The mechanics in Foiled are astonishingly simple but not void of nuance. The game is good at being accessible while retaining an element of competitive play.
Oh, and it made me beat the shit out of my brother. And it made my girlfriend beat the shit out of me. Rare is it that a game can provoke violence from normally docile beings. I like to think that’s a testament to its quality.
The reasoning for these brutal shoulder punches, I imagine, is that the outcome of a match directly reflects upon a player’s skill. And when that skill has a lot to do with head games, and without the ability to blame complicated controls, losing a match can affect your ego. I’ll explain:
Players have only two attacks. Swipe, which is an upwards slash to fend off death from above and Dive, a jumping attack that causes the player character to plunge violently downwards. The foils idle menacingly, poised parallel to the stage, ready to hurt. If two foils collide, they deflect. If a foil touches the other player, they perish and the victor collects their soul.
At this point, a goal appears on-screen. The recently felled player spawns at the goal to defend it while their assailant attempts to reach that goal with the soul in hand. If they are killed, then they spawn at a goal and the roles are reversed. If a player reaches a goal, they get a point. If a player gets three points, they become a giant, invincible fencer who will obliterate their rival. They also win the round.
Win two rounds, win the match. The essence of simplicity.
Only, not. From the get go, the tension is high. Two players face off, unsure of what the other one will do. Through repeated rounds, they start to get an idea of how their opponent plays, but you can never rely entirely on the ability to read your opponent. And you have to realize that they are adapting to you as the matches progress, too. Even playing defensively is unnerving, as an offensive player, who will usually have to jump to be aggressive, can simply bait you into a missed swipe. They can land behind you, in front of you, atop you… and if you make a bad read, then you’re more screwed than my attention craving sister.*
The stages are extremely vertical, encouraging lots of wall jumps and climbing to reach the goals. The systems of the game cause the position of power to chaotically swing between the two characters. When a player falls, they stand stoic sentry over their rival, with a very desirable footing.
And that ability to frequently deny a point is amazing. You never feel entirely disempowered, and no matter how the game has played out, there always seems to be some sliver of hope to edge out a victory.
Foiled represents a spectacular effort from first time developer, Gabe Cuzillo. I look forward to seeing what he produces in the future.
Oh, and it’s free. So find a friend and stop being a total lame-ass.
Hey, you! The indie game connoisseur reading this. You’ve been missing out, and you don’t even know it. I was missing out too, until I became Indie Gamer Chick. You see, there’s a platform on the Xbox Live Marketplace called Xbox Live Indie Games. XBLIG should be cherished as a landmark in gaming history, because it represents the first self-publishing platform on a major game console. Instead, XBLIG has a reputation of being full of less-than-quality games. It’s not an entirely unearned reputation. But XBLIG isn’t just about avatar games and Minecraft clones and text-adventures featuring anime boobs so impractically large that the Surgeon General would declare them cancerous. Since November of 2008, XBLIG has played host to some of the most creative and innovative game developers on the indie scene. In fact, if you’re a regular patron of Indie Royale, you’ve already encountered many developers and games that got their start on XBLIG.
And that’s why I’m here today, to present you with eight PC ports of the best Xbox Live Indie Games ever made. Two years ago, I started reviewing XBLIGs at my blog, Indie Gamer Chick. This community has been amazing to me, and I owe them a debt that I can never pay back. I’m not always nice to their games, but this community has shown a commitment to creativity and a desire to improve. They are indie gaming’s future superstars. As the sun sets on this current generation, and the community goes their separate ways, this is one last chance to show that they were here and they were important to the indie scene. This is what you’ve been missing out on. These are my boys. I’m Indie Gamer Chick, and this is my bundle.
And for those of you who are curious why (insert name of well-known XBLIG) isn’t part of this bundle, it probably comes down to two words that I’ve come to hate: scheduling conflict. I’m now more fearful of those words than I am of my doctor telling me I have 24 hours to live. He would have to work in scheduling conflict for it to register with me. “Cathy, I know you have plans tomorrow, but they’re causing a scheduling conflict. With the coroner.”
What are you waiting for? Go get it. Like, right now. It’s live at IndieRoyale.com!
Let’s get something straight here: you’re not going to survive an actual zombie apocalypse. You will die. Quickly. It will be embarrassing, quite frankly. And no, playing Dead Rising or Dead Island or Walking Dead or any other game with “Dead” in the title hasn’t given you a leg up on the rest of humanity. Dead Pixels won’t help you, either. But at least when the zombies are chowing down on your spine, you can remember the good times you had playing one of the most clever survival-oriented zombie shooters to hit the indie scene in a long while. You have to properly manage equipment, take advantage of a robust shopping system, and conserve ammunition as you take on thousands of brainless, slobbering ghouls. I’m talking about zombies, not Justin Bieber fans.
Take an old-school 2D platformer, dress it up in John Kricfalusi-like visuals, and then stick so much stuff to collect in it that your family will hold an intervention if you attempt to get it all. That’s Chester, and it’s one of the best pure-platformers of the decade. As you play, you’ll gather different characters and graphic skins that alter the way the game is played. You’ll have to mix and match backgrounds with characters that Chester is a game with style that creates substance, like a guy in a meth lab wearing an Armani suit. Although this is preferable and much more legal.
There are a lot of games out there that let you walk on the ceiling and do all kinds of wacky gravity effects, but Antipole stuck out to me. A clever, twitchy platformer starring, and let’s be frank about this, a guy who looks like Michael Jackson wearing Carmen Sandiego’s trench-coat. With well designed levels and the aforementioned gravity mechanic that you can use to clear gaps or drop enemies into a pool of spikes, I think you’ll really enjoy Antipole’s fast-paced breed of platforming.
Imagine a Metroidvania starring a radioactive feline with no method of attack that must save his girlfriend by retrieving keys obtained by answering trivia questions. Did you imagine it? LIAR! You did not! Nobody in their right mind would envision such a silly concept. Well, the guys at MonsterJail games are not in a right state of mind, and thank God for that. LaserCat isn’t particularly challenging, but it’s just a fun, enjoyable little old-school romp. Besides, radioactive cats are cool. Anyone who disagrees with that is provably wrong. Especially dogs.
Smooth Operators is a call-center simulation game. NO, STOP! Do not bail on this bundle and head over to Humble or Indie Gala. It doesn’t sound like a winning concept, but Smooth Operators can and will take over your life, and you’ll love every moment of it. You have to secure clients, staff a building, get the right equipment.. and everyone has already closed the description and gone off to check out what other games are in this bundle. Well, joke’s on them. They won’t be able to resist the temptation of trying Smooth Operators. Once they do, there’s no escape. It’s a time sink of the most potently fun variety. Protip: if you want to unlock all the items, type IndieGamerChick in the cheat menu. That’s right, I’m a cheat code. Highlight of my life.
Little Racers STREET (which you will accidentally call Little Street Racers, it’s unavoidable) combines RPG-style upgrading with online twelve-player action. You don’t have to be deeply into racers to enjoy what STREET has to offer. I’m certainly not. But the wide variety of tracks, cars, upgrades, and camera options kept me playing and experimenting for days. The mix of old-school arcade racing with modern design sensibilities works. Also, if you have a loved one and you want to see how far you can push them before they stop talking to you, there’s no better way to find out where that line is by intentionally crashing into them when you’re losing a race. In the case of my boyfriend, it was four times. After the fifth time, he didn’t speak to me for a week. And it was totally worth it.
SpyLeaks has a lot in common with the NES puzzle series Adventure of Lolo. But, like the best tributes to classic gaming franchises, SpyLeaks improves upon the original concept and comes up with ideas of its own. Here, an element of stealth is added to the Lolo formula, along with timed gauntlets that are among the most inventive puzzles I’ve come across in my gaming lifetime. There’s also a little bit of space-shooter mixed in, if for no other reason, to assure the minimum quota of aloofness a true indie requires. But the puzzles take center stage, and the puzzles in SpyLeaks are so smart that they’re getting an honorary doctorate from MIT. It’s also a lot of fun too, and fun is all that matters.
Imagine the arcade classic Defender if they remade it the same way Namco did for Pac-Man with Pac-Man Championship Edition. That’s basically what Orbitron does, and it does it very well. A fast paced shooter based around achieving high scores within a tight time limit. Developer Firebase Industries seems to have classic gaming on the mind. They went on to create XBLIG sleeper hit ArcadeCraft, either proving there’s still a market for golden age of gaming nostalgia, or that you can shoehorn “Craft” into any game and make it sell ten times as much as it would otherwise. Maybe Indie Royale should consider calling this the BundleCraft Bundle.. of Craft.
Early on in Thomas Was Alone, I really didn’t get the hype for it. “THIS is the game all the cool kids are talking about?” I tweeted, somewhat baffled. I mean, don’t get me wrong. The game was alright. But my fans had been trumpeting this one since it launched on PC last summer, promising me that it was a platformer unlike anything I’ve played before. To a degree, they were right. You just can’t tell right away. Thomas Was Alone is one of those slow-starters that wakes up at seven but doesn’t get out of bed until eight.
At heart, Thomas Was Alone is a minimalist platform-puzzler with the hook being an eccentric storyline that gives personality to the squares and rectangles you control. Again, it’s something that didn’t grab me at first. It came across as artsy-fartsy, bordering on pretentious. But, about a third of the way through, it started to grow on me. Who would have guessed that it was possible to give such distinct traits to fundamental shapes, with no animation sprites or anything resembling humanity? It does it so well that I would think one could consider Thomas a candidate for strongest writing of the year. But I have to disqualify it for that, on account of a couple groan-inducing references to the Cake is a Lie and the Arrow to the Knee. God damn it so much. Is there some kind of code on the indie development scene that I’m not aware of? Like a secret handshake or something? Two guys go up to each other at a developer conference, lock pinkys, touch ring-fingers with the other hand, say “The Cake is a Lie!” and then fall down laughing until it hurts because that will NEVER EVER grow old or stop being funny ever no matter what? Well it’s not funny and it hasn’t been for years. No matter how many ways you guys try to make it work, it never does. You’ve beaten this dead horse into dust, and now you’re just beating your fist on the blood-soaked ground underneath it. STOP IT!!
I think everyone’s favorite character is Claire, the big blue block with delusions of grandeur. I would love to get more of her story.
Anyway, mostly strong writing. However, it ended without giving me a sense of closure for the characters that I had grown fond of, or anything resembling a satisfactory conclusion for the overall story. It just sort of ends. And don’t look for the DLC to provide the comfort of an ending either, because it doesn’t. I guess Thomas Was Alone’s finale is supposed to be open to interpretation or something, but I was left disappointed.
You know what? I don’t play platformers for their stories. If they’re decent or better, that’s just a bonus. For this genre, gameplay is king. In which case, Thomas Was Alone is at best a knight, bordering on a rook. After a mind-numbingly dull start, the level design picks up momentum about one-third of the way in. By time you’ve reached the finish line, you’ll have played some of the most inspired levels seen in platforming in a long while. But, the ratio of slog-to-awesome is not so great. A good portion of levels revolve around stacking your characters in a way to make a staircase for the less jumpy in your squad. A handful of these would have been just fine. But sometimes you’ll have to build the exact same staircase five or more times in a single level. It’s tedious busy-work that needlessly cramps the game’s whimsical style.
When Thomas Was Alone’s level design is good, it’s really good. So good that my ear-to-ear grin was in place because of just how clever a world was designed and not because of the narration. Quite frankly, after a way-too-long tutorial sequence with levels and platforming so basic that it makes Atari-era stuff like Pitfall! look advanced, I wasn’t expecting it to be as good as it was. Then I would be hit with some pretty ingenious stages that involve timing, precision platforming, and thinking outside-the-box. I loved these moments. I’ve always said I’ll take those “ta-da!” moments in puzzlers over the best headshots in shooters or game-winning shots in sports games. Thomas doesn’t provide a lot of those moments, but when it does, it’s special.
My only possible complaint about the controls (outside of the DLC pack) is switching between the characters always felt a bit cumbersome. I’m not sure if the Vita handles this with touch-controls, but if it doesn’t, that would be a good idea.
Don’t worry, puzzle haters. There is nothing here that will bend your brain or make you have to consult GameFAQs. At most, Thomas will ask of you to apply some forward thinking and course plotting. Most of the puzzles revolve around what order you guide the blocks to the goal of each stages. Victory is achieved through having all blocks in their unique exit doors at the same time. Once you have a feel for the abilities and limitations of each block, figuring how to get them to the doors comes naturally. Actually, it almost becomes instinctual. It’s so rare that a puzzle-platformer does that to me that I can’t help but be impressed. It also helps that the controls are smooth and the main game never asks more of a player than can be reasonably expected. I don’t consider myself especially skilled at platformers, but I must be getting better. I figure I died probably around a dozen times over the course of the game’s one-hundred levels. Thomas Was Alone gives a trophy out for dying 100 times, but by time I had finished the game, I still hadn’t earned it. I’m pretty proud of that.
I’m not here to give the game an undeserved blowjob though. There’s plenty of problems with it. I’ve described some above, but the one that gets me the most is the difficulty curve. Or lack thereof. Other critics have noted how perfect the curve is. It makes me wonder if they played the same game as me. Even late in Thomas Was Alone, I encountered stages that offered no challenge at all to finish. The sixth world (really the seventh world, since the world numbering starts in the zeros) especially stands out. I wasn’t timing it, but it probably took between ten to fifteen minutes to complete while possessing the most basic and dull stages since the opening tutorial. Just weird that this would pop-up over half-way through. But stages like this are all over the place. I guess the excuse for these (and the overly long fish-in-barrel stages that start this thing) is they’re there as place-holders to drive the story. Well that’s a shitty excuse. A platformer should never let proper storytelling get in the way of proper pacing. People probably should buy the game for the game. I mean, it’s a pretty good game. So while I enjoyed the story, I almost resent the fact that the vastly superior gameplay was in part sacrificed for it. The result is a curve that appeared to be drawn by someone laying in a hammock during an earthquake.
After finishing the final stage, you’re treated to an extremely brief ending, and then the credits roll. I was disappointed not just by the ending but by the last level. Thomas Was Alone goes out with a whimper instead of a bang, which left me wanting more. After stewing on it overnight, I decided to grab the overpriced DLC pack. My intent was to get my craving for more Thomas out of my system. Mission accomplished, but not in the way I intended.
The DLC levels are so horrible and mismatched with the main body of the game that I actively questioned whether developer Mike Bithell had entered his emo phase in life when he designed them. Thomas Was Alone was a quirky logic-puzzle-platformer. The DLC levels alternate between back-to-basics platforming (that you have to pay extra to suffer through) and punisher-stages designed with nothing else in mind than a huge body count. What a stupid decision on developer’s part. These levels do not remotely have the almost childish innocence the main game does. It’s also the first time the controls didn’t feel right. Benjamin, the star of the DLC, possess a jet pack, but the only use they could come up with for it was navigating narrow corridors of spikes. The controls here are so touchy and the margin for error so low that any possible fun that could be had gives way to frustration and boredom. Benjamin’s Flight has twenty stages, and while the cutesy story is present, I can honestly say that I didn’t find one single stage of this pack to be worth paying any amount of money for. It might be the worst level pack I’ve ever purchased. I just don’t get why the tone changed so much. It would be like announcing that they’re going to make a new Dark Knight movie, only this one will be a buddy comedy and Batman is being recast as Adam Sandler.
Submitted for your consideration: level 11.6 of the DLC. I nominate this for “worst stage in a good game.” It’s repetitive and insanely long for what it offers. Like the rest of the pack, it adds no value to the overall game.
So here’s where I stand: Thomas Was Alone is pretty decent, but it takes a while to get that way. I wish the developer had focused more on ingenuity. When the levels in Thomas are clever, it’s one of the best of its breed to come out in a while. There’s just enough meat here to call it a must-buy. At the same time, the story ultimately left me feeling unsatisfied, and the game only has enough “this is amazing!” moments that it ultimately feels under-realized. You can’t count on the DLC to drown-out those thoughts, because it feels rushed and sort of half-assed. So different from the feel of the main quest that I was a little surprised to learn they came from the same guy who had awed me just yesterday. If I had my way, Thomas Was Alone would be alone, because I would bury that DLC in the desert next to unsold Atari carts.
$7.99 with PlayStation Plus discount (normally priced $9.99) plus $3.49 (Benjamin’s Flight DLC) said “hey now, Red Kryptonite has caused all sorts of problems, so don’t go there” in the making of this review.
Thomas Was Alone is Chick Approved, but for God’s sake, skip the DLC unless it’s free. And even then, you’re not missing anything by ignoring it.
You know what I don’t understand? Portable gaming consoles. I get the concept, I think. It’s a console, but you can take it anywhere. Cool, right? Except, when I think of situations where I use a portable gaming device, I typically only have a few minutes to play. I’m not into gaming in car rides (even the nice Vita screen is unplayable with the sun glaring), I don’t do a lot of plane rides, and when I’m at home, I would rather play a game on a proper console. The only times where it makes sense for me to play a portable game are when I’ve got ten minutes or less to kill. Waiting in a line, or out having a cigarette, or with whatever time I have to spare during a lunch break. That’s why I’m baffled at the types of portable games that are popular on Vita or 3DS these days. Hey, I loved Persona 4 Golden as much as the next person, but I would have loved it just as much if I had played in on the PlayStation 3. Probably more, in fact. Why does Uncharted even need a stripped down portable version? Why did Nintendo make a port of Ocarina of Time one of the flagship launch-window titles for 3DS? These aren’t games designed to be portable. These are console games that require significant time investments. What if I just want to play something for five minutes while taking a dump?
The only valid argument I’ve heard is “what if you have to share the television with others?” Granted, that was never a problem with me. Only child here that had her own television from an early age. I guess my parents weren’t keen on watching endless reruns of Barney and Sesame Street. Still, as someone who is very fond of consoles, I’ve oddly never had the desire to carry one around with me. Brian says I’m almost certainly in the minority on that. I say that just proves how much smarter I am than everyone else.
And don’t say I don’t know humility. I do. It’s what measures moisture in the air.
The kind of portable gaming sessions I want are readily available. They’re typically found on phones. Most of the time. Year Walk is a bizarre horror-adventure game based on Swedish mythology. It seems like it could be a decent title, but this is one of those cases where the game failed to grab my interest right out of the gate and I just couldn’t get into it. I’m not a big fan of point and click games. This is more exploration-oriented than average, but I fucking hate games where you wander around with no clue of where to go, what your objectives are, or what the ultimate goal is. Plus, it had features I’m not too keen on, like sound-based puzzles. I typically play my iPhone games with the sound turned off, because I have a strong desire to not annoy those around me. I mean, more so than usual.
I don’t deny Year Walk is spooky. It really is. But I don’t feel it’s put to good use on iOS. I would have rather played this on a television.
I didn’t finish Year Walk. Not even close. I spent most of the game just aimlessly shambling about. Yea, the settings were spooky, but I would have rather played this on a console, or the Vita. I probably should have fired this up on the iPad, where at least I could have seen things better. But, the truth was, I didn’t want to play it anymore. I was bored. I think horror-adventure fans might get a lot more mileage out of this than I did. Really, I was just disappointed that this wasn’t a game about Wicket’s first birthday.
. .
. .
. .
Get it? Wicket was an Ewok. Ewok sounds like Year Walk?
. .
. .
You know, Brian told me that one was no good. I didn’t listen to him. And now he’s gloating. He said “it’s too obscure a Star Wars pun and you have to make too large a logical leap to draw the connection.” Fine. Trying again: I thought Year Walk was boring. Would have been better if it had starred Luke Yearwalker.
. .
. .
. .
Ridiculous Fishing has absolutely no connection to Year Walk, other than being on iPhone. When I told someone I was reviewing this, they said “I’ve never liked a fishing game. Never ever ever.” Although I can’t say the same (I was quite fond of Sega Bass Fishing when I was ten), saying this is about fishing is like saying Punch-Out is an authentic boxing simulator. Here, you use the tilt-controls of your phone to lower a fishing lure to the bottom of the sea. While it’s descending, you want to avoid touching fish. Once you touch a fish, the descent stops and the lure starts to surface. Any fish you touch at this point are on the hook and being reeled in. When you reach the surface, the fish fly up in the air. At this point, you whip out a gun and shoot them.
No, seriously. You shoot them. With a gun. Okay, so it’s not the most ridiculous form of fishing I’ve ever seen. These Lithuanians I believe have that covered.
God bless YouTube.
Fishy fishy in the brook.. I wonder if Brooks Bishop hated that rhyme as a kid?
I’ve never, ever liked tilt-controls. Ridiculous Fishing is the first game that I truly enjoyed because of tilt-controls. It just works. It’s accurate, it feels natural, and it makes the game more fun. And Ridiculous Fishing is perfectly suited for micro-gaming sessions. Got five minutes to kill? Cast a line, scoop up some fish, shoot those fuckers up, and get back to what you were doing. It also has actual depth to it, with time-sinky upgrades and a decent (not spectacular) variety of fish to catch. In a sense, it’s the perfect mobile game. My biggest complaints are how there’s no jelly-fish repellent among the items. Well, that and the Game Center leaderboards are sort of limited. Oh, and maybe the game is a teeny-tiny bit overpriced at $2.99. A little steep for a game with no variety at all, especially on the iPhone market. Of course, Year Walk cost $3.99 and it’s on the wrong platform. It would probably make an excellent PC game, but at its price, it’s like paying LeBron James to play on your cricket team.
Wait, you mean we’re not going to eat them?
Year Walk was developed by Simogoand I really want to try it on a console at some point. Ouya, perhaps?
Foiled is available for free here.
Foiled has earned the Indie Gamer Team Seal of Approval.
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