It’s been a week of more awesome releases. With a couple of original puzzlers, a new MMORPG IP, an old F2P Steam release, and a good amount of high-quality miscellany, this weekend is the perfect time to burn some credits.
Cannon Fodder 3
This isometric “dual stick” (on PC I guess that would be WASD movement and mouse targeting) tactical shooter looks like a blast. Run around enemy encampments, collect weaponry, and blow holes in the heads of your foes. A gamer’s game if I’ve ever seen one.
Skirmishes take place all around the world and even in space! You’ll fight throughout the day and night, in hot and cold weather, in snow and rain. The enemy is skilled – there’re terrorists from all over the world and they have cutting-edge technologies at their disposal: teleportation and various mechanized combat systems. Our heroes will face great challenges – artillery strikes, insuperable force fields, automated turrets, suicide soldiers and giant humanoid robots.
Symphony
Also recently released on GOG.com, this music-based vertical shmup has you shooting the hell out of song-spawn. Though every level looks basically the same, you can use your own songs to randomly generate the enemy flood.
A mysterious entity is absorbing and corrupting your music before your very eyes. You must battle through your own song collection, discover items, customize your ship and fight boss enemies to liberate the Symphony of Souls and reclaim your music!
Deponia
An adventure game set on a garbage dump planet. This game is beautifully animated and I just might personally spend my hard-earned loonies on this particular title. The screenshots remind me a bit of the Eureka 7 anime, which is intriguing.
He is part of the lowest social class, doomed to live his life in literal mountains of trash. He hopes for an opportunity to get into the world of the rich, who live in a floating city high above the clouds. Fate seems to smile on the snotty good-for-nothing when one day the attractive lady named Goal from the higher sector plummets into one of the trash heaps. Rufus decides to help the young woman out by taking her back to her husband. When he notices that Goal’s husband is a dead ringer for himself, he hatches a diabolical scheme to gain access to the upper world. However, things don’t work out quite as planned, since he has feelings for the beauty which limits his usual unscrupulousness.
Babel Rising
Take on the role of God as you try to hinder the progress of foolish humans as they attempt to stubbornly create the Tower of Babel. This was a title originally released for various motion- and touchscreen-control platforms, though I’m fairly sure mouse control would work just as well.
Babel Rising lets you play as a God and use your powers to prevent humans from building the Tower of Babel. Hurl bolts of lightning, cause massive earthquakes, or unleash gigantic floods upon the Babylonians.
Rigonauts
This cute-as-punch indie title has you creating siege engines and then going up against other siege engines. These things appear to be strapped together with gum and will more than anything, check it out!
Rigonauts is the fantastical building battle game from Engient. Snap together the ultimate vessel and send your crew of Hobs into battle. With a well designed ship and a clever plan, your crew will smash and blast past an assortment of strange and dangerous foes. Of course no single plan survives the enemy and each tactical tweak will bring you closer to victory.
Unmechanical
Another cute little puzzle game, this one has the potential to be quite addictive. Great music and lonely, endearing images mark this one as unique… Though I can’t help thinking of Old Aperture when looking at some of the screens.
Unmechanical is a puzzle adventure that combines tricky puzzle solving, alluring exploration, and an engrossing atmosphere. Set in a fantastic world of flesh, rock and steel, your journey to freedom requires you to solve a great variety of puzzling challenges, and while it’s easy to pick up and play, later challenges may prove very difficult indeed.
The Secret World
It’s finally here! A fresh take on the MMORPG genre, this one pits you against urban myth and strange creatures in the vein of X-Files and Supernatural. The episodic, story-driven gameplay and total character-building control keep this game from falling into the melting pot with all the other MMOs saturating the market.
Hidden within our own modern-day world is a secret world. A world where every myth, legend, and conspiracy theory is true. And now, dark forces are on the move and secrets that should have remained forever buried have finally been uncovered. The world is about to discover that the terrors that have plagued our nightmares are all very real.
Dark days are here. Everything is true. Everything.
English Country Tune
This abstract puzzler reminds me so much of the Box-Pushing genre that was once popular in Japan. Americans might know the genre from the games Boxxle or Box Pusher. Yeah, It’s a little bit like that except crazy complicated. Only seeing gameplay footage will really show you what I mean.
Over the course of more than a hundred levels situated throughout 17 worlds, you’ll become acquainted with a wide variety of very different mechanics, none of them what they first may appear, and which will combine together in challenging ways.
MapleStory
Do I re4ally need to explain what MapleStory is? Basically it’s a side-scrolling action-adventure Korean MMO with a heavy emphasis on killing mobs and collecting items. It’s fun and cute, but really is very grind-heavy.
Whoosh! Leave reality behind and enter the world of MapleStory, where a cast of unique characters can’t wait to meet you, where a portal to adventure hides in every trash can and phone booth, and where you and your friends can customize your characters however you like.
And that’s it! I’m very excited about a couple of these games, and I hope it doesn’t show too much. Here’s a couple of trailers from… Random games… Which I may or may not be excited about.
