October 17th, 2012 | By Alex Wilkinson
Tagged in: arcade | arcade shooter | flash | PC Game | resist | retro | space shooter
I have been looking over some of the excellent submissions from the wonderful indie developers out there to be struck by the fantastic art direction VideoGamo have taken their latest title, Nave (“ship” in Spanish). VideoGamo is a game development studio from Argentina currently working on several projects but none quite as stunning at Nave in my mind.
Nave seems very reminiscent of arcade shooters of the past that were once found lining arcades. The highly stylized artwork does throw back to the earlier dawn of computing whilst maintaining the crisp clean feel seen in modern titles. Check out the trailer below:
From the initial look Nave looks to be just a basic arcade styled shooter, although VideoGamo are calling Nave more of a resistance game. With the idea being you have to resist the onslaught. Coupled with this idea as you collect power ups and progress on into the game your ship actually grows in size. It can grow to such an extent that it will dominate the entire screen. This is a very interesting new direction and will be very interesting to see how this turns out in the game.
VideoGamo also decided in Nave to take a somewhat unconventional approach to the skill level of the game, allowing the users to control it. This is achieved by the “turbo” feature, which allows the player to advance faster to the more difficult levels.
This new dynamic seems to me to be a fantastic addition to really start to change this classic genre up. There is of course all the classics in the game such as weapon power ups.
VideoGamo always decided to work with the striking low-res black and white pixelart, as this allowed the visuals to be made final and colour would not factor into the game as colour can indeed complicate the development, and I really love the direction they have taken it.
Nave will be showcased at the Argentina game conference (GameOn) towards the end of this month (October 24th). Of course they will be doing this in style and rolling out Nave in a classic arcade cabinet. They really are pulling out the stops with the whole retro vibe and I love every minute of it.
Although still in development the visuals already in Nave sell this game to me but VideoGamo are planning to release Nave in an arcade cabinet fashion along with putting it up as a flash browser game. They also are considering the new Ouya as a possible outlet, but I think this could easily be released across all platform as there is definitely a market for these retro arcade shooters.
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Alex Wilkinson (567 posts)
Full time gamer part time writer and a Graduate of King College London I have been playing computer games ever since the days of the much loved Amiga. Playing a broad spectrum of games over as many platforms as possible with a distinct obsession with RTS games even though lacking in much of the micro ability. Tweet me @alexwilkinson