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It's been a while since we've checked in on Mr. Venbrux, a fan favorite over here at PTT. His latest outing is a portmanteau of two of his previous works; it combines the dreamlike tone of Pazzon with the planetary-hopping gameplay of Frozzd. Since both games accomplished their respective aspects quite well this mash-up title doesn't feel as innovative as it should, but that's forgivable. The aesthetic here is wonderful, with soothing background music and an oblique art style. It's fairly short as well, but may require a second playthrough to reach the proper ending. No overwrought analysis this time around, but if you dug his previous work I'd advise you to check it out.

Semblante is a Global Game Jam entry from a team at the Catholic University of Paraná. As is typical with GGJ games, it's more of a prototype than a complete experience; just a single level.

What's notable about it is the atmospherics; darkness, an eerie soundscape, shadow enemies gliding in the depths. Periodically, there are overhead lights, and when you pass through the light, you glow for a time and can defeat enemies until the glow fades. Jumping atop them helps you not at all. Consequently, navigating the level is a combination of platforming and using the strategically placed lights to advantage.

Also, you can scream with the X key, but I don't believe this has a game effect.

Ostensibly, your character is named Jung, and you are exploring the recesses of your own mind.

You can see how a fuller treatment might be emotionally effective -- and certainly, the complexities of the human mind and its fears is a motif that lends itself to introducing additional gameplay elements over time.

Despite the generic name, S.H.M.U.P. is not a generic shmup. A finalist at the Chinese IGF, it is indeed a horizontally-scrolling shmup, but with some unusual characteristics.

Killing enemies gives you points you can use to upgrade, a common trope, but upgrades persist the next time you play under the same username, even if you've died. Indeed, it's designed so that you will almost certainly lose the first time you play, but that over time (a few hours of gameplay, at any rate) you will build up enough to be able to persist and triumph even through the higher, and more difficult, levels.

Control is entirely with the mouse; your cluster of ships follow the mouse pointer around. Right-click launches missiles, of which you have a limited supply. There's a boss at the end of each level, but these are not all that impressive.

Behind you are a cluster of squares that you can think of as akin either to the cities of Space Invaders or the points you must protect in a tower-defense game. Ships you fail to kill as they scroll by reduce them, and you can lose either by losing them all or losing all your ships.

However, at higher levels, enemies self-organize into impressive opposing formations -- sometimes taking advantage of combined arms, with defensive ships protecting high-fire but more vulnerable ones, sometimes organizing into megaships, in the fashion of amoebas forming into the cells of a multicellular monstrosity.

Gameplay is not, however, particularly challenging from a traditional shmup perspective; at worst, you simply die a lot, build up points to buy upgrades, and eventually triumph even with a fairly minimal twitch-action skill set. There would seem to be a bit of a casual game influence in this.

High scores can be posted to your Twitter feed, something I haven't seen before.

In general, it is neither the most visually beautiful shmup, in a genre known for its weird psychedelic beauty, nor the most challenging game of its type, but there are some interesting design ideas here.

Sidescroller. You are a repulsive drooling green guy, chasing a woman. Cops chase you; space-bar to kill 'em, up-arrow to jump. If they get you, there's a brief interlude telling you you're restrained and jailed for one year, then back to the pursuit.

When you "get" the girl, you're on to the next level. Tougher cops. The woman's baby is now a girl. Difficulty ramps up by level, you're still obsessively chasing the couple. Songs about love and incest. A definite story (with, apparently, multiple endings, although I only played to one). Weird sound effects, difficulty getting to the bullet-hell level (though this is no shmup). Disturbing. Smoothly executed. Hard to play (though the designer claims there's dynamic difficulty adjustment).

This is actually, in its own odd way, quite a polished game. Quite funny, with an uneasy edge to it, like -- wait, that's not actually funny.

Worth a play, yes.

Kino One is a retro 80s arcade-style shmup, vertical-scrolling, with borrowings from the bullet-hell style and R-Type-like bosses. The 80s feel is reinforced by some nice flourishes; the start-game screen shows several arcade cabinets, and in addition to playing Kino One itself, you can select some of the other cabinets and play small Pac-Man and Arkanoid clones. Among the logos displayed during the start-up sequence is a Department of Justice logo along with a warning against drugs -- a common feature of early 80s arcade games.

There's a manga-style story intro, which I of course ignored. Actual gameplay begins fairly easy, but difficulty ramps up with wave and level, and serious shmuppers will find later levels at least moderately challenging. Ship capabilities improve as you collect stars and other power-ups that appear when enemies are killed; each of the levels has a fairly impressive boss.

There's two-person coop play -- four hands on the same keyboard, although joypads are also supported.

There's not a lot of novelty here, but Kino One is a nicely executed game in a comfortably familiar style, and developed with considerable knowledge of and affection for the genre. It's also not freeware, but the demo is fun in its own right, and fi' dollah for the full game won't break your bank.

Mental Repairs, Inc. is a pleasant, occasionally funny graphic adventure implemented in the Wintermute engine. The graphics are quite nicely done, in 3D, which is fairly impressive for a lone-man effort. It helps that the only people you talk to are machines, so the immobility of 3D faces in a fairly low-poly environment isn't a concern here.

The conceit is that you are a sort of machine psychologist/repairman, and that repairing machines involves talking to them. Using your pipe wrench on a machine transitions to you the machine's "psyche," an "alternative space" that in some sense represents the machine's issues and fears. Fixing the machine is then a classic adventure game puzzle.

It's not long, and some of the puzzles are not exactly intuitive, but it's a pleasant romp. And Gameboomers has a walkthrough should you get stuck.

It's been awhile since we heard from Agustin Fernandez a.k.a. "Tembac" - he's apparently suffered from what I call "developer's curse" where you spend so much time and energy making games for an employer that you lose all capacity to develop games for yourself, an afflication which only Rod Humble in his Vice Presidential focus could overcome, and that only for a couple of weekends. Since then he's been free, not in the since of "free beer" but in the since of "hey, I'm fucking free!". He brewed up a poppy dish for Gamma IV, and now he gives us the exegesis of 48 hours worth of jamming. Polygamic Pac-Man poses the question: "what if Pac-man was no mere glutton, but a sex fiend?"

The game follows basic arrow key controls, you dash around the place trying to Pac up the ladies, apparently some of these Ms. Pac-men are at least open to the advances of a one-eyed guy with a top hat. This being the land of the blind, your former lovers try to find you again with their narrow cones of ray-casted sight, easily avoided in small numbers, but the more you seduce the trickier it is to move on to the next one.

After the initial gag wears off you're left with a difficulty curve that spikes asymptotic as the number of potential lovers, n, increases towards about 10. You are left to ponder the endless spiral of a young man's inability to rest, the justiable lack of trust in society, and why some of your lovers start cross-dressing. If you live in Argentina you may ponder why in this country you must put an entire apartment or house up as collateral for a rental contract, a $50k value against maybe 5k of cash-flow, in order to get any apartment - or why girls are justiably jealous of thier lovers, even if said lovers are among the good ones that don't follow Pac-Man's lead. Oh yes, a game can be made in a weekend and induce deep thoughts, but perhaps for not that long and not with much replay value.