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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

Towlr is a puzzle. Towlr is an art movement. Towlr is an aesthetic with its own manifesto. Sort of. Towlr is frustrating. In Towlr, the cake is not a lie.

Towlr has a + sign in the screen. It has no meaning.

Towlr provides no rules, no tutorial, not even a minimalist statement of goals. You must deduce the goal.

Towlr tells you when you have failed, in a most annoying fashion.

Towlr displays only simple, geometric shapes such as you might see in an Atari 2600 game.

Towlr rewards success with cake.

In Towlr, the appropriate response when you succeed is "Doh!".

Towlr looks simple; but actually, there is a highly refined sensibility at work here, one that could only and can only derive from games. It's a sort of minimalism that rejects almost everything we know, or believe we know, about games. There is no hand-holding, no increment in skill, only a puzzle, with no hints and no support. The purpose of Towlr is to figure out how to play, and once you have, you are done.

And just as stark as its gameplay are its visuals and soundscape.

The first Towlr was created by PoV for a Ludum Dare competition, but a bunch have been created since. They are all available at the Towlr site. Some are web-playable, others are downloads, and the downloads vary in what platforms they support. But you should check them out, if only to experience a remarkably different aesthetic of the game.

Joey has been throwing out some brilliant browser games recently, and this is no exception. Sushi Cat is part Peggle, part feeding a cat. With sushi, obviously.

Once the cat is dropped from the top of the screen, you have no control over where he ends up, but his bouncing and body-jiggling is almost hypnotic. As he eats the sushi, he also expands, making for some tight squeezes. It's all about eating your sushi quota for each level to progress. The visuals and assorted reggae/japanese music give it a great vibe, too.

Find the fat cat over at Armor Games. Continue reading

Factory Games has announced the release of Valet Hustle for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Valet Hustle is a puzzle game where players have to park cars for the rich and famous, but one feature that makes this game stand out among other puzzle games are the characters that can be played. The characters are lesbian or [...] Continue reading

The weekend just gone saw the first ever Game Jolt Weekend Jam spew out some lovely little numbers, including Zack Banack's hand-drawn shmup Paper Dreams. Over three levels, the task is to shoot everything that moves, especially anything that is smiling.

Z shoots, enemies explode, plus and minus signs fall. Grab the plus signs to upgrade your blaster and increase your chances of survival. It's pretty difficult, even on easy mode, although a checkpoint is saved as you enter each new level. The entirely hand-drawn visuals are quite striking, turning what is pretty much your standard shooter into something pretty special.

Play at Gamejolt. Continue reading

Titan Studios’ Fat Princess certainly has a hysterical premise. It’s a team-deathmatch game that features cartoonish visuals, tons of gore, multiple classes and upgrades. Did I mention the whole feeding the princess cake makes her enormous and hard to move? The game’s concept, visuals, and overall feel are instantly appealing, but Fat [...] 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