Indie Game Stand is doing a thing where they highlight one free indie game per day, then you can “buy” it with a donation to child’s play and get it in your game wallet on their site along with some extra stuff for certain games. Yesterday’s was Knytt Stories with an exclusive bonus game, today’s is A Fistful of Gun.
Hmmm i didn’t see the very awesome looking Heart Machine here so far (maybe it had it’s own, now long sunk, thread?):
And some latest RPS stuff on it’s current state etc:
Not ‘little’ at all, and i can’t seem to find the thread i thought this game had (looked back 15 pages or so!). An alpha walkthrough of a certain part of the up coming Dreamfall Chapters:
Looks and sounds really good. And here is the games main website:
‘Long live the Queen’: a suitable title for a game for me to pimp a little in this thread (being a royalist of sorts ( it’s more complex than that off course)).
http://www.hanakogames.com/llq.shtml
RPS rightup thing:
It is currently sitting on my wifes desktop (the demo that is), running through the first few bars of the music ‘God Save the Queen’ on the title screen, and i will give impressions later, assuming my missus plays it. The RPS stuff makes it sound quite interesting indeed.
Long Live the Queen is a game I wish I never bought. Unless I’m missing something, it is just a bunch of trial and error. Play and see what events pop up, eventually die. Then based on that knowledge select your classes. Play and make it farther. Rinse and repeat.
Ouch. Well my other half didn’t get to die in the demo, but she liked it (it reminded her of a new Princess Maker). Hmm maybe it is one of those games where the dying IS the game?
Let me know if she finds more to it than trial and error. Some people might just like following the story told by the events, but I was hoping for something with some more strategy to it.
No biggie, but you should post something like this in the Little Indie Games Worth Playing thread. That thread is to game reviews as this one is to game previews!
Well as you can see this is not decided as an indie game worth playing, so much as worth knowing about (probably). IF i had known it was great i certainly would have used the other thread (and it is not my fault we have two threads to argue about either).
The most crazy game title ever. FREE. will take about 20mins. Then you die. I have not tried it yet.
‘The Rapture Is Here And You Will Be Forcibly Removed From Your Home’
RPS right-up here:
This looks and sounds (when you read about it) fantastic. Exactly the kind of game i’m a gamer for. Neo Scavenger:
http://bluebottlegames.com/main/
It has a demo (which i am downloading). And an RPS write-up here:
Edit: Thanks Pod, no idea how i messed that link up.
Signal Ops. Seems like this game slipped under the radar. Odd team-based 1st person espionage/stealth game where you control different agents that have different special abilities. The whole vibe of the game is great, and quite immersive even with the cartoon/painterly aesthetic. The controls are admittedly a little challenging, but should be no problem for anyone that played old Looking Glass games like Thief!
I really enjoyed Signal Ops despite some tricky control issues and a steep learning curve. It definitely deserves more attention. It’s kind of like that old Amiga game, Hired Guns (The beta of the unreleased Unreal engine powered sequel is available online if you’re keen for more multi-viewpoint action).
Digression:
I worked at the developer of that “new” Hired Guns game (VR-1, previously Devil’s Thumb Entertainment), although I didn’t work on it. Had no idea someone from the team leaked it. (I probably know the guy who leaked it.) One of the artists/level designers was the late brilliant Adam Adamowicz, the guy probably most responsible for the look of Bethesda’s Fallout games. I can’t say the game was particularly great, but it’s nice to see years of hard work not totally disappear down the memory hole.
I had no idea someone was making a new Hire Guns, though by the look of this it would have been about 2002? I don’t know how a Quake-speed style FPS game would work in a Hired Guns style game, though. Was the original Hired Guns fully real time? (I only ever played the demo). Space Hulk was manageable due to the small amount of pause time, and I feel like games similar to Mass Effect have effectively cornered the “full party real time combat” shtick that hired guns was going far, albeit in third person.
edit: PS, Zak meant to include this link http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/01/17/impressions-neo-scavenger/
Oh man! That’s awesome. I played through the entire game last year and thought it was really cool. Was it just Psygnosis withdrawing from the pc market that left the game in limbo because it seems like it’s virtually finished? I was really surprised by how decent the AI was, especially considering the landscape isn’t flat, and that you can issue multiple squad orders. I would’ve been all over it in 2000/2001.
It sucks that Hired Guns, Xcom: Alliance, and DNF (Unreal 1 era) never saw the light of day. I noticed that the late Adam Adamowicz worked on H.G. Some of the urban environments are gorgeous for the time. There’s one assassination/stakeout mission that takes place in a non-linear Bladerunner-esque city that’s particularly impressive. I’m such a sucker for neon in games.
This is a pretty cool game, though it’s built on really shitty technology with terrible resolution options. The game wasn’t what I expected – I expected hex, turned based combat. Instead it was a kind of choose your own adventure, but I like it. I stumbled around the area, found a few clothes and sleeping bags, went to sleep, got woken in the night by a bandit and beat him to death with a stick in a midnight duel – he wast mostly running away, the coward, took his stuff and carried it all around in 2 cardboard boxes, stumbled around thirsty looking for water and then got into another fight with 2 bandits. I found it hard to visualise this battle as both people were listed as “bandit” in the blurry log and I couldn’t tell which one was attacking me at what moment. In the end I died, though I think one of them was about to die.
Why couldn’t I talk to them? :'(
Also, I had the tracking skill but couldn’t make a fire?
Hired Guns was in development when I showed up in 1999 and probably was killed in 2001? Yeah, Psygnosis went incommunicado for a long time and then basically vaporized. I think there were attempts to sell it to other publishers, but it looked pretty dated by then, having been built on pre-release versions of the first Unreal engine. And you can imagine the art sacrifices that had to be made to enable four separate renderings of the world all the time. Actually, I had the honor of moderating their postmortem on the game… I wish I remember more of what they said.
To answer Pod’s question, the game was pretty fast-paced (but not Quake-fast), but your characters had AI they would use to fend off enemies when you were controlling someone else. In many ways, the game’s reach might have exceeded its grasp, but there’s admirable stuff in there. And let me tell you, the guys (and girl: Heather Sowards making music and audio) who made that game were–or became in the process–some of the most endearingly off-the-wall folks I’ve ever worked with. A lot of that can be attributed to the one-of-a-kind humor of Mr. Adamowicz. Most of them are in other places in the industry, still doing their thing.
There’s some pretty strange dialogue in the game. I would probably be banned if I brought up one particular bar conversation!
The trailer sells it as a fast-paced shooter, but it’s very much plays like it’s own thing. Each of the team members has their own special trait (regenerating health, night vision, strength, stealth) and most levels require the player to split the squad up (ala Illusion’s Hidden and Dangerous series) and switch between multiple spots on the map to progress - some of the levels are huge! There are a few big firefights, but it’s pretty varied. You can order covering fire as a distraction while flanking; there’s lengthy exploration sections, quick puzzles like hunting for switches, turning off machines or alternative routes, and a number of areas you can scout before the NPC’s turn on you which is a nice change of pace. If you use a Glidewrapper (I used Nglide) you shouldn’t have any problems running it if you’re interested in checking it out.
Loving the Hired Guns talk :) This is pretty much what i remember about it, the music really brings it all back:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLoYnUc5Wt4
That ‘Quake-like’ remake thing is quite a different paced beast isn’t it? Even if the original was not tbs, it had a certain pace that meant it was reasonably possible to control your 4 man team (and probably it was less hard/lethal than the old Space Hulk game of the same era, that game was pretty chaotic much of the time i found). Anyway the original Hired Guns had something, but could/should have been developed into a true classic with some more work (background story/setting/puzzle elements etc).