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Father-daughter team hoping to make Super Chibi Knight a reality
Last year we reported on Super Chibi Knight, an adorable-looking adventure in the Zelda 2 mold that's being developed by Abobo's Big Adventure creator Nick Pasto and his 8-year-old daughter Bella. Nick's on task for the programming nitty-gritty, while Bella provides the voice of the Chibi hero, sketches for character and weapon designs, and she's a valuable playtester - not least because she names the excellent Spelunky, Super Meat Boy, and Castle Crashers in her list of gaming favorites. Some eight months on, Super Chibi Knight is halfway along in development, and while it's stayed stuck on Steam Greenlight since then, Pasto (senior) tweeted this morning that it's currently ranked #2 in the queue. Everything's looking good for a summer 2014 release for this father-and-daughter game, except for the last bit of funding to get it past the finish line. So, Pasto's turned to Kickstarter with the relatively modest goal of $6,000 to get Super Chibi Knight funded. The fundraising campaign's already notched a third of that goal at the time of writing, with a healthy 32 days left on the clock. Also, if you want to pledge just a single dollar, Pasto says that if he ever has the pleasure of meeting you in person, you're guaranteed a high five there and then. More guaranteed high fives in the world can only be a good thing. [Image: Nick Pasto]
Crowdfunded point-and-click mystery Detective Grimoire out now
2014 may be young but there are already some new games to dig into, including the brightly animated mystery that is Detective Grimoire. The classic-looking point-and-clicker tasks you with uncovering the truth behind a murder apparently perpetrated by a mythical marshland creature - called Boggy, of course, of Boggy's Bog, no less. Detective Grimoire is the brainchild of British brothers Tom and Adam Vian, who comprise SFB Games - the SFB stands for Super Flash Bros. The exceptionally-eyebrowed Grimoire character made his debut back in 2007 in a Flash game, but with the aid of nearly $30,000 from a 2012 Kickstarter campaign, SFB brought him to newly animated and voiced life in this year's release. That includes the familiar vocals of Arin "Egoraptor" Hanson of the Awesome parody series, and Skullgirls announcer Josh "Tomamoto" Tomar among others. You can check out Detective Grimoire on iOS or Android for $4, or cross-platform across Windows PC, Mac, Linux, and Android for $7.
Daily iPhone App: Kingdom Rush Frontiers makes great TD better
We've mentioned Kingdom Rush Frontiers here a few times before, so odds are you might know a little something about it already. But the long-awaited sequel / expansion to one of the best tower-defense games on the App Store has now gone live, for US$2.99 on iPhone and $4.99 on iPad, and you can now download it and defend towers to your heart's content. Kingdom Rush has been on the App Store for a while (it originally began life as a Flash game), and Frontiers takes the winning formula of unit-based tower defense, and adds a whole lot of new content and extras. In addition to a whole new map and story to play through, there's a new upgrade tree to unlock as you go, which will buff up your towers in various ways. And there's now a "hero room," as you can hire and upgrade heroes to fight for you. There are new enemies to face in combat, all themed to fit the new environments. And finally, there are new powers to play with as well, which add even more strategy and excitement to the fights. In other words, Kingdom Rush Frontiers takes a great game, and makes it a real classic. If you like tower defense at all, this one shouldn't be missed, and even if you just want to see one of the best games in the genre, you should give this one a look. Kingdom Rush Frontiers is available on the App Store now.
Daily iPhone App: Interlocked puts lots of physical puzzles on a digital touchscreen
I am a big fan of The Room, an iOS app which has gained plenty of accolades here and elsewhere already. One of the most charming things about The Room, I think, is how well it replicates real-world objects on a touchscreen platform. The Room expertly turns the touchscreen interface into a series of mysterious puzzle-boxes, all very fascinating and ingenious to play with. Interlocked is another app that does that, although without a lot of the extra mystery and setting that The Room adds to things. The app is published by Armor Games, the same company that published the great Kingdom Rush, and like Kingdom Rush, it's based on a popular Flash game you can play for free online. Also like Kingdom Rush, the iOS version has been polished and cleaned up a bit. The game is simple: You're given a puzzle with a set of interlocking pieces, and then you can drag or swipe around the screen to try and pull all of the pieces apart. The game starts off easy, and quickly gets difficult -- just a few levels in, I had some frustration trying to figure out just how these pieces on screen fit together. If you're a fan of these kinds of manipulation puzzles, you'll love this setup for sure. As I said, Interlocked is a pure puzzle game, so it doesn't have any of the mysteriousness that made The Room so popular (and if you haven't played that one, you should). Still, if you like these very physical puzzles, Interlocked, with plenty of content and a nice clean interface, should offer up lots of fun. It's available right now as a universal app for US$0.99.
Daily iPhone App: Follow the Rabbit makes for blocky fun
Armor Games, famous for its Flash titles, landed a huge hit on iOS with the great Kingdom Rush. Now the company is back for more with a new game called Follow the Rabbit. This one's very different from that tower defense title -- it's more of a puzzler in the vein of Cut the Rope, with the main mechanic being pushing a blocky guy around while chasing a rabbit instead of slicing cables. The gameplay is related to the old Sokoban games, though there's some innovation. The levels are all 2D from the sides rather than the top, and you can "jump" your guy up a higher level. There are three coins to collect in each level, and the eventual goal is to get your guy to a door while chasing a rabbit who drops coins. As with all of these "stage-based" games, the difficulty eventually ramps up, though this one's pretty easy throughout. Follow the Rabbit isn't bad at all. I wouldn't say it's as good or deep as Kingdom Rush, but it's obviously a very different type of game. If you've rolled through all of Cut the Rope and want another casual puzzler to play through, Follow the Rabbit is a universal app on sale right now for 99 cents. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Edmund McMillen game collection escapes the basement in August, finds solace on Steam
Before he made a game about a boy with no skin and a fetus with a monocle, Edmund McMillen of Team Meat created a game about a young emo boy and his interplanetary adventures, one about a lonely man traveling through time and another about puking, along with a few others. Eight of these titles will be available on Steam in late August as a bundle called The Basement Collection, for $4.The Basement Collection will include Time Fcuk, Aether, Spewer, Grey Matter, Meat Boy (flash prototype), Triachnid and a locked, secret title updated with new content, soundtrack, difficulty modes and achievements. Each game will come with bonus content such as development sketches and early prototypes, and The Basement Collection will feature four "very large bonus unlockables that should make fans of my work quite happy," McMillen writes.The Basement Collection will also come with a free soundtrack with bonus indie remixes. Try out (i.e. "play") all of these titles for free via McMillen's Newgrounds page now, if you can spare a moment for puketastic, interstellar, time-traveling fun.
'Shifting World' brings world-flipping puzzle platforming to 3DS
The Shift browser game series is being ... transferred to another platform. Aksys Games has announced a 3DS game based on the puzzle platformers, called Shifting World. Like the browser originals from Armor Games, Shifting World works by letting you switch between "black" and "white" mode at will, flipping gravity and altering which parts of the level are the floor, and which are the background. Aksys and developer Fishing Cactus add a literal extra dimension of play by also putting "2D" and "3D" switching in the levels. There's also a "level generator of awesomeness" that makes levels from DataMatrix barcodes -- the same barcodes that appear to be the visual inspiration for the game. Despite its windowed origins, Shifting World is making a move up to retail. Aksys is planning a 2012 release.
Portabliss: Siege Hero (iOS)
Did you know that you can download handheld games now? That's amazingly convenient! The only inconvenient part of it is finding the right games to buy -- and that's where we come in, with our Portabliss column. In each installment, we'll tell you about a downloadable game on the iPhone, iPad, Android device, DSi, 3DS, PSP, etc. Today: Siege Hero! Some of the most important video games have the power to, through their mechanics, illuminate something specific about the human condition. Siege Hero for iOS is just such a game. For this little diversion hangs its hat on a very primal pleasure, perhaps as old as man himself -- the eternal, unreproducible thrill of knocking down some shit that another dude made. In early 2010, I profiled a game called Crush the Castle, where players used a catapult to launch massive rocks across a screen laying siege to enemy structures. Siege Hero is its spiritual successor, only it has eschewed the two-dimensional, Angry Birds-esque perspective for first person boulder hurling. Just tap the exact spot on the screen you want the boulder to fly, watch as wood and stone splinter and then wait breathless as you pray you took out the keystone that's going to reduce the place to rubble. Though physics still play a big part in how and why the castles fall, the first-person shift brings with it a precision that makes Siege Hero feel more like a puzzle game, like a slightly more mean-spirited Boom Blox. When levels begin to task you with finding the exact spot to toss a boulder that will not only bring down the structure but preserve certain people inside, the destructive thrill becomes decidedly cerebral. It's like watching Ozzy Osbourne do a sudoku, only, you know, not depressing.%Gallery-130195% Siege Hero is available from the iOS App Store for .99. We're always looking for new distractions. Want to submit your game for Portabliss consideration? You can reach us at portabliss aat joystiq dawt com.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Armor Games
Being a giant, beloved video game blog has its downsides. For example, we sometimes neglect to give independent developers our coverage love (or loverage, if you will) as we get caught up in AAA, AAAA or the rare quintuple-A titles. To remedy that, we're giving indies the chance to create their own loverage and sell you, the fans, on their studios and products. This week we talk with Armor Games' Daniel McNeely (Founder) and John Cooney (Head of Game Development), who converted a love of medieval Flash games into a full-on gaming hub. How did Armor Games get started? DM: Armor Games got started out of the desire to make quality Flash games available to just about anyone. There're so many out there, we wanted to be consistently great. We initially launched as 'GamesofGondor,' with the intent of focusing on medieval games. I'm a big fan of Tolkien, CS Lewis, Robin Hood, King Arthur and pretty much anything representative of chivalry, so it was a natural choice. Anyway, I quickly found out that the word 'Gondor' was protected by one of Tolkien's law firms, and so I searched for another domain name that would keep it Medieval. I found ArmorGames.com, and went from there. I worked from my bedroom for a year before bringing on my first full-time employee (John Cooney, our game development lead). Being independent and supporting indie game development has always been important to us, so I'm glad we can continue to fund and sponsor Flash games in the long-term.
iPhone It In: Crush the Castle
We talk about a wide variety of iPhone games in this feature, but we're increasingly in support of games like Canabalt which require just a single touch to play. Call us lazy, but one-thumb tapping seems to be the exact amount of interaction we need on our phones, and Crush the Castle, our latest iPhone addiction, delivers on just that. You play as a sentient trebuchet attacking an increasingly intricate and fortified series of castles filled to the brim with royalty and their servants. With a single touch, you'll start the firing arc, with a second tap to choose the exact moment to release your (increasingly potent) ammunition. The fewer shots it takes you to bring down the castle, the greater the reward, in the form of bronze, silver and gold medals. %Gallery-84161%
The Joystiq Free Game Club: Dodge
The industry is finally slowing down on the twin-stick shooters, but we've found their successor: One-stick no-shooters. Submitted for the approval of the Joystiq Free Game Club, we present Dodge.It feels (and sort of looks) like a forgotten gametype from Geometry Wars. You pilot an unarmed ship with only one means of defending itself: Steering enemy bullets into other foes. By circling your enemies you can get a whole train of missiles following you, and direct the whole lot into the opposition's hulls with a single quick maneuver.By stringing together a bunch of kills you can build your combo meter and earn more points, points that can be exchanged for a refill of your health bar.We're fans of the basic gameplay here, as well as the fairly derivative sights and sounds. But we think it gets repetitive just a bit earlier than we'd like. What say you about it?
The Joystiq Free Game Club: Warfare 1917
As you long-time readers know, Joystiq loves the zombie-battling action from The Last Stand and The Last Stand 2. Now, developer Con-Artists has moved on to a new project, Warfare 1917, and though it lacks a horde of brain-hungry degenerates, its take on World War I is no less addictive.You'll lead either the British or German forces as you try to overcome the steadily approaching opposition. It's both a battle for land and morale as you can win by either moving to the far right of the board or just beating up on your foes until they can't take it any more.You'll decide which unit types you want to send out when, as well as the best time for them to move from trench to trench. Also at your disposal is a wide array of different big weapons like mortars and artillery, which you can rarely deploy without making sure your forces are far, far away from the target area.We haven't completeld Warfare 1917, so we can't quite put it on the level with Last Stand yet. But if the early bits we've played are any indication, you might want to free up a couple of hours before deciding to give Warfare a try.
The Joystiq Free Game Club: Aether
Oh boy, do we ever love Aether, and we bet you're going to as well. Simply put, it's the story of a boy dealing with feelings of alienation as he discovers (with the help of his pet monster) that he is, in fact, not as alone as he once imagined.As the game begins, you leave your home planet on the back of your beast, which gets through the universe via his long, elastic tongue, allowing him to snap to nearby clouds and planets and then hurtle to the outer reaches of the galaxy. There you'll find several planets, each with their own unique puzzles to solve, requiring a combination of quick reflexes and some non-linear thinking. It's all presented in attractive, washed out pastels and with a hauntingly otherworldly soundtrack.It's everything you want an "art game" to be, with a unique visual style, a creative gameplay mechanic and a real sense of an artist's touch (two, in this case, Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel). It's a uniquely personal, touching game that we can't wait for you to try and share your thoughts on in the comments.
Mercenaries 2 gets a Flash version
If you find yourself unable to wait until the Aug. 31 release of Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, we may have the perfect soothing balm for you: Armor Games and EA's Mercenaries 2: World (Nearly) In Flames. It's exactly like the console versions of Mercenaries 2, except it's free! (And it's made in Flash. And it's two dimensional. But other than that? Exactly the same.) OK, so maybe it's not as technically impressive, but we could think of many worse ways to kill some time until the real release than with this solid, old-school diversion. Enjoy.
The Last Stand returns for titularly improbable second helping
You may remember that, back in the spring of 2007, we had what one might call a total crush on the zombie-killing survival game, The Last Stand. Now, almost a year to the day after we first brought word of it, the game has risen from its grave and begun shambling towards us with The Last Stand 2. Though it's not a huge leap forward graphically, there are some significant improvements, especially to the daylight time-management part of the game. Now you'll be able to move from city to city as you try to survive the zombie apocalypse with your ragtag group of survivors, deciding exactly how much time (and where) they'll hunt for new weapons and others still among the living. Traps have also been added, which give the combat a little more depth. If you haven't checked it out (especially if you haven't played the first game) you absolutely need to.
