Itch.io Indie bundle for Palestinian Aid, Part 1
A number of the games “included in this bundle” are, in fact, free-to-play browser games. That feels disingenuous.
Basil goes O.U.T.S.I.D.E. (Platformer, Browser game) - Basil is a little purple man who wakes up in a cave and goes on an adventure that leads to him dying a lot, because touching most things kills him instantly. You have to love wall-jumping and careful platforming, and not care about story or inflicting violence upon your foes.
When it’s safe again (Exploration, Browser game) - A five-minute exploration of little things in someone’s life while they miss their SO during quarantine.
Walkerwall (Puzzle Platformer, Browser game) - A minimalist puzzle-platformer; you can slide around corners and change gravity by doing do, and there are pickups you can only retrieve while gravity is going a certain way. Many points for cleverness; I haven’t seen anything quite like this before. But it also can be hard to grok because of that.
Tetrible (Puzzle, Browser game) - What if Tetris, but the floor is lava and the tetrad stack is constantly sinking into them? This is neat, and it changes the dynamic of Tetris because you need to be mindful of both building too high and falling too low-you need to make a thin stack and build out from it to score lines, and do that again and again repeatedly because your wide stack will end up in the lava.
Glitch Dungeon (Puzzle Platformer, Browser game) - A curious puzzle platformer where you eventually learn 4 spells and can switch between them each granting you a different power: Ignoring gravity, jumping high, being invincible, and climbing walls. (They’re color-coded and change the dungeon tiles when in use.) I got stuck on a puzzle room and frustrated, but I thought it was a cool concept.
Light Borrower (Puzzle, PC game) - This I really enjoyed. In an underground bunker called Haven, where the prophet Charlie led his followers before the End, Rachel is undergoing a coming-of-age ritual by solving lots of light-based spinning-wheel puzzles. The draw is the puzzles, but the story bits, told in notes, are interesting also. It took me an hour to get 34% and see the first ending; I may go back for more.
Worldcraft (Puzzle, Browser game) - A short but clever game of matching up lines, which is an abstraction of organizing planets and stars.
MineFinitum (Puzzle, Browser game) - It’s Minesweeper, but it scrolls forever as you solve chunks of it. It doesn’t keep score and there’s no penalty for misses. It’s very zen.
Pixels Out of Space (Platformer, Browser game) - A very Game Boy-style platform-and-shoot game, but the gimmick is that different areas change to different colors, causing environmental effects. (The sharply limited ammo, while appropriate to a “horror” game, doesn’t actually make this more fun.) I think I would need save states to get through it without getting too frustrated, but points for cleverness.
The Majesty of Colors (Puzzle, PC game) - I played this years ago, back when it was a Flash game. It’s a fun little thought-experiment game, where you awaken as a tentacle monster in the ocean and become fascinated by the strange things above you. It’s short, and the only real trick to it is finding the five endings.
Pleasant Dreams: The Welcoming Play of Kirby’s Dream Land by Joel Couture - Couture clearly has a very most favorite game from his childhood, and wants to tell you in excessive detail why that is. To save you 90 pages: It’s because it’s very good at being its own tutorial and isn’t very hard. This deserved to be a blog post, not a book.
Radiant Chaotic Sorcerer (D&D 5E class variant) - This is really delightful: For the player who thinks a Wild Mage is too controlled, they randomly cast random spells. When you attempt to cast a spell, it’s randomly rolled (with a chance of a wild surge). When you do anything else that requires a roll, there’s a 1/10 chance you’ll cast a random spell instead. After 15th level, you counterattack anyone who hits you with a random spell. This is wonderful one-shot bait and I want to use it.
The Book of Common Games by Kyle Latino - Less games and more a mix of meditative thought experiments and commentary on hobbies. What are hobbies, really, than ridiculous games we play over time? I don’t think I’m really the kind of person to attempt any of these, but I can imagine there are people who would.
Overall: Light Borrower was a lot of fun, and the Radiant Chaotic Sorcerer will appear in a game at some point. There were a few other clever ideas in things I tried, but those two stood out.
Basil goes O.U.T.S.I.D.E. (Platformer, Browser game) - Basil is a little purple man who wakes up in a cave and goes on an adventure that leads to him dying a lot, because touching most things kills him instantly. You have to love wall-jumping and careful platforming, and not care about story or inflicting violence upon your foes.
When it’s safe again (Exploration, Browser game) - A five-minute exploration of little things in someone’s life while they miss their SO during quarantine.
Walkerwall (Puzzle Platformer, Browser game) - A minimalist puzzle-platformer; you can slide around corners and change gravity by doing do, and there are pickups you can only retrieve while gravity is going a certain way. Many points for cleverness; I haven’t seen anything quite like this before. But it also can be hard to grok because of that.
Tetrible (Puzzle, Browser game) - What if Tetris, but the floor is lava and the tetrad stack is constantly sinking into them? This is neat, and it changes the dynamic of Tetris because you need to be mindful of both building too high and falling too low-you need to make a thin stack and build out from it to score lines, and do that again and again repeatedly because your wide stack will end up in the lava.
Glitch Dungeon (Puzzle Platformer, Browser game) - A curious puzzle platformer where you eventually learn 4 spells and can switch between them each granting you a different power: Ignoring gravity, jumping high, being invincible, and climbing walls. (They’re color-coded and change the dungeon tiles when in use.) I got stuck on a puzzle room and frustrated, but I thought it was a cool concept.
Light Borrower (Puzzle, PC game) - This I really enjoyed. In an underground bunker called Haven, where the prophet Charlie led his followers before the End, Rachel is undergoing a coming-of-age ritual by solving lots of light-based spinning-wheel puzzles. The draw is the puzzles, but the story bits, told in notes, are interesting also. It took me an hour to get 34% and see the first ending; I may go back for more.
Worldcraft (Puzzle, Browser game) - A short but clever game of matching up lines, which is an abstraction of organizing planets and stars.
MineFinitum (Puzzle, Browser game) - It’s Minesweeper, but it scrolls forever as you solve chunks of it. It doesn’t keep score and there’s no penalty for misses. It’s very zen.
Pixels Out of Space (Platformer, Browser game) - A very Game Boy-style platform-and-shoot game, but the gimmick is that different areas change to different colors, causing environmental effects. (The sharply limited ammo, while appropriate to a “horror” game, doesn’t actually make this more fun.) I think I would need save states to get through it without getting too frustrated, but points for cleverness.
The Majesty of Colors (Puzzle, PC game) - I played this years ago, back when it was a Flash game. It’s a fun little thought-experiment game, where you awaken as a tentacle monster in the ocean and become fascinated by the strange things above you. It’s short, and the only real trick to it is finding the five endings.
Pleasant Dreams: The Welcoming Play of Kirby’s Dream Land by Joel Couture - Couture clearly has a very most favorite game from his childhood, and wants to tell you in excessive detail why that is. To save you 90 pages: It’s because it’s very good at being its own tutorial and isn’t very hard. This deserved to be a blog post, not a book.
Radiant Chaotic Sorcerer (D&D 5E class variant) - This is really delightful: For the player who thinks a Wild Mage is too controlled, they randomly cast random spells. When you attempt to cast a spell, it’s randomly rolled (with a chance of a wild surge). When you do anything else that requires a roll, there’s a 1/10 chance you’ll cast a random spell instead. After 15th level, you counterattack anyone who hits you with a random spell. This is wonderful one-shot bait and I want to use it.
The Book of Common Games by Kyle Latino - Less games and more a mix of meditative thought experiments and commentary on hobbies. What are hobbies, really, than ridiculous games we play over time? I don’t think I’m really the kind of person to attempt any of these, but I can imagine there are people who would.
Overall: Light Borrower was a lot of fun, and the Radiant Chaotic Sorcerer will appear in a game at some point. There were a few other clever ideas in things I tried, but those two stood out.