simple feats of platforming 4 or 5 times because my character just wouldn't do what I wanted, when I wanted him to.

Finally, the physics engine doesn't seem like it can always keep up with the puzzle design. There was one room where magnetizing a block was supposed to push it through a short tunnel into a platform that it would raise off the ground so I could progress, and the first few times I went in there, it just didn't work. The block went down the tunnel, but maybe it didn't get close enough to the platform. Regardless, eventually I re-entered the room (each room resets when you leave), did the same steps, and that time it worked. Random reactions from games can be great, but not when they dictate your success or failure in a puzzle situation.

I'm just gonna emphasize again that this game is really gorgeous.

Despite that list of concerns, though, I want to make it clear that I come away from my time with Teslagrad really intrigued by what Rain Games has built, and hopeful that they can tighten it up and release a product that plays as nicely as it looks. I think there's reason for optimism. The gameplay premise of physics-driven magnetism as a puzzle mechanic is very clever, and even early in the game it's clear that there's a lot of promise in it. It's extremely satisfying to watch objects in the game world react to your magnetizing them, and I found myself playing with things just to see how they'd behave, which is a good sign. I'm not sure it applies terribly well to combat - like with Portal, the vast majority of gameplay is about avoiding enemies, not confronting them, and the first boss is fun while you learn his pattern, but then a bit frustrating to actually fight. But I'm willing to give the game more time to see what else it has for me, and I applaud Rain for bringing something that feels different and interesting to the somewhat crowded "2D puzzle platformer" space.

It's also clear, early on in the game, that the map is going to open itself up to the player in "Metroidvania" fashion, teasing you with areas you can't access until you have the right items or abilities. That's not uncommon for a 2D side scrolling platformer, obviously, but it is somewhat uncommon for a game with such a focus on puzzle rooms, and I find the blend refreshing.

The bottom line for me is this: Teslagrad left me wanting more, and that's the most important thing that a taste of a game can do. Again, the game is currently on Steam Greenlight, so if this all sounds interesting to you, head on over there and give them a vote so that hopefully they can end up on the service. It's also being tracked on Desura, so once they hit release I assume you'll be able to pick it up there as well.

I'm definitely going to keep an eye on this one. There's a lot of potential here, and I'd love to see it realized.

Tales of PAX East: Delver's Drop

I went to PAX East a week ago, and came back with all sorts of games I want to write about, but also came back sick and tired. So dragging myself to and from work all week was about all I could manage, and I took this last weekend to recover. (And to beat Bioshock Infinite. You really, really need to play Bioshock Infinite.) Having gotten back to a place of feeling relatively human, there are some things I think you might enjoy, if your tastes run similar to mine.

The first of these, and the most exciting thing that I personally played on the show floor, is Delver's Drop.

The product of a Kickstarter project I was proud to help fund, Delver's Drop has been described by its creators (a small and ambitious team calling themselves Pixelscopic) as "a sexy HD Zelda roguelike", which is (1) just about the best 5-word pitch for a game I've ever heard, and (2) pretty much entirely accurate, based on my time with the game at PAX.

What does it mean? Well, in their own words,

Delver's Drop is a 2D Action RPG with fluid physics-based movement, snappy combat, shifting dungeons, and a rogue's gallery of individually leveled character classes. With an emphasis on mystery and dynamic gameplay experiences, the game features randomization for infinite replay, enigmatic puzzle permutations to unravel, multiple narrative paths, customizable character growth, and layers of secrets to unearth.

I spent probably 30 - 40 minutes with the game over the course of three days (I kept going back, to the point where the team was pretty familiar with me by the end of the weekend), and as one of the many people who believe that The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is one of the finest games ever made, I'm happy to report that Pixelscopic clearly thinks so, too, and they've built a game that wears that opinion proudly on its sleeve.

Everything about Delver's Drop looks and feels like a validation of the assumptions we might have made about the future of gaming back in 1992, based on what we were playing on the SNES. The combat, the items, the puzzles, the movement and physics... they all feel deliciously familiar, but modernized and made incredibly pretty. Before I talk about what I played, just take a look at this thing in motion.

Look at the colored lighting bouncing off of every surface, and the shadows being tossed around by that lighting, and the parallax that's being used on the walls to give the illusion of depth as Link (he's not Link, but I'm just going to call him Link) moves around the room. Look at the sliding block puzzles, and the bombs being tossed and the arrows being fired, and the rupees (they're not rupees, but--) spilling out of crates and jars. Look at the sheer number of enemies being rendered and how smoothly it all moves. Look at the not-at-all-subtle Triforce reference in the logo! (That last part doesn't matter for the gameplay, but I'm not ashamed to say it made me happy.)

Different gameplay modes are promised, one a story-driven campaign and the other likely more of a "challenge mode" where players compete to dive as deep as they can into a (presumably) endless dungeon. Something like the latter was on display at PAX, with 60 randomized floors on offer. I managed to make it 21 rooms down, only two shy of the PAX East High Score of 23. The final game will have multiple character classes, a bevy of items and upgrades to find or purchase, and all sorts of other fancy stuff, but really, it all boils down to "Sexy HD Zelda Roguelike," and my answer to that is, "yes."

It's still in an early state, and of course things are being tweaked. The hit detection on some things is a little off, and the bottomless pits are a little too eager to suck Link into an instant, demoralizing death. The timing on bombs might be changed. Obviously they've got lots more content to build. But I didn't want to stop playing what they already have - navigating the environment and swinging the sword into enemies feels great, the level and enemy designs are fun and clever, the roguelike-inspired tension of permadeath is palpable, and the whole thing just looks stupendously attractive.

My hope is to get someone from Pixelscopic on Skype for an interview in the near future, and if that happens I'll certainly link it here. In the meantime, if you have any love for the Zelda series, action RPG's, roguelikes, 16-bit game design, or a combination of the preceding, keep your eyes peeled for Delver's Drop. It's slated to come out late this year for PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and OUYA (vote for it on Greenlight right here so it'll end up on Steam), so you're pretty much guaranteed to have something that will play it. For my money, if re-imagining SNES classics in HD is going to be Pixelscopic's bag, a proper 2D Super Metroid-style game next sure wouldn't go amiss.

Wherein Zelda Saves Link For a Change

Thanks to Owen Good over at Kotaku for this one. While I've been a fan of the Legend of Zelda series almost my entire life, there's no question that most of the series has been very heavily focused on male power fantasy. Beat the evil guy, save the helpless girl. Zelda's gotten some good moments in the series proper, but never an unambiguously powerful role, and certainly never her own game. (For more on this, see the recent and very good Tropes vs Women in Video Games video series.)

So somebody fixed it. Zelda Starring Zelda is a patch for the original NES Legend of Zelda that simply swaps the roles; you'll play as Zelda now, saving Link. It's a small thing, just a sprite swap and some modified text, but it was remarkable to me how much this video made me think, "Why the hell hasn't Nintendo done this by now?" See if you agree.

Says Kenna, the author of the patch:

Earlier this week, I read about that awesome dad who edited Donkey Kong to let his daughter play as the Princess. I wished I had someone who could have done that for me. Then I remembered. I'm an adult now. If he could work it out, I could too.

...For me, I played my first Zelda game when I was pretty young, and at the time, I thought the game did star Princess Zelda. I figured I'd get to play as a magical battle princess that saved her kingdom. The game was fun, but I was bummed out that I never got to play as Zelda. But like I said, I'm an adult now. There's no one to stop me from eating candy before bed and there's nothing standing in the way of me creating the games I want to play.

Hear, hear. She talks more about the technical details of making the patch in the post, and it's a good read.

In terms of playing the modified game, setting it up seems fairly trivial. It does require finding yourself a ROM of the original NES Legend of Zelda, which for copyright reasons I can't provide for you, but a little searching will help you out there if you want to try this out. Kenna links you to a good emulator, and the patch, and the instructions are simple.

It's about time.

This is really cool. I'm glad somebody did it, and I'm absolutely going to try it out. It's been awhile since I played the original Legend of Zelda and this is a great reason to go back.

Proteus is Painfully Lovely.

I wrote about Proteus about a year ago, back when you could only buy it as a beta product directly from its website, but haven't said anything about it since it got released as a finished game this January.

A lot of stuff has been added to the game since I wrote about it - it has a cycle of seasons now, and many more objects and creatures to interact with, and a definitive ending. I've played through it several times, and just finished another playthrough tonight, and felt compelled to post the following to Twitter.

"Proteus is such a special and unique experience. For me, it's always about finding the house."

"On every island, in every season, I have to find that house."

"And then I cling to it until the game takes me away."

That might not make sense to you if you didn't read my previous article and/or don't know what Proteus is (in which case, you know, go fix that), but that's pretty much how I feel about it as a final product. It's lovely, people should play it, and I'm really glad I have it on my laptop to make me feel this way whenever I want / need to.

But that's what it's come to be about for me. Maybe for you it'll be about something totally different. It's on Steam now, for $10, and it has my strong recommendation.

Friday Night Bytes: The Button Affair

It just so happens, it's Friday again, and I played another sweet free game that I think you should check out. Serendipitous! And so Friday Night Bytes returns.

I have a fascination with the "runner" genre. I've written about it before with games like Solipskier, how a game that allows me to feel fast and graceful almost always captures my imagination. Tonight's game doesn't nail quite everything about that, but it gets enough right that I still strongly recommend you check it out.

"The Button Affair is the story of Enzo Gabriel. His quest. To steal the priceless Button Jewel from the infinitely wealthy business tycoon Victor Meirelles." The product of The Button Experiment (4 fine folks you can read about right here, if you like), The Button Affair is an automatic runner in the style of Canabalt or Solipskier, in that you're stuck constantly moving one direction and the gameplay primarily consists of avoiding obstacles. It is not, however, "endless", comprised of three distinct and fairly short levels. BIT.TRIP Runner might be the better parallel, actually, though there's no rhythm component to the gameplay here.

Oh, those look bad for your health.

The game's strongest element is its style, without question. Lighthearted and self-aware, it hearkens to all sorts of pleasant influences from across entertainment media: James Bond, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Prince of Persia, Flashback, Mad Men. It's self-assured and playful, knowing just what it wants to be and communicating it to the player extremely well. Video is going to convey this better than I can in words:

So, yeah. It looks and sounds great, and you should download it for that reason alone.

Whether The Button Affair's gameplay holds up to its aesthetic is going to depend strongly on how well you tolerate trial and error. Controls are simple and tight - the arrow keys are all you need - so there's no problem there, and I rarely had any issues with the game being "unfair" in terms of not respecting my input. The level design, though, essentially boils down to pattern memorization. Jump, roll, roll, jump, jump, roll. The quicker you can do it, the higher your score will be, but you'll never see a Game Over screen here; failure leads to a death animation and a return to the most recent checkpoint, and you can repeat that as many times as you need to.

A couple of clever variations are scattered throughout - each checkpoint has a quick code entry minigame that determines whether or not the checkpoint will "register", for instance, and one late section introduces a start/stop mechanic in short bursts. But on the whole, we're talking about a very one-note game. It'll probably take you 20 minutes to finish your first time through, and I imagine you can do it in half that once you've practiced, if you want to try for a higer score.

For being as short as it is, though, the game contained a little more frustration than I expected. Obstacles sometimes seem to come out of nowhere, to the point where failure is the only way to learn, and even on repeat trials I found some sections to be maddeningly difficult. Not "cheap", necessarily, but sometimes you can hear the designer laughing at your failure. If that bothers you, be forewarned.

Still, for a free game made by a team of four, I think The Button Affair is pretty great. It's slick and polished, challenging without restricting your progress, and while it doesn't have a lot of tricks up its sleeve, it doesn't overstay its welcome either. So get in there. Get that diamond. Or don't. I'm not giving away the ending.

The Button Affair is a free download for PC and Mac. If you like it, the team asks that you donate to a charity for disabled gamers. That's a pretty stand up thing, in my opinion. Bravo.

Friday Night Bytes: Binary Boy

I don't know if this'll be a regular thing, so maybe I shouldn't kick it off with a column title, but it's a Friday, it's nighttime, and I played a short free game that I want to tell you about. So, Friday Night Bytes. Okay? Okay. Here we go.

I got an e-mail yesterday from Jared Johnson of Data-Fidelity, asking me to check out his new game Binary Boy. I'm glad that I did! It's short, it's fun, and it's got a solid concept with a lot of room for future expansion. Let's start with a trailer.

Jared cites VVVVVV and Proun as his influences, and you might remember that I liked both of those games a lot, so I was excited to dig into Binary Boy and see what he'd taken from them.

The answer is, a surprising amount for such a small game. Like VVVVVV, Binary Boy is a two-state platformer (I think I just made up a term), in that your character controls his horizontal movement and his vertical orientation, but nothing else. You're either pointing up, or you're pointing down. Unlike VVVVVV (but exactly like Proun), you are anchored to a line that traverses the level, along which obstacles attempt to thwart your forward progression. There's no fail state; hitting any obstacle or being pushed off the line bounces you back to a checkpoint, which are placed very generously. Your goal (again, like Proun) is to complete the levels as quickly and gracefully as possible. Jared claims his best time is around six and a half minutes; I managed to do it in something closer to twelve minutes. Regardless, we're not talking about a big time commitment.

Things that impressed me:

• The aesthetic is nice and clean, with some great touches for being an intentionally low-fi project. Little animations abound, and add a lot of character to the world.
• Though resolutely 2D in gameplay (and, I think, technically), it mimics depth nicely, with objects swinging into the foreground and receding into the background.
• Each level feels distinct, with a new trick to learn in each area (with the exception of the final level, which offers a visual change but not a gameplay one).
• I didn't expect the game to have boss battles, but it does, and they're not bad given the limited mechanics at play.
• The generous checkpointing means that failure (almost) never costs you more than a few seconds of gameplay, which makes the trial-and-error nature of some of the sections much more palatable.

Things that made me go "hrm":

• The hit detection seems... off, sometimes. It's not bad, but for a game where essentially the only challenge is "don't get hit by things," it could use some tightening.
• Because the checkpoints re-set you, but not the state of the world, the timing of the puzzle you're about to face doesn't stay static from one attempt to the next. I hit one frustrating section that I was trying to do some fancy flipping to get through, and eventually the timing worked out such that I just walked through it without flipping at all. Maybe that's deliberate, but I doubt it.
• I hit one nasty bug (which I e-mailed Jared about, and to his credit he says he has fixed) where pausing the game removed the boss I was fighting from the game world, rendering the game unbeatable. Short game, so not a deal breaker, but it did happen.
• The very last section of the game (by which I mean literally the last 60 seconds of gameplay, if that) feels frustrating and arbitrary. I e-mailed Jared about that too, and he said he'll take my feedback into account. I should mention here that Jared is very responsive to feedback.

On the whole, I'd like to see a little more done with this concept than is presented here - the levels are so short that just as soon as you've had a chance to say "oh, neat!" it's over and you're on to the next thing. Stuff like working an "attack" into your flip ability and using a rising / falling water level to provide platforming puzzles are really good ideas, but could be built out a lot more. The inspirations here are clear, but the experience is so short that it never quite hits the "oh WOW" moments of VVVVVV.

But this is a free game, and also an early effort from a young and promising designer. If you've got some time and you like trying out new takes on the platforming genre as much as I do, I strongly recommend giving it a look.

Indie Surprise: Teleglitch is Superb.

Thanks to RockPaperShotgun, as usual, for pointing me to something that just eats two hours and I'm left wondering what happened.

Teleglitch is a procedurally generated top-down action game in the vein of Doom, if Doom were also a roguelike but roguelikes weren't turn based. Here, why don't I just let them describe it.

The game takes place in procedurally generated military research & training complex that has a different map every time you play. Our mission is to give players like you a chance to walk in the dark corridors, gripping their gun and few last rounds of ammunition. To play with finger on the trigger, high on adrenaline. We want to give you the paranoid, sweaty, and bloody hard kind of fun.

It's admittedly similar to some other games I've played - it's unsurprisingly a little bit like the Doom Roguelike (which is excellent), if that were realtime. It's also a little bit like the R.I.P. series, if that were procedural and ammo was more sparse. It's a mashup of a lot of good stuff, basically, and I became immediately entranced with it. Here are a few things it does that I think are notable.

• The claustrophia is superb, using a lighting engine that reminds me of Nox, and that's high praise.
• There's no pausing for inventory management (or crafting), you have to do it all in realtime, but the interface for it is intuitive and fast.
• There's a surprising amount of lore to dig into, with a Mass Effect-style codex that fills up as you discover things. There's a lot to discover.
• The crafting is simple enough that it didn't deter me from using it on the fly - enter the crafting menu and it just shows you everything you can make with what you have. There's a lot to make.
• Combat is slightly random, but not to the point of feeling like you have no control. Sometimes a lucky shot will take down a monster in one hit. Sometimes it won't. Your guns don't aim as precisely as you'll want. You're almost always out of ammo. It's hard. Success feels good.

Here's how the game looks (if you're sick of pixel art, this may turn you off, but I'm loving it):

The free demo (Windows) contains more than enough gameplay to tell you whether you want to play more, so please, download it and give it a try. I was very pleasantly surprised.

Mini Muscle Man: Michael Stearns & Tiny Barbarian

As mentioned a week ago, Tiny Barbarian DX - the sequel to the absolutely lovely Tiny Barbarian - is up and running as a Kickstarter campaign, hoping to garner enough support to make it to release. As a long-time fan of the diminutive warrior, I got in touch with Michael Stearns of StarQuail games to talk a bit about the making and history of his once-freeware, now-hopefully-profitable franchise.

As a reminder, if you haven't played the original Tiny Barbarian, you still can, for free, and you should, because it's grand.

EG: Alright, let’s start with the basics. Who is Michael Stearns? What is StarQuail Games? Give me the short history.

MS: Well, I’m just this guy, you know? StarQuail Games is me and my friend Daniel, who started working on games in high school together. We didn’t release anything under that name until several years later, and that was Sky Puppy, which we entered in a contest for one-switch games and placed pretty highly in (8th out of over 100 entries, I think). That was in 2006. The game we’re probably best known for was Astroman in 2010.

So Daniel and I are both from a small town in Washington. In 2010 I also moved to the Seattle area and took some classes in 3D modelling, thinking I’d get a real job making games, but the current state of the industry just really didn’t excite me, and at the same time I was making Tiny Barbarian on my own, so it was hard to stay interested in the direction the classes were pointing me. Shortly I had to find some kind of work again, but eventually the urge to make games took over and I started Tiny Barbarian DX.

EG: What inspired you to make the first Tiny Barbarian? It obviously draws its fictional inspiration pretty directly from The Frost Giant’s Daughter, but were there specific gameplay inspirations?

MS: I certainly have influences, but from a gameplay perspective I don’t think I drew on anything really specific. It’s a pretty simple game, after all, just jumping and swording! There were a couple indie titles that were really inspirational to me, Arvoesine and Star Guard, in terms of creating a shorter type of game. Really I just gave a character a sword and did what felt natural to me, though “what felt natural” certainly comes from playing tough old games like Ninja Gaiden and Megaman.

[Tiny Barbarian] DX on the other hand has some more deliberate stuff that I had always wanted to include, like how enemies can be bashed into one another like so many Treasure games, and I had recently played Shinobi on the 3DS, which is a really brilliant game, and I wanted to incorporate some elements of its flexible combo system. Other stuff, like being able to deflect arrows (and other things), was just something people asked for in the first game, though there are lots of games I love that allow you to do that sort of thing.

EG: The words “Treasure” and “Shinobi 3DS” make me very happy in that answer. (Shinobi 3DS really is pretty great.) Also “swording” is a great word!

How long did Tiny Barbarian take you to put together? Even though as you say, it was pretty short and “simple”, the level of polish was pretty high, for a freeware title.

MS: It took about three months. A lot of the art was done prior to development so I had a little head start there. I had woken up one day and thought “I wonder how small a barbarian I could make” and that’s kind of when the design occured, I ended up making a lot of the enemies at that time as well. At the time I didn’t know if I’d ever actually put those sprites and backgrounds in a game, I was just having fun.

But that’s part of why the polish was so high, having set a kind of target with the graphics, the programming had to match, it wouldn’t be any fun if it looked good but played sloppy. I was a real nuisance at the TIGSource forums around this time, I had a lot of questions. :)

EG: I’m glad you stuck it out. So, Tiny Barbarian DX. You announced back in August that the little guy would be coming back for a sequel. When did you start working on it? Did you always plan to do a second installment, or was that a decision you made after people responded to the first game?

MS: I had done planning for multiple stories right from the beginning, but even after I finished the first game, I wasn’t sure I’d do another, there are so many low-fi games out there, after all, but people had responded so well to it that I decided it was worth exploring some more. I started coding it again in February 2012, and it was really slow going. I had begun “teasing” bits and pieces of the game on my twitter and made a little website for the new game, but I didn’t really do a real announcement until the Kickstarter.

In August I put a video together to show to other developers at a Seattle indie games event, and thinking (vainly) that perhaps some of them would want to watch the clip again from their own homes, I left it public, but someone found it and shared it and the next thing I knew it was all over the place! That and the positive response other developers had really gave me the confidence to work towards the Kickstarter and go full time.

EG: Speaking of multiple stories, the episodic format you’ve picked for Tiny Barbarian DX seems to line up with the pulp nature of the original Conan material, and The Frost Giant’s Daughter translated pretty smoothly into a game. Will you continue to parallel Robert E. Howard’s stories? Will we be seeing Tower of the Elephant in there, or Hour of the Dragon? Or are we off on all new adventures?

MS: They’re kind of a mix of all-new and “heavily inspired by.” Officially that’s as close as I want to be, because I do plan on selling this one, and of course I want to do my own ideas, too. Part of what makes Tower of the Elephant so great is that it establishes a lot about Conan as a character, and the savage vs civilization motif. You aren’t going to see that in Tiny Barbarian, but you will get to climb a tower!

EG: Aren’t the Conan stories public domain? I’d hope you wouldn’t be in trouble using them. Regardless, I’ll take what I can get.

MS: I think they are -- I actually looked into this a while back -- but it seems kind of murky, not many people seem to have a clear idea of what stories are public domain and what aren’t, and as far as what elements have been “trademarked” and are therefore off-limits. Mainly to me, there are still official adaptations (lots of comics, in particular) being made of the Howard material, so I don’t want to get too close to that.

EG: Fair enough. Since Tiny Barbarian came out, the 2D action platformer has come back into vogue a bit - Rayman Legends and New Super Mario Bros U are going to be big holiday games this year, and stuff like Mark of the Ninja and Dust: An Elysian Tale dominated X-Box Live Arcade this year. Is it suddenly a crowded market? Or does the added popularity of the genre help? Tell people what makes Tiny Barbarian DX stand out.

MS: I think it’s a good thing, I don’t think those games are really crowding the market (there are certainly not enough mainstream 2D titles to keep me happy!), and if anything they’re bringing in new players or reminding old ones how fun those sorts of games can be, which is good news for everybody. What I think stands out about Tiny Barbarian most is the setting, being inspired by that kind of pulpy sword and sorcery vibe, and the delivery mechanism with new episodes is also pretty unique, at least in a low-priced game like this. What I worried about initially was really more on the indie side of things, there are so many low-fi platformers out there, that’s something that’s harder to stand out against, but Tiny Barbarian is still pretty visually and conceptually distinct, and the idea of the character seems to have a lot of appeal.

EG: Agreed. It’s weird that there haven’t been more Conan games, honestly; though I know that there have been a few, just not very good ones. Maybe making him very very small is the secret! (Actually, now that I say it, I might not be kidding; Tiny Barbarian being tiny probably allows for a much more epic-feeling scene in a 2D space.)

MS: There’s definitely something to that. I did do some experiments with a larger character and it really was a completely different-looking concept that didn’t really have the same appeal. I’d like to tackle it again sometime, but it wouldn’t really be Tiny Barbarian!

EG: Speaking of price and distribution, 2012 has pretty much been The Year Of Kickstarter. Talk a little bit about your decision to use it for Tiny Barbarian DX, and what the early reaction to that has been (if it’s not too early to say).

MS: I don’t know, we might come back next year and say that 2013 was the Year of Kickstarter! I have certainly been encouraged by the recent successes on it, but I planned to do something with it from the moment I heard about it, which, it turns out, was back in 2009. (Yikes!) It really is an exciting thing, what it means for creators and consumers alike, I’m not going to go on about the potential of a glorious post-kickstarter future, but it’s hard not to be excited about the possibilities.

That said, I mainly went with Kickstarter because it is kind of the thing to do! It’s low-risk for everyone involved, and it’s big enough that just by being on it, you attract people that you wouldn’t normally have -- a lot of my backers have come from people who browsed to it on Kickstarter or saw it under staff picks, more than those who came from any other individual referral so far.

Early reaction was fantastic, and I’m still getting over how it did right out of the gate. People really do seem excited about it, and I’ve been blown away by the backers from outside the US -- Tiny Barbarian has players all over the world! That said, it hasn’t been one of those Kickstarters that backs immediately in just a few days. Things also really slowed down over Thanksgiving, unsurprisingly. I don’t know if the current lull is because of that, or if it was more the natural course of things. Regardless, it’s over halfway there, and I know we can do it, but I’m going to be slightly neurotic until it’s over.

EG: Understandable. I’m glad to see it get off to a strong start, though. I have something of a Kickstarter addiction, so I can never tell whether my impulse to back a thing is indicative of how others will take to it. Looks like at least in this case, I’m in good company.

Anything else before we wrap up? Feel free to tell people anything you like that we didn’t cover about yourself, your game, StarQuail, your thoughts on badminton, whatever.

MS: Badminton is really fun! The unique aerodynamic qualities of the shuttlecock really make it stand out against other racket-based sports. I’ve seen an interesting game set that I can’t remember the name of which uses a ball with tendrils that can be attached in different positions to create drag or unpredictable movement. Badminton is a pretty old game, but people are still creating interesting variations on it!

But also, seriously, thanks for the interview, and thanks to all your readers for their support! It gets cornier every time I say it, but every “tiny” bit helps!

---

Indeed. Thanks to Michael Stearns for taking the time to talk with me about Tiny Barbarian DX - I'm excited to jump back in those tiny sandals and wield that tiny sword. If that sounds good to you, too, head over to Kickstarter and chip in. 22 days to go. Let's get tiny.

This interview also appears at Colony of Gamers, which is a site full of great people that you should visit.

Another Game You Might Consider Supporting

I'm still working on a Tiny Barbarian DX interview, but a 2nd game came across my desk today that I want to let you know about, and this one's got a demo you can play right there in your web browser, if that's your thing.

I got an e-mail this morning from Antoine Guerchais, who, along with four other intrepid gentlemen, made Deadlock as an entry in the 7 Day FPS Project. It's a puzzle platforming FPS, which is to say it's more like Portal than it is like anything else, but it stands on its own without too much trouble.

Like Portal, you're navigating a hostile environment in first person. Like Portal, your enemy is a malignant AI setting traps for you and hunting you. Like Portal, a single non-violent "weapon" is your only advantage.

Unlike Portal, in Deadlock the focus is much more on fast, precise movement and the neutralization of threats. Instead of a "portal gun", what you have this time around is a "switch gun", which has the ability to enable and disable mechanical devices. This includes both beneficial and malicious machinery; you'll swap rapidly between de-activating weapons systems tracking you, and turning on jump pads to allow you to reach the next vertical platform in your path.

Oh, it's also really vertical. You're gonna do a lot of jumping in Deadlock. Don't worry, it works pretty well.

Here's a look at the game in action:

If you like what you see, they're running a Ulule campaign (Ulule is very similar to Kickstarter) to develop Deadlock into a full fledged game in early 2013. You don't have to take it on faith - there's a demo you can either download from the project page, or play right in your web browser through the Unity plugin.

They've got my support. I had a great time with the demo and I want to see what they can do with a full game.

Tiny Barbarian Needs Our Help!

Back in February 2011, I wrote about a lovely little game called Tiny Barbarian, which I was quite taken with.

In August of this year, RockPaperShotgun tipped me off to the happy news that Tiny Barbarian was coming back, and I was very happy to hear about it.

This morning, Michael Stearns of StarQuail Games sent me an e-mail to let me know that Tiny Barbarian DX has been launched as a Kickstarter project, and it needs our support.

Here's his pitch video:

And here's an updated gameplay trailer.

I'm hoping to write up some questions for Michael to post on here for an interview, but in the meantime, if retro action games are your thing, please consider tossing him a few dollars. They're already $1,000 towards their $12,000 goal after just one day, so I'm hopeful this can gain a lot of momentum. I was a big fan of the first game, which didn't cost a cent, so I'd really like to see him rewarded with funding for a bigger, better sequel. The episodic format sounds great for the gameplay style, and being able to buy in once to get all the episodes seems like a solid deal.

And if you want to check out the original Tiny Barbarian for yourself, it's still a free download. Just click the link from my first article above, and give it a try.

Go! Bring Tiny Barbarian DX to life!

Asphyx is a Weird, Free Game. Try It.

Hey guys. Yeah, I know, it's been awhile. But I just wrapped up a show, and it's election night, and I'm here watching the results come in and trying out free games. This is one I think you'll like.

It's called Asphyx, and it's a game that lets you cheat if you want to, but you probably won't want to.

In broad terms, it's just a side scrolling platform puzzler - you run left and right, you jump, you hit switches to open pathways you couldn't get to before. The primary puzzle element, and your only enemy, is water - parts of the world are flooded, and you'll need to go underwater without running out of breath.

Here's the hook: it's your breath you need to not run out of. You, the player at the keyboard. The game has no mechanic for monitoring you, and it trusts you. If you want to claim you can hold your breath for four minutes, go ahead, it won't complain. If you want to play honestly, just hold your breath every time your character dips under the water, and take a deep gasp every time he pops out again. If you take a breath while he's under water, press Escape to admit defeat and try again.

It's not a game full of brilliant level design - it's a Flash platformer, and perhaps no more remarkable than any other I've played in that respect. But the personal challenge introduced by its unique honor system is very compelling, and I had a lot of fun testing myself in a way I can't remember doing in a video game recently. It's free, go give it a shot and see how you do. Just don't pass out.

Thanks to RockPaperShotgun for the heads up.

Buy Hero Academy, Play it With Me.

Hero Academy is a game by Robot Entertainment. (They also made Orcs Must Die! and its sequel.) An asynchronous multiplayer game, which is to say that you take your turn, and then the game lets your opponent know that it's their turn. They take their turn when they have time, you take your turn when you have time, rinse & repeat until somebody wins.

It's a fairly simple strategy game - you have a grid-based map on which you and your opponent each have a number of crystals. By deploying offensive and defensive units on to the map, you try to destroy the crystals of your opponent by protecting your own. There are also items you can use to help your team, and spells, and units that have special abilities; a fair amount of variety and depth is contained within a simple formula.

For being varied and deep, though, Hero Academy plays fast. You always have a randomized "hand" of six units/items/spells to deploy, so you don't get overwhelmed by options, and matches don't take that many turns to play out (how long that'll take just depends on how quickly you and your opponent take your turns).

First launched on iPhone / iPad earlier this year, it started out as a fairly straightforward if quirky fantasy-themed affair. The developers have a sense of humor, though, and since the game's release they've added steampunk dwarves, brutish orcs, and - now that the game is on Steam - a team based around Team Fortress 2. Which doesn't make any sense, but it doesn't have to, because it's just a wacky good time and they aren't telling a story here. The result feels like a cartoony board game with tiny expansion packs, which I think is pretty great.

Take a couple minutes and check out the trailer.

If this looks like your thing, it's five measly dollars on Steam. Four dollars apiece if you buy two copies. And you can play against everybody who already owns the game on their iPhones / iPads. The purchase price gets you two of the teams - others are available for a few bucks more, but the game plays great just with the default set.

I've been playing Hero Academy for months on my iPhone, and it gets at least a little of my time almost every single day. Launching the game on Steam and allowing cross-platform play is a brilliant thing for Robot Entertainment to have done. I'm "Ravenlock" (on Steam and in this game). Buy it and play it with me. Thanks.

Free First Person Roguelike? Yes, Please.

I like Roguelikes. I like the randomized levels, I like the brutal but generally fair gameplay, I like the feeling of slow but genuine improvement as you fail a little bit better each time. (If you have no clue what I'm talking about, go look at the articles I wrote for Spelunky, or Dungeons of Dredmor, or Shoot First, or Desktop Dungeons, and you'll get the idea.) I also like free games that experiment with something new. So, even in a slightly rough, unfinished state, Delver makes me very happy indeed.

Coming as so many good things do from TIGSource, Delver is "a first person action roguelike"... an attempt "to combine the mechanics of games like Ultima Underworld with the depth and replayability of a roguelike." In practice, right now it plays a little like Doom, a little like Nethack, and a little like The Legend of Grimrock. Which, itself, plays like a lot of old classic games. Here's a video where the designer speaks for himself a bit:

I've only done a couple runs through Delver so far, but there's a lot I like about it.

• The interface is minimal but functional. A hotbar, popups for map and inventory, and a key that toggles between mouselook and interaction with the mouse pointer. That's all it needs, so that's all it has.
• The world feels at least somewhat complex - nothing like Nethack levels of madness yet, this is still an alpha version - but intuitive. If a trap is on the floor and you can trick an enemy into walking on it, the trap will harm them instead of you. You can also trigger traps by tossing unwanted items onto them (hence the Grimrock comparison), which gives you a good reason to pick up "junk" like skulls, or keep items after their usefulness has run out (wands out of charges, swords you've already got better versions of, etc).
• Combat is simple but satisfying. Enemies vary in attack patterns and potency, so you'll need to put some thought into which ones to tackle first, and how (melee vs ranged combat being the primary distinction).
• The game never stops, so you need to be on your toes about things like inventory management and checking the map. I like that I need to find a safe spot to do those things.
• I like the aesthetic. It's intentionally low-fi, but charming. Good music, too.

It isn't entirely without its problems - there are still some bugs in there, like combat sounds disappearing when I enter a new level sometimes, and I don't like how random the enemy respawning seems to be. It is in the flavor of Roguelikes to have enemies respawn, but in this it seems like a room I just cleared can suddenly have bad guys in it when I go back in, and that's aggravating.

That won't end well for anyone.

Still, I expect I'm going to spend quite a bit of time with Delver. It's still being actively updated by developer Chad Cuddigan - the latest build is only a few days old, and apparently he's working on getting bows & arrows working the way he wants now. If you like it enough to toss him a couple bucks and you have an Android device, it's also in the Google Play store for $2, which seems quite reasonable to me. (It looks pretty great on my Nexus 7.) The Windows version is totally free, though, so get delving.

More Tiny Barbarian!

This is just a lovely bit of news (courtesy RockPaperShotgun again): Tiny Barbarian, which I was enamored with enough to write this article praising it back in February of last year, is getting a sequel! From the developer page:

Tiny Barbarian is back for all-new adventures in the upcoming Tiny Barbarian DX! The new game, currently in development, is completely reprogrammed for a smoother, faster, and more colorful experience, with new enemies to fight, more treasures to find, and pixellated damsels to rescue.

The original was a great example of tightly focused design leading to a short, extremely pleasant experience, and I'm really happy to hear it's getting a follow up. The trailer (which I'll embed below and is oddly silent) makes it look like maybe a few new mechanics are being introduced (beast riding!), but I trust StarQuail not to let it get too bloated.

No information yet on when it's coming or whether this one will also be taken from original Conan fiction (The Frost Giant's Daughter made great source material for the original game, so I'd love to see them take on more of Robert E. Howard's stories) but I'll certainly be looking out for it either way.

Another Free Little Gem - Seedling

Thanks go to RockPaperShotgun for pointing me towards Seedling, a delightful little Flash game on Newgrounds that evokes classic Legend of Zelda gameplay (A Link to the Past in particular) in a pretty great way. Controls are extremely minimal, as Flash game controls are wont to be, but Connor Ullman manages to cram a lot of good exploration, item collection and puzzle solving into what he's got to work with.

From his website:

Seedling (renamed from “Shrum”) is an adventure game in which you play as a small boy who is tasked with finding a seed to replace an enormous tree for your creator, the Oracle.  You will fight many monsters, collect many tools, and eventually find a way to get to the seed—at whatever cost that may be to yourself and this old land you have changed so much along the way.

...Seedling features over 100 areas spread across an overworld with eight dungeons, six different weapons, and several other types of items that give the player new abilities that will help them traverse a world that varies from icy wasteland, to heavy forest, underground caverns, floating clouds, and magic castles.  Boss battles and enemy grunts will meet the player at every turn as they try to gather the tools necessary to reach the seed; a goal that will destroy beings known as the Creatures of the Relic, all while under the eye of the Watcher, who sees and judges your every action.

Here's a trailer, which should make the aesthetic inspiration very clear to anyone who owned a Super Nintendo. (EDIT: @lavos quite correctly points out that Link's Awakening on the Gameboy might be a better reference point for the visual style. I think I have Link to the Past on the brain due to a recent jaunt through the Wii Virtual Console.)

I've only put about a half hour into it so far, enough to get the starting items and explore a bit into the landscape, but there's a whole lot to like here for a free game you can play in your web browser.

One notable change from the classic formula - your health regenerates every room, so if you die, your loss of progress is extremely minimal. I'm not sure that sort of mechanic would serve Link to the Past, but Seedling is twitchy enough that it's nice for it not to punish you too harshly for the occasional failure.

I'll be going back to it for sure. If it sounds like your thing, go give it a try.