FunEffect.com

The PC version of hermitgames' abstract shooter is now available to download. In Leave Home, the difficulty of the game increases whenever you do well in it and scales back accordingly when you begin having problems keeping the ship in one piece.

A demo that features the first level from the full game can be acquired from the official page. The full version costs US $5, and the first twenty customers who purchases the PC version will get a free copy of Fren-ze as well. Continue reading

Shiromaru is a 2D action game in which you attack enemies by commiting suicide and causing a chain of explosions. The longer the chain reaction, the more extra life items appear for you to collect. Certain enemies glow brighter than the rest, indicating that you should aim for them for a larger explosion and a better chance to create longer chains.

This demo features three levels to play and an extra hard mode with just the first stage to sample. The game isn't particularly difficult to beat, but one cool thing about it is that you can die even at the title screen. Download it here or here. (Windows, 21.0MB)

Blendo Games (the creator behind the very stylish and classy Gravity Bone) released Flotilla a little over a week ago.

Flotilla is a space exploration game where you go from star to star flirting with danger and talking to bull-slavers and cat-pirates and various other terrestrial animals piloting space ships, killing and getting killed by many of them.

The meat of the game is the turn-based spaceship combat. Turns take place simultaneously, so you have to really think about what your enemies are going to do, especially since each ship has a bunch of invulnerable armor plating that you have to circumvent. You can control the orientation of your ships, and there are a few movement options that let you trade speed for firepower and vice-versa, so it’s really a battle of lining up your ships so that you’re ships are flanking or can otherwise hurt the enemy, while making sure their shots can’t get past your armor.

It’s an incredibly satisfying system with a lot of depth, and the demo will make you cry and wish you had $10 when it ends. Or, y’know, you do and you can buy the game and everybody wins. Continue reading

A standalone demo for Alexander Bruce's Hazard: The Journey of Life is now available for download. This UT3 mod was selected as one of the finalists for the Sense of Wonder Night 2009 event, and it even won a couple of prizes in the Make Something Unreal contest.

You won't need Unreal Tournament 3 installed on your PC to play the UDK build of Hazard. The full version will be available sometime in 2010.

Freeware Mod Pick: Hazard - The Journey of Life (IndieGames) Continue reading

Brendon Chung's turn-based strategy game Flotilla is now available to download from the official site. There's a 60MB demo that you can try, while the full game costs $10. The trial version also includes an option to test out the two-player mode for both adventure and skirmish battles, although one of the players has to to plug in an Xbox 360 controller to play.

Windows only currently, but Brendon will also be releasing the game for the Xbox360 Live Indie Games channel soon. Continue reading | 1 Comment

Renown DJ Ferry Corsten and developer Virtual Fairground (Club Galactik) have partnered to create Pulse, a new rhythm game for iPhone and PC in which you can play and compose dance tracks. It will also feature seven new music tracks produced by Corsten exclusively for the music title.

In Pulse, players tap the screen (or keyboard) to the beat of the music to reach song samples, play notes to those samples, then integrate those samples into their song. Depending on how closely gamers follow the beat, they'll be able to access more elaborate samples and layer them with their track.

The iPhone version is expected to come out on March 27th, while the release date for Pulse's PC edition, which will include additional online cooperative and versus multiplayer modes, is still unannounced. Both versions will include a feature that allows players to post their scores to Twitter and Facebook.

"I was trying to combine my music and games for quite some time," says Ferry Corsten. "Then I met the guys from Virtual Fairground who showed me a demo of Pulse. With my experience and their game design skills we have been able to shape Pulse into both a great game and something that makes you feel like a DJ. I can't wait to see Pulse in the hands of players."

Hopefully, this will turn out better than that awful horror movie with the same name that came out several years ago. I can't believe I paid money to see that.

Cleveland's Blockparty returns this April 15th-18th alongside hacker conference Notacon, now in its fourth year running (out of five promised annual editions) -- making this the longest running demoparty in North America to date. To prepare for the show, organizers have set up a Block Party 2010 site with details on the event.

For those of you still unfamiliar with the demoparty concept, Blockparty 2010's organizers break it down: "set up a stage, invite programmers, artists and musicians from around the world to enter competitions, watch in amazement what comes out, and then hand out prizes to the best of the bunch."

As with previous shows, Blockparty 2010 will feature competitions like demo, HiRez, textmode, music, photography, wildcard (generally animated short films or short visual productions) and more. Returning attendees will want to check out the site for info on the new competition machine, rules, and category changes.

The show will also have seminars and presentations like Guybrush's "Proce55ed Synaesthesia for fun and profit". You can find information on registering for Notacon 7 and Blockparty 2010 (around 135 out of 400 tickets are already sold as of this posting) at the Notacon site.

[Via Demoscene.us]