The Indie Game Magazine » Platformer

Belligerent Bacon Bonanza: ‘Super Pig’ Trailer

Chris Priestman — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:51:46 +0000

Sosowski has released the first trailer for Super Pig – the rather fantastic platformer that we ranted about the other day. Hold on to your pork in anticipation for this one!

Imagine Meat Boy with a snout and in the pitch black – that is a fair summation of Super Pig. Except it’s a lot more genius than that, design wise. There are 30 levels in this upcoming platformer, each of them made very hard as you cannot see the environment at all, until you kill Super Pig. When the squealer dies, lots of blood splats over the environment and stays there so you can start to piece together a visual map.

This makes the game very hard and death a very necessary part of progression, not in the cutesy Soul Brother kind of way either. In fact, this idea seems very fresh and is what makes Super Pig so trough-scoffingly good. Check out this trailer for a rough idea of what we are on about.

More information on Super Pig can be found on the official website.

Chase The Storm In ‘Project Stormos’ Alpha Update

Chris Priestman — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:37:43 +0000

Rob Storm has released the 0.225a version of his anti-platformer Project Stormos – this new version increases community features for friendly and competitive purposes.

Project Stormos, if you didn’t know, is definitely one of our favorite upcoming platformers. Well, it’s more aptly described as an anti-platformer as you are encouraged to not touch down once you leap and dash through the air.

The latest update for the game is available now for those who have bought it at the $5.00 asking price for either their Windows PC or Mac. This update doesn’t add any new gameplay but rather enhances the experience overall for the community.

First up is a brand new title screen which is a whole load more exciting than the last inanimate one – this one sees the robot running across the screen before jumping off to somewhere. More importantly there are links to Featured Levels made by users and the official Blog. By far our favorite addition is the World Ranking screen which now appears upon completing a level so you can see how far behind the next fastest time you were. We’re fearful it’s brainwashing but we don’t care – we will not rest until everyone perishes!

Anyway, you can check out the full blog with all of the updates detailed properly right here.

Project Stormos is finally starting to get some attention from those video making types too, so you can watch people (we call them n00bs) fly through the levels and get ecstatic at their pathetic scores.

You can register for a Project Stormos account here, purchase it here and download it here.

There’s much more information on Project Stormos available on the official website.

Quaking In Your Bacon: How ‘Super Pig’ Uses Tactile Memory

Chris Priestman — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:52:24 +0000

Unfair platformers are a staple of the hardcore gaming diet. Another one is the mass consumption of bacon. Put the two together and you get Super Pig! No not Homer’s loveable Spider Pig. SUPER PIG!

Now, as far as my relationship with platformers and gaming in general goes, it started off at a very early age. Oh I remember the days of playing Alex Kidd, Sonic 2 and Shadow of the Beast and having red-faced tantrums because “I can’t do it”. Of course, back then death often meant having to restart the whole game and those buttons were hard to press with such feeble thumbs.

Enter my loving parents – yes, this is all their fault. Their reaction to my frustrations was with a range of phrases which have been burned into my skull forever. “There’s no such word as can’t” was a favorite of theirs, along with “It’s no good crying when you could be trying”. But the ‘creme de la creme’ was “Practice makes perfect”. Shudder.

The effect of such near infanticide was the gift-curse of the inability to rage quit. This is why, when I started playing Super Pig, I was not going to be beaten by its cruel yet genius design. Not on my watch!

Mastering platformers is a real skill but anyone can do it with time and dedication – two things that Super Pig urges from its players. You also have to be a master at keeping your cool and be willing to obsessively replay a level so that you can maneuver the avatar around it with your eyes closed. You will literally have to do this to complete Super Pig. Well almost.

Allow me to elaborate. What you are doing when replaying a level again and again in an “unfair platformer” is learning the necessary steps to pass through the level safely. It’s more than that though, you begin to establish a ‘tactile memory’. That means, quite simply, that you begin to feel the level. My fingers know how long to press the directional button on the initial jump on the level ‘The Hole II’ in Super Pig – it’s not something I have to consciously think about, I just do it. That is the result of about an hour’s worth of doing that jump over and over again. Thankfully my effort was rewarded, I am now one of only 6 people to have completed that tortuous level…so far.

This is a common trait of what I term the “unfair platformer”. These are games which adhere to a masochist form of gaming, titles such as I Wanna Be The Guy, Aban Hawkins & The 1000 Spikes and, of course, The Unfair Platformer. These games all have their roots in those pesky invisible blocks and other unfair designs in Super Mario Bros., as the guy in the video below finds out.

The significance of Super Pig is that it is designed from its very core to push the player to the very desperate depths of their tactile memory. When you start up the game and get past the amusing difficulty selection (they’re all Hard) you encounter the very first level…and it is pitch black. Super Pig stands there in a fuzzy darkness and that’s it, that’s all you can see. Move or jump however and you will soon come across some spikes clinging to the walls, floor and ceiling. DA FUQ?!

When you do die, and you will, a load of blood sprays over the environment and remains there so you can start to piece together the level and its dangers. This introduces the player to the idea of dying to make it easier for themselves, or as I like to term it, “tactical dying”. Essentially, you use those blood splats to reveal parts of the level.

The more you replay a level though, the less of the level you need to expose – you only have a certain amount of lives to play around with. So to make it easier on yourself and to ensure you have more lives for when you need them, you rely on your tactile memory to navigate past spikes and through the level without being able to actually see any of the environment.

I am not entirely sure how original this idea is but I can tell you that I have never seen this form of game design before. Although I would imagine the idea has been toyed with and touched upon in other games at some point.

This kind of blindness enforced on to the player is actually cropping up in other game types as well and it’s really quite an interesting and unique way to offer a new and challenging experience. BlindGiRl and its sequel and SONAR are two games that limit the player with blindness; the former sees it transform into a puzzle game and the latter a terrifying survival horror. I really hope to see more developers continue to experiment with this simple design idea, it has some great potential.

Sosowski‘s Super Pig is a very clever platformer though and one you should at least acknowledge, even if you cannot last the enduring pain.

You will be able to find out more information and play Super Pig on its official website shortly.

‘Grand Invasion’ Review – Inhuman Centipede

Charles Battersby — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:57:06 +0000

The Unreal Development Kit is amongst a number of kits available to the general public so that just about anyone can make their own game using the Unreal 3 engine. This has resulted in lots of indie design teams putting together elaborate games using Epic’s professional caliber engine, but it also means that fledgling designers are now able to try making a game too. One such newcomer to game design is Melissa Lee Shaw who created Grand Invasion: A Full-Scale Assault.

Unlike the implications of the title, Grand Invasion is a very simple, very easy, and very short mission; barely more than a tech demo. Presumably intended as a portfolio piece and not so much a product for general consumption, Grand Invasion is not a good game in terms of keeping players engaged for more than a few minutes. But for what it is, it does demonstrate a good grasp of game design principles and will keep gamers moderately entertained during this bite-sized adventure.

The premise of the game is that tiny caterpillar-like aliens have landed in a typical human apartment and must assemble materials to repair their ship. Luckily, these materials include ordinary household items and are conveniently lying around the two rooms that make up the entirety of the game.

Players control a two-inch tall alien named Ensign Beta Boson. Do notice the subtitle “A Full-Scale Assault”, which is a little joke about the use of scale and size in the game. Boson appears as a normal-sized avatar for a third-person shooter, but the environment is scaled up so that everything else is gigantic. A typical human kitchen and living room are dangerous and exotic places for this minuscule alien and she must find ways to reach high-up areas like counter-tops and tables, all the while doing battle with enormous monsters like spiders and house cats. It’s a clever way to get a lot of use out of a relatively small map.

The basics of an amusing science fiction story are all present, Ensign Boson has to deal with a cowardly commanding officer, who makes his subordinate do all the work. The aliens also consider worthless Earth items like pennies to be great treasures, and Boson is tasked with collecting these precious “Copper disks” before the crew can return to their home world.

Grand Invasion plays as any other third person shooter would, movement is done with WASD, while aiming and looking are done with the mouse. Boson quickly gets an improvised slingshot and there is a brief shooting sequence. Eventually the character gains the ability to glide, but just about all of the game consists of making Boson scurry around the over-sized kitchen interacting with the items she needs to complete her quest.

The quest is extremely simple, with players being told exactly what to do every step of the way. There aren’t many items in the level and players basically just need to go where they’re told and click on the only objects they can interact with. The only challenge that appears is locating the mandatory ten pennies that are hidden around the rooms.

Art is simple and cartoony, with very little animation. However, this design is sufficient as important items are clearly defined and objectives can be spotted on the levels with ease. Sound is a different story. Voice work is outright terrible, with the designer doing the dialog for the main character. The audio also has a fuzzy sound to it when characters are speaking as though it was recorded with bad microphones.

Most players will spend about ten to fifteen minutes with Grand Invasion before completing Boson’s quest in its entirety. Replay value is virtually nonexistent, and the only true challenge is the brief search for the hidden pennies that always spawn in the exact same places. Combat is limited to just a single sequence against a harmless enemy.

Despite its limits, which do appear to be deliberate, Grand Invasion still shows its designer’s understanding of basic game design concepts. Ms. Shaw also has a grasp on how to use the Unreal Development Kit, so the further adventures of Ensign Boson might be more elaborate, but in its current state Grand Invasion can only be recommended for indie gamers who enjoy seeing early works of new designers.

You can download Grand Invasion: A Full Scale Assault for free and find out more information about it on its official website.

Pros:

Funny story, runs on Unreal 3

Cons:

Too short, too easy, no replay

Rating:

50%

The Good, The Bad And The Cardboard: ‘Platformines’ Development Update

Chris Priestman — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:35:14 +0000

Platformines, the action platformer from Magiko Gaming, has received another development update, this time featuring a bunch of new options, mechanics and cardboard heads.

After warping our minds with the fourth update, this fifth development exposé for Platformines introduces the ability to customise your character with a range of attractive and not so attractive facial designs. Chins, hair color, tribesmen and cardboard heads are a few of the alterations that can be made to your own personal hero.

Energy and Inventory systems have also been implemented successfully; the former acting as health amongst other survival related issues, the latter meaning that items can be collected and traded at stores. With this, the game is finally starting to take shape, as the developer says in the development blog: “We have started to implement the whole progression of the game: increasing difficulty requiring you to get better energy belts and weapons to be able to go further down.”

You can watch all of these new updates in action in the latest video which you can find below, or you can read up on them right here.

Platformines is expected to be released in Q2 2012 for PC and Xbox 360. More information can be found on the official website.

Can You Keep Up With The Official Trailer For ‘Out There Somewhere’?

Chris Priestman — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:42:17 +0000

MiniBoss have released the official trailer for their teleport-heavy 2D puzzler, Out There Somewhere. The question is: what the hell is going on?!

As we move further and further away from the nineties, we see more and more developers yearning for that decade’s style of games. MiniBoss are the first to put their hand up and say that is exactly what they are going for with Out There Somewhere – a simple story with fun gameplay and a retro look and accompanying music. That’s what games in the nineties were all about then, apparently. Really?

In Out There Somewhere, you play as an astronaut called Yuri, who may sound Russian but isn’t. He’s actually from that part of the galaxy that often gets confused with Russia: the Great Mother Planet. Like Doomguy, Yuri is in a weird place where he can hear monstrous growls coming from the dark, but rather than being armed with a pistol, he has a much more modern Teleport Gun. With this, he dodges the creatures and flies around the screen, hence our opening question.

The developers are also trying to decide on what promotional art to use for the game. In doing this, they are asking people to vote on their favorite out of three – a Master System style, PC-CD Rom style and a Mega Drive (Genesis) style. You can see them all and vote for them in their latest post.

There’s no release date on Out There Somewhere as of yet but it’s expected for PC only at this moment in time and you can find out more information on the official website.

p.s. Vote for the Master System style promo or become victim to our torture methods!

They See Me Rollin’: ‘Ballform’ Teaser Trailer

Chris Priestman — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:16:16 +0000

Something holy has descended upon us! What is that glowing orb in the sky? Apparently it’s the playable mechanism in Ballform – a rather spherical looking first-person platformer.

Somewhat a cross-between those marble-oriented platformers and the masterful trick jumping of many an FPS, Ballform has you playing as a ball in a first-person perspective as you roll up and down ramps for big air and precision bounce around the levels. At the moment, the only slither of information floating around is a non-musical teaser trailer in which it can be assumed the game consists of levels of the ‘get from point A to point B’ affair.

How far into the development this is, no-one knows, but considering that there is no music it is presumably a ways off yet. An obvious comparison is the recent game of the same breed, inMomentum, which took the art of strafe jumping and bunny hopping at its core. Ballform is definitely quite different though, merely because momentum is gained through simple ball rolling physics, so in that way it might be a lot more accessible. Maybe.

There will be more information on Ballform on its official website soon.

‘Zack Zero’ Review – Hero to Zero

Gerrard Winter — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:55:00 +0000

Join intrepid hero Zack Zero as he fights back the alien menace Zulrog using his ability to switch between the elemental forms of fire, ice and ground! Wait, doesn’t that sound a bit familiar? Ok, lets just ignore for a moment that Zack Zero appears at a glance to be a bootlegged Ben Ten knock-off; to be honest that’s the least of this 2D platformer’s crimes against humanity. It’s certainly very nice to look at though! The cartoony Ratchet and Clank-esque art style and colourful, busy environments made this game almost bearable for a time; truly the diamonds in the rough. It’s such a shame then that, being literally the game’s only decent assets, even they’re utilised poorly.

The awkward way the levels have been laid out makes it frustratingly difficult to tell the difference between things you can actually interact with and stuff that’s just background set dressing you can safely ignore. What’s already a pretty fundamental issue is made worse by confusing camera angles and a couple of poorly telegraphed moments where you’re required to “jump into” the background layer for no apparent reason. Zack Zero is far from the only platformer to suffer from this exact same issue, but in most cases it’s made up for by well polished gameplay or at the very least some kind of unique innovation. **Spoilers for the next paragraph: In this case, It’s not.**

The game’s PR blurb promises the “playability of 2D classics” and that’s exactly what they delivered! In fact, one 2D classic in particular comes into mind: Castlevania. Ever tried actually playing Castlevania? Well, the average playthrough mostly consists of seemingly broken gameplay mechanics, untold numbers of totally unfair deaths and a fair bit of cursing on the player’s part. And in that context, Zack Zero hits everything right on the nose. The deaths come thick and fast; Zack’s diminutive health bar ensuring each one of them feels like the game has cheated you in some sinister way, especially on the occasions you die from “falling damage” of all things. Yes that’s right, in a genre almost exclusively about falling from high places then landing on things, they decided you should take damage from falling from high places then landing on things. Good call.

The combat side of things doesn’t fare much better either. With no real way to block incoming attacks and your myriad of elemental powers being slow and cumbersome to the point of uselessness, anything more than a small entourage of opponents is more than enough to send you back to the last all too distant checkpoint in no time flat. Ironically, this makes the ultra fast long range attack that comes available when your powers are turned “off” feel like the sole viable ability in your entire arsenal. As far as I can tell, the only practical uses of your elemental powers are to complete the game’s tedious puzzles and to rank up extra points during combat. Don’t care about points? Well don’t tell the developers, cus’ they were sure hoping you would!

The top portion of the screen is constantly churning out leaderboard data like “You have the highest score amongst your friends on this level!” “KawaiiDesuDragon13 has a top score of 452,230 on this stage!” or “You are ranked 343 out of the 960 poor sods that have actually played this game!”. While it’s quite admirable that the developers would try following in the footsteps of the bigger budget titles that that go crazy for this leaderboard tracking stuff, perhaps they should’ve spent a wee bit more time on making the “Game” part a little better first?

Perchance with that extra time they could’ve made sure that almost all the 20 or so boss fights weren’t just the same 3 damn near identical ones repeated over and over? I tell you what, they weren’t much fun the first time round, and they got exponentially less fun after that. But then again, possibly their time would have been better spent ensuring that your span of invincibility after taking damage lasted for more than half a nanosecond? Without a doubt that would’ve cut down on the copious number of times I ended up stun-locked into oblivion. Or maybe, just maybe, they could’ve spent a few moments deleting that annoying cutscene that plays every single goddamn time you fall to you death. Every. Single. Time.

I guess I could use the traditional excuse of “It’s just for kids!” to brush most of these complaints under the rug, but that would imply I’m a terrible person that really hated kids. Truth is, I have no idea who this game is supposedly aimed at, all I know is that I feel deeply deeply sorry for whoever they are and whatever plane of existence they inhabit. The real tragedy here is that the individual components of Zack Zero do show at least some promise if handled correctly. But in reality every single one of them (bar graphics!) has been implemented with a quite frankly shocking lack of common sense that makes me wonder if this game saw even a smidgen of quality assurance between its initial conception and it eventually appearing on my TV screen.

Pros:

Fun, colourful graphics. Score tracking.

Cons:

Almost all Zack's abilities seem useless. Difficult for all the wrong reasons. Hard to tell the difference between foreground and background.

Rating:

35%

‘Gateways’ Is Definitely Not Portal…But It Is A Lot Like It

Chris Priestman — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:53:34 +0000

It’s not Portal, not Portal, not Portal, not Portal, not Portal. Smudged Cat Games have announced their new 2D side-scrolling game Portal! DAMMIT! Okay so Smudged Cat’s new 2D side-scrolling platformer Gateways is not Portal, but it’s very much like 2D Portal therefore basically making it Portal…in 2D.

The very precariously named Gateways may seem like Portal in every way but it does seem just as clever in its copy-cat gameplay and by jove there is no denying that the trailer made by brain knot. But before you scroll down to the trailer after knowing that it turned me into a toast-munching zombie, you should be made aware of what the game is all about. Oh wait a minute…it’s basically Portal in 2D, oh and it will be coming to the Xbox 360 and PC. On with the brain farting!

More information on Gateways can be found on the game’s official website.

Coming To iOS Soon, ‘Tobe & Friends Hookshot Escape’ Trailer

Chris Priestman — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:06:03 +0000

Tobe is running away from certain death once again in the latest iteration of his platformer series but this time he has a mugged Batman and nicked one of his coolest gadgets – the grapplehook. But oh look, he now thinks he is SO badass that he also renamed it a “hookshot”. Yeah whatever Tobe.

To complete his “badassery”, Tobe has also formed a little mafia with his mates who each have their own little gadget to help them escape death – Hammer, Dragon Punch and Feather Cape. Due to these three extra playable character, Hookshot Escape on the iOS devices will have x4 the amount of longevity than when it released on Windows 7 Phone last year. Good things come to those who wait, I guess. There’s also unlockable background music, themes, equipment and leaderboards to track how well (or awful) you fare at the game.

The trailer below is the cause for this news so you better go and watch it! It would have been delightful to send you off with a release date for Hookshot Escape on iOS but we can’t, so we won’t. All we do know is that the game is coming to the App Store in early 2012 – yeah thanks for that Secret Base, I always loved a bit of unnecessary mystery in the morning! That’s why I march around my neighborhood with a smoke machine at 6am every day.

More information on Tobe & Friends Hookshot Escape can be found on the official website.