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!

Connect-M by McSebi Software is a small, and in some ways, innovative little puzzler on the iOS platform (also available on Android Market). Your mission is to connect pieces on the board to make them disappear, an empty board equals the next level. There are nine worlds spread across 37 different levels, so there is some breadth at least. As you progress in the game, it becomes more and more difficult. In world four, for example, the pieces start to move from side to side. The game flows nicely, there is no lag and the controls feel good.

Like all good puzzle game concepts, Connect M it is deceptively simple. However as you might have gathered, this game is hard, merciless and just plain mean. The graphics and audio is perfectly okay, nothing more and nothing less. Initial impressions are that this little puzzler is a good deal. It isn’t and here’s why; there is nothing more than just a standalone concept. There are no alternative gamemodes, time-attacks, continues or anything. When you fail to complete a level, you can start the same level again or start from the beginning. You have three lives, lose them and it’s back to the beginning for you.

There is a reason that Pop-Cap, Rovio and Mojang have become kings of the mobile gaming world and that is because they actually bothered to implement superfluous stuff like “game-design” and “replay-value” in their games. In Connect M we find none of this. It’s like the developer wants us to hate the game. I find this decidedly odd. Why are there no unlockable levels? If I want to revisit world eight again, I have to play all the levels…again! Needless to say, world one becomes really boring after a while, which also means that I won’t be revisiting this game after my reviewing duties are done. I’ve basically seen it all, twice.

This is insanely frustrating to me mainly because Connect M could have been something really special. Since the actual structure is in place, why not expand the game? Why not save the progress of the player? Connect M will go from being something resembling a demo to a full-fledged game with some minor tweaks. I can sympathize with the humble indie developer sitting alone in his room, coding away and releasing his game. But iOS, and other online platforms, are a cut-throat business, you are competing with the big boys. The games must have more than “just” a good idea. Connect M is a story of what could have been. That is a darn shame!

More information on Connect M can be found over on the game’s official website, you can purchase the game on the App Store for $0.99 or you can try the demo on your Mac via this link.

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (ITSP) is a sublime if short experience. The game is so excellently designed that you will undoubtedly be left wanting more. In essence, it simplifies the “Metroidvania” sub-genre by eliminating the platforming elements and focusing on exploring a bizarre alien world.

The game’s story is simple; a dark malevolent force has entered and taken over your alien homeworld, so you have to hop into your UFO and figure out how to stop it. The story is told through amazing and stylized cinematics rather than the more obviously narrated style of a game like Bastion. I really respect the storytelling in ITSP and think it’s cool to tell a story solely through these visuals. It allows the player to imagine their own backstory. It also helps that the visuals in ITSP are absolutely gorgeous.

Your alien homeworld may be infected by some malevolent parasite, but it still looks amazing. The planet is brought to life with terrific animation and incredibly stylized visuals. Artist, Michel Gagne has crafted a game that looks brilliant both still and in motion. ITSP is as much a work of art as it is a game. Its creators aptly describe ITSP as a fusion of art, animation and gameplay. I couldn’t agree more and found myself absorbed in the graphical detail, colors and subtlety as much as the game itself. The game’s sound design is equally excellent and features archetypal sci-fi beeps and bloops alongside some excellent atmospheric effects and music.

The gameplay is simple but original. The controls will be instantly familiar to shooter fans. You move your UFO with the left stick and aim/shoot/use your gadgets with the right stick. ITSP takes these simple omni-directional shooting controls and introduces exploration and adventure into the genre. There are a variety and diversity of gadgets to discover throughout the adventure. Early on you will acquire an arm that will allow you to pick-up and move objects such as boulders that block your progress. The pace at which you discover new gadgets is perfect and keeps you playing and exploring the bizarre and twisted world of the game. It keeps things incredibly fresh and makes the game fly by.

ITSP is a short game, but that is not a negative, it just can’t be ignored at around 5 hours. There is nothing worse than grinding through repetitive levels and the same gameplay mechanics. Like World of Goo and other great indie games before it, ITSP is so well designed that your enjoyment will never wane throughout the campaign. The game expertly introduces new environments and gameplay mechanics throughout the adventure so that you are never bored and nothing is ever repeated. The most critical thing that I can say about the game is that the core fun of the game is discovery. After playing through the campaign, there is not much left to do and not much inherent fun replaying the same puzzles and levels over and over again.

As long as you don’t go into ITSP expecting hours upon hours of gameplay, you will not be disappointed with this charming game. It is not a time-consumer. It is much more like Braid or Limbo than Minecraft. Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is an incredible fusion of visuals, sounds, and interactivity. The game is so well-conceived and designed that you will leave wanting more. The brevity of the game may sting, but that’s only because of our urge to spend more time in such a beautiful and bizarre alien world.

Lexiv; Noun – An indie game on the Xbox Live Marketplace that utilises a unique blend of tower defence, RPG progression, linguistic challenges and city building mechanics to create an experience unlike any other.

Okay, so I couldn’t resist that opening but after playing around for 10 hours on Lexiv that really is how my brain started to work. When I first picked the game up I was pleasantly surprised by what greeted me. What started out like a more intense version of scrabble quickly evolved into something entirely different, mixing mechanics that you wouldn’t think should work into a fantastic blend of fast paced cerebral fun.

The basic gameplay of Lexiv revolves around building a city from words, if you think that sounds simple then you’re sorely mistaken. To build your city you need a combination of word types; Nouns serve as homes for your population whilst Verbs are their place of employment. To take it even deeper you have to consider Adverbs and Adjectives; an Adjective will boost the housing capacity of a Noun and an Adverb does similar to a Verbs employment level. Pretty soon I found myself deeply engrossed in trying to perfectly balance my city.

By adding this level of complexity to the game the creators did a fantastic job of elevating it up past a simple Scrabble-esque experience. Rather than just creating any old word you need to heavily consider the balance your city needs, throw in a happiness bar and constant attack by marauding planes and you have something that can consume hours without you ever noticing.

But it doesn’t stop there, as the game progresses you’ll come across missions that require you to reach specific targets or do very specific actions. The wealth of side levels that feature throughout the campaign progression bring with them endless variations that keep the gameplay fresh. One mission you might have to fill in a specific square on the board whilst another will have you forming a specific set of words. The most surprising inclusion into this varied level design was the odd tower defence levels. These really brought a new perspective on the game as it completely changes not only your play style but the way in which your brain solves the problem at hand.

Overlaying the levels themselves is a meta player progression system, every level will reward you with experience and occasionally a new perk. As you level up you will gain abilities to help you and in-game perks that change how certain core mechanics work. The finest addition in terms of abilities is the blueprint ability; this allows you to place letters ahead of time therefore making those longer words easier to pull off. It’s far and away the most useful feature of the game and really shows the strength of the game’s design.

The constant shifting nature of the gameplay is a real strength of Lexiv, it serves to keep you constantly engaged throughout. The game, by the way, is surprisingly long. Lexiv is split up into 4 ‘worlds’, each consisting of 15+ levels. Just finishing each level’s main objective can take anywhere from 5 minutes up, with the bonus objectives varying in length depending on difficulty and player skill.

Accompanying the delightful gameplay is the outstanding soundtrack. Lexiv‘s bright and melodic piano pieces act to relax you and really set the mood of the game. The art style may not be the most outstanding or unique but it does its job fantastically, everything is cohesive and has its place.

I really can’t sing the praises of Lexiv enough, the game offers hours upon hours of deeply cerebral fun. It’s RPG-style player levelling gives you more than enough of a reason to come back time and time again and the game, whilst taxing, is never a chore. The satisfaction of beating a level in Lexiv is rewarding in the classic sense as well as giving you the vague feeling that you learnt something. If you love crosswords, if you love tower defence, if you feel your vocabulary is extensive, or if you just want a challenging but rewarding experience; then this is definitely the game for you.

More information on Lexiv can be found on the official website. Purchases and downloads of the trial version can be made on the the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Big Robot have released their debut title, an audio-visual sequencer puzzle game called AVSEQ for Windows and Mac, it looks simple but there’s no denying that the huge numbers of variants is overwhelming.

Today I learned that tredecillion is a thing, to be more precise a number. As is sexdecillion (I know), septendecillion, octodecillion and novemdecillion – they have seriously named huge numbers after months, it’s mental. Anyway, the game that taught me this is Jim Rossignol from Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s debut game under his studio name, Big Robot. The name of the game is AVSEQ and before you go “well that’s a stupid name”, ahem, Audio Visual SEQuencer, comprendé? It’s worth pointing out that Rossignol was helped by many other developers to make the game, a lot, apparently.

In AVSEQ you are tasked with linking up falling musical gadgets to form a sequence of music. That’s all there is to it to be honest – it’s more of a chilling out kind of game with a little bit of brain activity to keep you busy. Now that the game is released, you can purchase it for $5 on Windows or, if you you prefer, Mac.

Big Robot is also working on an exploration game under the working title Project Lodestone which you can check out here.

More information on Big Robot and AVSEQ can be found on the official website.

Jamo Games have announced their debut title, a puzzle game called Amp, Watts & Circuit with a trailer which shows the first gameplay footage and it looks pretty smart.

There have been a couple of puzzle games of late that feature maneuvering two characters around in order to either unite them or to use their different abilities to remove obstacles and complete the puzzle. Amp, Watts and Circuit, as you can guess from the title, features three robot characters that must use their different abilities to figure their way out of the monotonous bore of a place they work in.

The announcement trailer in which you can see the three robots shows them plugging themselves in to various circuit boards at different times as to allow each other to advance through the puzzle board. One cannot help think that this would be a great supplement to those boring science lessons at school in which a teacher relentlessly attempts to explain how a circuit works. The color scheme in particular is very striking; more workplaces should be candy-colored! Amp, Watts and Circuit contains 50 puzzles and in each are three golden bolts to collect but their purpose is unknown, probably just an extra challenge for completionists.

Amp, Watts and Circuit is intended for release on PC but no release date has been formulated at this time. More information on Amp, Watts & Circuit can be found on the game’s official website.

Ever wonder what would happen if the world blew up, then aliens came to visit only to find themselves stranded in a series of ever more difficult 3D logic puzzles? Well wonder no more my friends, Alien Jelly is here to answer that precise question. As a side note, that’s an oddly specific thing to wonder….

As just said, Alien Jelly is a 3D logic puzzle game that takes place in the large vacuum of space where the Earth used to be. You play as up to 4 coloured blocks of…well, alien jelly. After flying to the co-ordinates where Earth once was, you and your cohort find yourselves conveniently stranded on one side of a 3D puzzle and are tasked with navigating the way back to your ship. It’s not that simple though; blocking your way is a plethora of spike traps, color-coded floor panels and dimension switching buttons, all of which make the seemingly short journey back ever longer.

On the surface Alien Jelly comes across as fairly simple, the game has a simple concept masked with a quirky yet deeply satisfying contextual exterior. Beneath this unassertive exterior lies some excellent level design, complex mechanics and mind-warping puzzles. The game starts out incredibly easy but soon starts to introduce new mechanics on a regular basis, some are easy to get to grips with – avoiding spiky death blocks – whilst some of the more complex mechanics require a certain level of finesse to understand.

Past the first 10 or so levels the game really begins to step up, introducing buttons which spin the whole world on its axis as well as the ability to stick your self to a surface – the latter is mainly required because of the former. What starts out as a fun and simple game quickly ascends into an intensely well designed, if not maddeningly difficult, level design. At times the difficulty curve can be sporadic, leaving you stuck on a level with a particularly harsh difficulty spike – nothing that can’t be solved with some real dedication and brain power though.

Covering the well designed mechanics is a cohesive and brilliant exterior, every aspect of the game feels well designed – especially the aesthetic touches. The game has a distinctly Worms 3D style about it which is in part thanks to the camera choices, but it manages to attain its own unique feel with its rich palette of colours that are well suited to the over-arching art style. The backdrops may feel a little lacklustre from time to time but the nuance of art design in the levels really makes up for this fact. Tying the whole style together is the cliché, but entirely appropriate, soundtrack. Alien Jelly does a brilliant job of creating a 1950′s mystery-science feel that works all too well. Even those less familiar with this trope won’t fail to be reminded of Ed Wood style campy science fiction films.

Once you’ve dispensed with the games 40 story levels, a feat which can take anywhere from 8-12 hours, there’s a well thought out level creator mode to extend your experience. This allows you to create your very own rage-inducing levels to share with the rest of the community. While it can take a little time to wrap your head round this mode it’s definitely worth investing some time in, especially if you have friends with the game and you feel like destroying your friendship with a complex puzzle.

Speaking of friends, the story-mode need not be played alone. Every level in the game supports up to 4 player co-operative play, meaning that Alien Jelly can easily become a fun party game or just something to sit back and shout at a TV screen with friends over.

Overall, Alien Jelly is fantastic, the game benefits from some supremely well executed level design which provides the same visceral reward that you get from games like Portal. It’s entirely possible to get stuck at points where the difficulty takes a particular spike but it’s never frustrating enough to make you walk away. Featuring 40 levels and the ability to create, publish and share your own worlds, Alien Jelly definitely has a wealth of content that could easily see you coming back to it for quite some time.

You can find out more information on Alien Jelly on the official website. Alien Jelly can be purchased for your Xbox 360 from the Xbox Live Marketplace for 240MSP/$3.

If your alien race needs water, the only logical thing to do is attach giant water cannons to planets throughout the galaxy and squirt the precious fluids through the void of space to your eagerly receptive Mothership. Right? Well that’s the premise of Water Galaxy, a physics puzzler from Wired Games. Despite the (no doubt unintended) sexual symbolism, Water Galaxy is wholesome, easy-to-play fun in a small package.

The story is very thin and doesn’t provide much beyond tutorial information; a race of aliens called the Saphira need water and the player has been recruited to provide it. There really isn’t much more to it. Gameplay and puzzle solving take the forefront in this game.

Players have a water cannon that can launch an entire planet’s worth of water into outer space in the form of several fast-moving blobs. The water blobs shoot across the screen in a straight line unless some source of gravity acts on them. The physics system works well, accurately simulating the pull of gravity so that players can “Slingshot” around planets by aiming at the fringe of their gravitational field.

Controls are simple, aim the water with the mouse and fire it with the space bar. Once the space bar is hit, players no longer have control over the water’s path and the blobs will be pulled around the levels by the gravitational force of heavenly bodies like stars, planets and the Mothership.

Water Galaxy gives the player the choice of setting up “Gravity Fields” that can pull water towards them, thus altering its path, to circumvent obstacles. These can be placed anywhere on the map, and the player can adjust how strong they are. Each level has a different number of gravity fields ranging from none up to five. Clever players can find ways to complete the levels without using all of them, and the game encourages experimentation. Some of the levels can even be turned into Rube Goldberg contraptions with water flying all over the place until it finally reaches the Mothership.

Adding to the challenge are hazards such as stars that will evaporate the water, as well as poisonous clouds that will taint the precious fluid if it passes through them. There are also fields that cause your water to increase in amount; these levels require players to get their original burst of water to travel through the field (essentially starting out with 80% of the total amount needed by the Mothership). There are also red “Anti-bonus” fields that absorb water and must be avoided. Later levels add in wormholes that teleport the water blasts around the map.

An interesting feature is the use of “Ice Planets” which will freeze the water solid if it passes too closely, thereby rendering the ice immune to gravity. Of course in the real world, water would freeze solid almost instantly if launched into space, and ice is most certainly still affected by gravity. The use of authentic astrophysics is obviously not a high priority for the game and it keeps to a light-hearted tone.

The graphics are simple 2D images that aren’t impressive but they do clearly define the objects and hazards that they represent. Everything is neatly color-coded and players aren’t likely to confuse a wormhole with a planet. The soundtrack is a handful of spacey tunes that provide enjoyable, but not distracting ambient sound.

Even though there is a lot of good design in Water Galaxy, the levels often become pure trial and error with the player firing blast after blast, adjusting the mouse a little bit after each failure until the right position is reached. There is no penalty for a missed shot and no way to die or fail. There is a timer, but it counts up, rather than counting down from a set time limit. Players are essentially competing to complete the levels as quickly as they can.

Another problem is the lack of difficulty. In order to complete a level, players need to get 100% of their planet’s water to the Mothership. However, the player doesn’t actually need to complete a level in order to progress. If a someone gets completely stumped, they can just continue on to the next planet without any sort of penalty. While this ensures that everyone gets to enjoy all of the levels, it also means there is no sense of challenge or urgency.  Completing the game is a given, not an accomplishment.

Water Galaxy is short too. There are 52 levels which might sound like a lot, but some of these are merely there as tutorials and can be completed in seconds. Even near the end of the game, there are still plenty of levels that can be finished with one lucky shot. Spending an evening or two with it will allow most players to grok this water to the fullest.

A very interesting feature is the inclusion of a level editor so that players can make their own maps and share them online. There are already a few “Online Levels” available, and these are very easily accessed through Water Galaxy’s main menu. Using the design tools is easy, it doesn’t have a slick interface or a tutorial that takes inexperienced gamers by the hand, but it only takes a minute of experimentation to have a working level that can be shared with the world. Once the levels are uploaded anyone playing can vote for or against your creation.

Water Galaxy does what it does very well. It’s a simple to use game that can be completed with ease. However getting 100% completion on every level using as few gravity fields as possible takes a good deal of thought, and hardcore puzzle fans will probably spend more than a couple of hours with it. The short playing time is surely a problem, although there will most likely be a community of gamers creating new material and this will extend the playing time somewhat (and make updates very easy).

Water Galaxy is available now for PC. It can bought for $4.00 through Indievania. More can be seen on the Wired Games website.

Unstoppaball is the first game from Nuclear Wombat to hit the iOS platform with nice graphics, 30 levels and a soundtrack that would make any classical fan jump for joy. However, the game has a few obstacles that are keeping it from reaching its full potential.

The objective of Unstoppaball is fairly simple: each level has broken fragments scattered about that must be collected by the player in order to unlock the portal to the following level. Along with the fragments there are stars that players can collect in order to boost their score, which will come in handy for anyone who is interested in stat-tracking and achievements. This basic formula makes for what sounds like a simple game, but the main obstacle is tilting your iDevice in order to navigate the thin paths of each level. The iPad undoubtedly makes for a much easier game, while the iPhone is a bit more challenging due to the small size of the screen and, equally, the size of the paths that players must balance upon.

While rolling around as a glass ball is surely a fun time in itself, Unstoppaball would not be nearly as enjoyable without the soundtrack. The music features pieces from a few greats such as Bach, Brahms, Chopin and Beethoven. The tracks play back-to-back throughout each level and can really set the mood when you are speeding down a thin ramp trying to keep the ball just on the lip to avoid the destruction that waits below.

Graphically speaking, Unstoppaball is a decent-looking title for the iPhone. Two worlds are split into 14 and 16 levels respectively, with both worlds having their own theme. World One uses an aqueduct theme that has you rolling your glass ball on a stone-looking surface over some grass and water. Unfortunately, the levels can become bit tedious and nothing much changes between them. However, the second world revolves around cyberspace and is extremely enjoyable. Cyberspace goes for a black background with colored designs as well as a textured (and colored) surfaces to roll your ball across. The second world also has many more exciting and varied levels.

Unless you consider yourself an achievement junkie or someone who likes to make sure their games are 100% complete, there isn’t much in Unstoppaball in terms of replay value. You can always play through the game a second time using another skin, but they are available to change at any given point during your first playthrough. Sadly, the skins don’t do anything other than change the way your glass ball looks.

Both the iPad and iPhone versions of the game are nearly identical, with the only difference being the unique bugs in each version. These bugs are the aforementioned obstacles that the game possesses, and they really do keep it from becoming a must-buy. For the iPad version the glaring bug is that the game comes to an abrupt halt directly after completing the first world. Upon starting World Two, the game will crash and bring you right back to your home screen – repeatedly. The iPhone version of Unstoppaball allows you to play through all of the levels, however some of them will give credit for completing them as soon as the level loads. You can easily bypass this by manually selecting your levels, but it is frustrating nonetheless. The final bug that could be a deal-breaker for some is that the last level on the iPhone version will also crash your game similar to the iPad’s bug. If you were hoping for 100% completion, you will have to wait for this to be patched up.

All in all, Unstoppaball is a fun game that will keep you busy during a boring evening this winter. Assuming the bugs are patched in the near future, as well as the possibility of additional levels in updates, the game could be well worth the $2.99 price tag. However, be warned that until those patches come you may be paying for a game that will ultimately not function properly.

You can find more information (including Unstoppaball updates) at the official website. You can even try out the free browser version first.