Review summary

Back in December we reported on the public release of the Unity 3.5 beta with Flash Developer Preview and its accompanying ‘Flash In A Flash’ contest. Developers were challenged to create and submit a Unity authored Flash game between December 22nd 2011 and January 5th 2012.

Over 500 games were submitted by hopeful developers with their eyes on that $20,000 prize, but the results are in and it is Cameron Owen’s arcade racer Tail Drift that came out on top – you can play it for free right here.

“Not only is Tail Drift incredibly fun, but it also shows off both the amazing technology and fast development capabilities of Unity,” said Lucas Meijer, Flash Development Lead, Unity Technologies. “It’s extremely gratifying to see the development community adopt and take-off at such a rapid pace with the new beta, and we can’t wait to see the stellar work that is still in store.”

Tail Drift is not the only victor though, three runner-ups will each receive $1,000, Unity Pro with iOS Pro and an iPad 2. They include:

• AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome by Owlchemy Labs and Dejobaan Games
• Six Sides of the World by Emilio José Lopera Joyera
• Ski Safari by Brendan Watts

Six additional games will receive Unity Pro with iOS Pro as an award for their efforts. They include:

• Covert by Quick Fingers
• Flatboyz by Bento-Studio
• InvinciBall by Doug Wolanick
• Microtone by Increpare
• Pile of Kittens by Tyrus Peace
• Running Fred by Dedalord

You can play all of the prize winning games over on the official ‘Flash In A Flash’ page, just click on this link to go there now.

Since being made public in December, the Unity 3.5 beta with Flash Developer Preview has been used by nearly 50,000 developers. You can still download it for yourself right here.

Action RPG Dungeon King: Dreadstorm Keep has now finally been released after a few launch time hiccups, but the wait has been worth it now that you can play before you purchase.

Bulletproof Arcade’s double DK did have a dose of pre-release jitters which meant its release was slightly delayed. You can jump right on into the game now though and start running circles around bulky goblin-types and hacking at angry spiders plus all of the other dungeon-related monsters in the game.

DK:DK is as simple as you get in the genre really but it’s of a high quality presentation and has kept us busier than we anticipated. For all the LMB clicking and “float like a butterfly” dodging we did, there was equal parts of barrel smashing and key collecting which would normally start reviewers using the words “old school”.

Currently the free version lets you go quite far into the game and each playthrough is supposed to be different – how different we don’t know. The full version of the game which comes in at $9.99 unlocks the rest of the levels and lets you complete the game.

To play DK:DK right now in your browser, simply click on this link and get your index finger ready for button mashing!

The trashiest indie game about, Into The Dark, has been given a solid release date by its developers and although it bears resemblances to Duke Nukem, we are pretty sure that it won’t mimic the constantly postponed nature of his last appalling title.

When a developer describes their game as “Indie Horror Comedy Adventure Shooter Trash gem” my ears leap off my head, do a dance and instruct my brain to guide us towards the nearest Happy Hour. Smut, camp and filth are the kinds of things that I revel in, so Into The Dark seems like a perfect title to add to my “lookout for” list. The game is like a very, very dark version of Duke Nukem, except it’s more European too.

Shooting weird mutants, looking at females in a sexual though disturbing manner, and making apparently funny remarks are what define the game. There are levels to complete, keys to collect and loads of dark everywhere as you can discover by playing the early Alpha version of the game, download it here.

Ah yes, the release date! That would be June 30th 2012, or so the developers say they are aiming for. It will be a Windows only release though and we do not know if it will be free or not, instinct tells us it will be because the developers aren’t.

More information on Into The Dark can be found on the IndieDB page.

There’s a new flash game portal that launched this month and it is pretty different from what is currently offered by the likes of Newgrounds or Armorgames.  NextPlz.com promises to help you discover flash games based on what you like.  The site features a recommendation engine that learns based on your voting what types of flash games you enjoy playing so you don’t have to waste time sorting through all the users top picks and categories that litter other flash sites.  Another great feature is the Full screen button that allows you to play your games without the annoying banner ads that sit above and below most flash games.  IGM had a chance to talk with the programmer behind NextPlz, Dan Liebner to learn all about how this new flash portal works.

IGM:  So how did you come up with the concept for NextPlz?

Dan: I was just surfing the internet looking for some flash games to kill some time.  I tried several of the big flash game sites and I got sick of navigating all the menus and categories looking for games that I would like. So one night I was talking with some friends and the idea came up. And years ago, I had written a recommendation engine for my webcomics site, SmackJeeves, and thought why not improve on this system and apply it to Flash Games. 

IGM: So what makes NextPlz different than other flash portals?  

Dan: The biggest thing is the recommendation engine.  NextPlz is kind of like the “Funny or Die” of Flash games.  You can start playing games with one click on the NextPlz button.  When you’re done with a game, rate it and hit next.  After about 5 games, the recommendation kicks in and starts giving you games based on your likes and dislikes.  The best thing about the recommendation engine is that it compares your likes/dislikes to other users to really zero in on the types of games that you should like (mathematically speaking).  You can help our system out from the very start by picking what categories and genres of games that you like, but I’m really happy with the system and how a new flash game is always only 1 click away.  We have some other cool features too.  As far as I know, we’re the only flash portal that let’s you resize the game and play it fullscreen and we also have a really cool game history that let’s you keep track of all the games you’ve played so you can go back and play games that you’ve liked.

IGM:  I hear you mentioning likes and dislikes a lot. What do all these ratings mean exactly?

Dan: It’s pretty simple.  NextPlz is all about discovering NEW flash games that you SHOULD LIKE. Our rating system is a simple thumb up (like) / thumbs down (dislike) system.  We also have a “Meh” rating which just tells the site that you’ve played the game (so it doesn’t give it to you again).  If you’ve rated a game, the NextPlz button will never give you that game again…unless you play EVERY game on our website.

IGM: How many flash games are on NextPlz?

Dan: I think we have around 3,000 now, but we’d love to have flash and indie developers submit their games.  We just didn’t want to put too many on there since the recommendation engine needs user data to really work.

IGM: How does the system track all my ratings?  Do I have to fork over an email address so that you can spam me?

Dan: Ha ha ha.  No, I hate that too.  Right now, you can register with your Facebook account or just create a username and password.  You can use your email as your username, but you don’t HAVE to give us an email address and even if you do, we won’t spam you.  That isn’t one of our planned features.

IGM: What are some of your planned features?

Dan: Well, I still have a lot of ideas, but at the top of my list is definitely to improve the submit a game form and perhaps automate that a bit.  We also plan to get some sort of blog or newsfeed going so that people can stay up to date with all our updates and changes.  If people really want our homepage to be more like other flash games, we could add more game categories and thumbnails.  Right now, we just have some Editor’s Picks on the frontpage.  Basically, I plan to continue to support the site and update it as long as people continue using it.  I would love to hear people’s thoughts on how we can make it better.  Tell your readers to comment on this story so that we can get feedback.

So there you have it, register for free and try out NextPlz and sound off below to let Dan know what you think.  It sounds like he’s interested in user feedback and will hopefully continue to improve on the site.

Calling all point and click adventure fans! The Living Nightmare series from domithan is free to download and it doesn’t seem half bad. Maybe you should give it a go.

Interestingly, domithan says that their Living Nightmare series is part of their now completed “training” series. “I learned everything I know about programming while making the “Living Nightmare” series”, it reads on the website.

Form playing the first in the series, Living Nightmare Deluxe, we can tell you you’re instantly drawn into the protagonist, James – a guy who has terrible nightmares when falling sick. The interface seems pretty accessible in the majority too, which is always a crucial element to get right when developing point and click adventure games if you don’t want loads of complaints coming in.

As said, the other two games, Endless Dreams and Freedom, are also finished. The developer says they are very proud of their work and you can see that they have come a long way in the last few years by comparing Living Nightmare Deluxe to the original Living Nightmare.

More information on Living Nightmare can be found on the official website where it can also be downloaded for free.

Shooting zombies may have grown tired about three millennia ago but that’s not to say that Con Artist Games don’t have it in them to deliver another stellar game of that dreaded breed. Their upcoming isometric zombie shooter, Dead Zone, has been teasing it’s sexy zombie features in a new trailer and we watched it and have opinions!

In all honesty the last time I played one of Con Artist’s The Last Stand games was a while ago so I was quite surprised that the series has moved from being simple, 2D fun to a more complex, isometric design. Dead Zone seems very ambitious but given the popularity and established quality of the developers’ games there seems to be no reason to not presume that this latest iteration will be any less addictive as the rest of the series.

It seems that in Dead Zone players take control of the leader of a group of survivors, each with their own abilities as according to the typical class setup – medic, recon, fighter etc. As is expected from a game in The Last Stand series, players can customize their skills, loadouts, what survivors do and where they go and so on. Experience is rewarded as progression to spend on better weapons and skills. The Dead Zone, or Union City as it was previously known, is your battleground of which you pick various locations to travel to, explore and fight in. All pretty standard stuff really but it all looks good, especially for a free flash game.

More information on The Last Stand: Dead Zone can be found on the game’s official website, Twitter account and Facebook page.

You’ll probably want to go and play Con Artist’s older games now as well, so just head on over here to do that.

Looking like the child-friendly version of Dead Space, Noxious is free to download on Desura but you probably already know considering that it is currently ranked number one on the indie game-centric digital download service.

A student project of just 5 months work, Noxious looks pretty dandy for such a development history and it is free to download, hence why it has seemingly become very popular since its release just a few days ago. The protagonist seems in many ways to be a combo of Isaac from Dead Space and Gordon Freeman from Half Life due to the look and the fact that they are a scientist in a post-disaster research facility respectively.

The idea of the game is to escape the facility by restoring the power and using your “X-Rifle” (we’re presuming it fires David Duchovny in tennis ball form) to shoot the various escaped experiments that stand in your way. We’re not talking petri dishes with legs here though, more the abominable bug/alien type.

Now you have two options, you can either watch the whole game below or download it and play it yourself using this link to the Desura page. Choices!

More information on Noxious can be found on the game’s Twitter page, Desura page and Facebook page.

Hacking is so cool that there is now a game about hacking so that you don’t hack real people but hack them in a fake hacking universe full of hacker wannabes. Why not just hack in real life? Because it’s bad and naughty you little twerp so go and play Hacknet and keep it that way.

You may be thinking that a game that focuses entirely on hacking would be an acquired taste, even more so that it is entirely based in a terminal. However, Hacknet does brandish a couple of attractive features in the form of an intriguing story and a multiplayer mode. A story says I?! Read it and weep:

“A terminal-based hacking game, following the story of a recently deceased hacker Bit, who’s death may not have been the accident the media reports.”

As cool as multiplayer hacking may sound it’s restricted to LAN unfortunately, saying that the online version has been around for years but it can lead to a prison sentence so best to steer clear of that. If you do have a willing partner then the multiplayer in Hacknet will have you both going head-to-head in an attempt to compromise each other’s computer.

As you can imagine, there isn’t a whole load of explosion-filled screenshots to flaunt of Hacknet, but we can show you how it was made in a timelapse video. Once you’re done with that, or if you can’t be bothered to watch it, then you can download the full alpha version of Hacknet for free right here or over on IndieCity.

More information on Hacknet can be found on the game’s IndieDB page, unless you use those hacking skills to obtain even more information!