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Super Chef is a new flash-based puzzle game on Gamesville.com. The goal of the game is to match food. The trick is matching the same type of food in a square or a rectangle. The food is cleared off the board when all four corners are the same type of food. Super Chef is a new [...] Continue reading

A Visual Novel about breaking up with your girlfriend? That's indie in more ways than one -- we're dipping into indie music territory here. This is a game for everybody who's been in a bad relationship that lingered on more than it should have, which should cover just about everybody in attendance. The backstory is vague enough that you can impose yourself into the role of the protagonist, who is struggling with ending a courtship that isn't exactly healthy. The game plays out as a series of conversations with the young lady supplemented by your own interior monologue. Occasionaly you're prompted to choose between two options, which usually either relent and placate her or push towards ending your entanglement. The game's short so exploring the various options doesn't take much time, and the dialogue is well written and easily identifiable with. The pixel art has a clean and appealing style to it but the tinny chip music wears thin after a while. Instead I'd recommend some early Elliott Smith to set the mood. With that in mind, give it a shot and come back for spoilers and musings. I'll promise to not pull out my acoustic guitar.

I tend to view things through the lens of addiction and have a penchant for junkie-folk so naturally when I saw this was about a bad relationship the drug corollary was evident. After exploring the various options I eventually came to the hospital ending which proved me right and made the connection explicit. This game isn't as much about addiction as it is about the difficulty of quitting an addiction. It's easy enough to cave into the girl's pleadings and follow the path of no resistance, but to completely rid yourself of her you have to constantly and consistently say no to her. The double entendres in the text also point to addiction and the protagonist's conflicted desire to leave. Hopefully if you play with this mindset it might clear up some of the more esoteric moments. If you have any alternate theories, feel free to post them in the comments section.

Think roguelike meet Small Worlds, and you'd have a pretty good idea of what Team Lantickall's A Most Peculiar Adventure is all about. Viewed from an overhead perspective, your quest is to find a complete set of suits, each hidden somewhere in four separate secret caverns on the area map.

Similar to controlling a tank, you use the left or right cursor key to change the character's facing position, then press the up arrow key to move forward one tile at a time. The game will work on either Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, provided that Java is already installed on your machine. Continue reading

Nicemetal is a tower defense game with an interesting gimmick, originally created by babarageo for distribution at Comiket 76. There are a number of unmanned defensive structures in each map, and you have to send out soldiers to operate them for a short amount of time before they'd return back to base.

Enemy robots will attempt to break through your defense, so it is just a question of managing your limited resources and destroying your adversaries before they reach the front gates. Your troops can only move in a straight line, and an enemy robot will have no hesitation when it comes to crushing them with their feet if the two ever meet.

You'll have to skip two cutscenes first before access to stage one is given at the main menu. There are six levels to play in total. Continue reading

Nyahax is a loose remake of Galaga that features thirty stages to play, boss fights and even the occasional power-up items to collect for ship upgrades. Players are given a total of three minutes to beat the entire game, but you can earn some extra time during the bonus rounds that comes after every boss fight.

Don't forget to turn on the autofire option when starting your mission if you want to avoid getting blisters on your fingers. (source: babara) Continue reading

Stickvania is a browser-based remake of Konami's Castlevania with stickmen graphics used for every art asset in the game. Purists will cry foul when they discover that our vampire-slayer can stop moving in mid-air while performing a jump, but most of the level layouts, enemy designs and boss battles will feel very familiar as they've been replicated here with some degree of faithfulness.

You'll need a Java-enabled internet browser to play this game. There are reports that the full screen mode can cause the application to crash when switching back, so you might want to avoid using that feature just to be on the safe side. Continue reading

Crafting a game in under a week is hard work; making a game fun is harder still. Managing to pull off both with aplomb is by no means an easy feat, so I have to hand it to Mr. McCoy here. Every 168 hours this man graces us with another short-form game that isn't only just playable, but actually pretty fun. The game mechanics that are the crux of these two titles are solid and well designed. Admittedly the two games I'm highlighting have spheres for protagonists, but who plays indie games for sexy graphics anyways?

Wavespark is the lovechild of Excitebike/Truck and RunMan. It takes the positioning mechanic of Excitebike -- but instead of tilting a bike you merely have to land on a downwards slope -- and combines it with a satisfying sense of speed. It's a one button affair, press any key to increase your sphere's gravity. It's ultimately a test of timing and momentum. Land on a downwards slopes and you'll get a speed bonus, but land on an uphill section and you'll grind to a near-halt. It doesn't sound exciting on paper but trust me, it's an absolute blast. There's four modes of play, of which Time Attack is my favorite; the time restriction lends itself well to quick-play sessions for whenever you have a few minutes to kill. Once you get the ball rolling (Editor's Note: because putting these in somehow qualify as an excuse for a shitty joke) and get a hang of things you'll most likely get addicted to its simple yet charming gameplay. Now how about an iPhone version?

If the above sounds too Jay Is Games for your taste (which it shouldn't, you snob) Dragondot should give you a reason to break out your prosthetic Hyrulian ears. It's an action RPG that's in the vein of Game Boy Zelda titles or, say, Shining Soul for Game Boy Advance. You take control of a dragon, erm, dot and fight your way through screen after screen of enemy dots. It controls fairly well, imagine wielding a sword and Roc's Feather in LoZ and you'll have a good idea of combat. Despite the lack of innovation in the character designs the enemies have distinct movement and combat patterns. There's also a nice attention to detail; if you're savvy enough you can have enemies whack each other a la Wind Waker. The game exploits your hard-wired love of doled-out progression by having an RPG system in place that gives you extra health and the occasional attack to your solitary combo. It's pretty basic but good and stupid fun.

Both of these games aren't especially deep but are solid foundations for larger projects, should McCoy want to pursue these further. The quality of these weekly experiments have been consistently fun, so I'd keep an eye on this guy if I were you.