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The Soul of Dracula is a 2D platformer inspired by the Castlevania series, featuring appearances from mainstays such as Death and the Count himself in the role of level bosses. You play as a vampire hunter who must venture into the Dark Prince's castle and defeat him using only your whip and the familiar array of ranged weapons at your disposal.

Though many of the enemies had appeared in monsieur Belmont's adventures before, the developer of this tribute project had included a couple of twists and surprises that will please even the most hardcore of Castlevania fans out there. Download the game here. (Windows, 1.84MB)

While Steph Thirion's Faraway and all the other Gamma IV finalists offer clever takes on the competition's one-button limitation, there are more than a few submissions that look just as fun as the winning entries but weren't shortlisted. Fortunately, our sister site IndieGames has a round-up for several of those standout submissions, Beau Blyth's Fish Face being one of them.

As the game's title suggests, you play as a Ponyo/Seaman-esque fish with a human face as he swims through three different stages (lasting 5-10 minutes each) in his quest to "rescue the Cephalapod Princess". The only button you'll need to his is Z (or Down) to swim downwards. When you let go of the button, bouyancy will launch the mutant creature upwards.

Along with navigating caverns and leaping over walls, you can swim through red loops to collect points or through blue loops to save that particular point as a checkpoint location. Fish Face also challenges you with Thwomp-like falling blocks and other enemies to avoid. You can download the one-button arcade game for free from Blyth's site.

Over the course of the past couple of weeks we had written about a number of game submissions that weren't selected for the Gamma IV showcase at GDC. Barrie Ellis of One Switch Gaming has a comprehensive list of playable Gamma IV submissions posted in the Switch Gaming forums, and we'd suggest taking a look at that as well.

Here's a list of our five favorite Gamma IV submissions from those that were already released:

Fish Face (Beau Blyth) [Windows, freeware]

Fish Face (video shown above, courtesy of ortoslon) is a one-button arcade game with three levels to play, each taking roughly five to ten minutes to complete. Here you play as a fish that uses its buoyancy to move in and out of the water, avoiding walls or enemies that will hurt our aquatic friend on impact.

Red loops can be collected for points, while the blue ones act as checkpoint locations that you can return to when your fish crashes into a solid object. Continue reading

Mike: 6 When I visited Labyrinthica’s website, the screens immediately reminded me of the Legend of Zelda. Ultimately, the game is a more generic hack and slash game. The hand drawn cutscenes and in-game characters look nice, but the dungeons themselves are sparse and boring looking. I realize they’re randomly generated, but there could’ve been [...] Continue reading

Originally released as downloadable freeware back in the summer, this Flash + Flixel update of Constellation Chaos features a different control scheme, music by SoulEye and much more frantic play.

Whereas the original used a keyboard-based control layout, this collab version is fully mouse controlled. The task is to connect stars together, creating constellations while dodging enemies. Shooting for a star all the way across the level rather than one nearby will rack up more points, and all your trails act as barriers to destroy the various baddie shooty things.

There's a bunch of power-ups worth grabbing too, and high score boards for those who like being the best. Reach for the stars! (I apologize profusely) Continue reading

Carnegie Mellon University tinkerer Chloe Fan created this rudimentary version of Super Mario Bros. out of an 8x8 LED matrix, an Arduino Nano, and two buttons (forward and jump). Of course, with a system even more limiting than the Meggy Jr., there are bound to be a few elements missing: power-ups, enemies, and music.

To add a soundtrack to the game, Fan transcribed Koji Kondo's famous theme and plays it in a separate Arduino-powered device. It's a basic experience that only scratches the surface of Super Mario Bros., but it's impressive how much of the legendary platformer she was able to fit on an 8x8 display.

Interesting fact: the blocks in this Super Mario Bros. clone are just recolored clouds.

[Via Boing Boing]

After months of teasing the game (and a slight delay in development due to a computer meltdown), indie developer Anna "Auntie Pixelante" Anthropy has released Redder, her biggest project yet in terms of scale and time. The Mighty Jill Off/When Pigs Fly designer notes, "It's the biggest game world I've ever built."

In the 2D platformer, you control an astronaut who has crash landed on Mars and needs to gather a batch of crystals to get her ship back in working order. To do that, you need to explore the planet's ruins, avoid enemies, and solve a number of increasingly difficult switch puzzles to reach the crystals.

Redder's controls are simple -- walk with the left and right arrow keys, and jump with the up/shift/z/space key -- keeping most of the focus on timing the astronaut's hops. The planet's lower gravity allows you to jump higher and float in their longer than you typically would in most other platformers, but if you've played Anthropy's other games, you should be used to this by now.

You can play the Flash game for free right now on Newgrounds!