FunEffect.com

Christmas stuff gets a little leeway when it comes to quality; just think about how many crummy Christmas television specials we get excited about. Rocket Santa is a little late to the Christmas party, though, so it loses the Christmas veneer and is revealed to be what it actually is: boring and unremarkable. The reindeer fall [...] Continue reading

Stew: 5 Vitamini’s website describes it as “Tetris with physics.” That’s giving it a bit too much credit. The core mechanic of the game can be described as bashing floating, spinning blocks into one another. The closest visible resemblance to Tetris is that blocks fall from the top of the screen and land on the bottom. [...] Continue reading

Telepath Psy Arena 2 is a basic strategy RPG by Craig Stern / Sinister Design. The genre is kind of underrepresented among indie games (although perhaps it appears more than we’d expect), and as it’s one of my favorite genres I’m just happy to play a new one, even if it doesn’t do anything particularly special and felt a bit unpolished for its price to me.

The way it works is you buy a party from the slave market (there’s a variety of classes), and fight a series of coliseum battles. You gain more money, which you can use to train your characters to make them stronger, or buy orbs to make your hero stronger, or buy new characters. If you lose a character in battle, they’re usually gone for good (like Fire Emblem). There isn’t very much story (although there’s a little), most of the game is just battle after battle. There’s no equipment or class changing or other bells and whistles, it’s just a bare essentials strategy RPG, although occasionally there are alternate win conditions to add some variety (such as capture a square, or protect one). I’d guess the game will probably last about 6-8 hours for a single playthrough.

By unpolished earlier, I mean things like many actions (such as GUI actions or walking) not having associated sound effects, a GUI made largely of round rectangles and text which often gets in the way and has to be moved around manually, very few pieces of music, difficulty in telling your team and the enemy team apart (they don’t even have separate colors), the inability to place your characters where you want at the start of a battle, and so on.

And of course the graphics. I know that Craig wrote an article called The Obsession With Aesthetics in the Indie Scene, but I kind of think there’s a difference between being put off by bad graphics and being obsessed by good graphics. To be fair though, the flip animation of the assassin was top notch, I loved watching it every time it happened. And of course it’s hard to make pretty graphics in a completely top-down perspective, regardless of how skilled you are.

But as I said, I’m just happy to see more strategy RPGs, and while it’s not excellent, it’s at least a solid entry to that genre that got me addicted to it for a small time (which is also how I feel about the latest Vandal Hearts game). Continue reading

Colt: 8 Boy this is fun. Tower Defense with some rad inclusions, like a user controlled camera and first-person mode. Even though a single tower, and a player with steady aim, can handle the first few waves solo, when the difficulty ramps up FP is a lifesaver. Awesome animation, inventive towers, great sound effects, a staggering [...] Continue reading

Zak: 10 Machinarium by Amanita Design is a perfect 10 in my book. This puzzle game features perfect graphics and great sounds effect. The game ran smooth with no technical issues and is reminiscent of Amanita’s previous Samorost games, but set in a raw steampunk world. As for the story, the player begins with a robot [...] Continue reading

Unlike the Street Fighter IV mini-arcade sticks, Namco Bandai's new Musou Controller keychains don't just play audio clips from the game; it lets you play full Street Fighter II matches! The small pad lets you select a character, input different moves, and even win a round without needing a display.

Depending on which of the three SFII controllers you purchase, you can play as Ryu, Blanka, Sagat, Ken, E. Honda, Guile, Chun-Li, Dhalsim, or Vega. And though I'm not sure how it works, if you have a friend with his own controller, you can apparently battle each other a versus match.

Namco Bandai also produced Musou controllers for shoot'em up Xevious and for Pro Baseball Family Stadium. Again, I've no idea how these work -- I assume the sound effects/game outcomes are chosen randomly? Either that, or there are miniature people inside the controllers acting out your directions and yelling out sound effects.

The Musou Controller line will release in Japan on March 20th for around ¥888, or around $9.83. Expect these to show up on import shops like NCSX, Play-Asia, and Strapya.

[Via Eastern Mind, Mecha Damashii]

Andrew: 10 Windowsill is a puzzle game of the most abstract variety. You have to get the square peg through the hole above the door. That’s all you need to know. The rest is derived from contextual clues, and organic puzzle solving of the highest quality. It’s got a visual style that would make an abstract [...] Continue reading