Category Archives: Indie

And so another platformer manages to escape the gloomy limbo that is Xbox Live Arcade.

Quite why Limbo took a year to find its way I have no idea, maybe it couldn’t find the door shrouded in darkness… *does research* Rather more predictably, it turns out the awkward bouncer that is Microsoft decided to bar Limbo entry onto it’s niche platform, the personal computer. In spite of it showing quite the appetite for indie platformers. Another score for common sense.

But to call Limbo a platformer is a slight understatement. Sure, it’s 2D and you have to do a fair bit of jumping, but your protagonist is by no means a contender for the 2012 long-jump. Everything about the boy you control reminds you that he is still alive: His eyes shine brighter than anything in the black and white world around him, his run is imbued with a sense of innocence and helplessness – traits that are incredibly human, and seldom evoked in games. When the boy pulls a lever it seems to require every inch of his life, a life that I have squandered on far too many occasions. Continue reading →

Some games are adept at teaching history in spite of your best efforts to avoid everything baring any resemblance to education. Jamestown is no such game. The year is 1619. The English are at war with the Spanish – “well the game’s only a couple of decades off…” The war is being fought out over the outskirts of English expansion, on Mars. “Wait, what?!”

If there’s anything that’ll draw me into the warm fold of a bygone genre its such an absurd display of imagination. Jamestown is a shoot ‘em up, in true Space Invaders fashion you’re meant to obliterate the enemy multitude whilst evading their unrelenting attempts to shoot down your ship. Of course, the first time you play Jamestown you won’t be paying enough attention to any of this. Rather, you’ll be ogling Final Form’s beautiful, pixelated realisation of a colonized Mars as it scrolls past in the background. Which is why you’ll promptly die. Woops. Continue reading →

So you want to know about the fate of the world huh? Well, to tell the truth its pretty shitty. Fortunately, the game on the other hand is quite good (see what I did there, oh the hilarity!). So, the set up: You have somehow landed the job of world dictator, but it’s okay – you’re no Gaddafi, you’re of the cuddly dictatorial variety, like… God? Continue reading →