e7

In a discussion about mutable terrain somebody mentioned e7, which turned out to be pretty amazing.  The first, most obvious standout is the gorgeous visuals:

These static shots don’t do it justice.  You really need to see the parallax, lighting, and the little details like meteors or ships crashing in the background to fully appreciate it.  Although very sparse, the world does also have some nice little touches like the sunken ruins you can see in the first screen shot.

Excellently complementing those empty, haunted scenes is some similarly quiet, eery audio.  Most of it consists of just the wind blowing and occasional beeps and knocks as you do things, with just a few musical notes to accent the mood.  It’s very subdued and conveys a quiet, exploratory, introspective atmosphere perfectly.

Finally, the gameplay is pretty novel.  You slide around the world like a little hockey punk of a drone or ship, deforming the terrain (maybe via some local gravity generator or something???) and then releasing to launch yourself around as it rebounds.  Using this you need to jump and wall jump between platforms, as well as hurl yourself at unfriendlies to knock them apart.  It’s a really interesting mechanic and implemented well, it all runs really smoothly even on my older laptop.

The one downside of the game is that I think it takes the mechanic a bit too far.  Some of the fights are very difficult, time consuming, and very easy to fail at the last moment and have to start all over.  I couldn’t bring myself to play through the last third of the game and wound up watching a YouTube recap to catch some highlights and the end of the story.  The latter was also somewhat predictable, but basically the way it had to be given the atmosphere.

So, e7’s not a game that I think has a ton of replay value or long term engagement as it’s somewhat of a 1-trick pony, but it’s well worth giving it a play for the great aesthetic and the novel gameplay mechanics.  You can check it out on Jay is Games as well as a bunch of other places.

Luftrauser

I stumbled across this game Luftrauser from Vlambeer the other day.  Personally I think the imagery trends just a bit too much toward glorifying the 3rd Reich—and the sequel Luftrausers they’re ostensibly working on is much, much worse in that regard—but there’s no denying the gameplay is very very good.  There are some weird jags in the motion every now and then, but otherwise the planes fly super smoothly, the controls are intuitive yet interesting, and within a super limited aesthetic they create some really neat effects, like the water spray when you fly too close to the deck.  Definitely worth giving it a spin.

Mission in Space: The Lost Colony

This was released earlier in the year so I’m a bit late, but I want to highlight Mission in Space: The Lost Colony, a videogame by Storm Alligator.  This is one of the best games I’ve played in some time now, Flash or otherwise.

Lock and load!

Oh man, that hallway looks creepy! I don’t like creepy hallways!!!

For one reason or another I never really played XCOM, but I clearly would have loved it.  Mission in Space plays somewhat like a simplified, shorter, Flash version of XCOM.  You control a squad of space marines as they attempt to clear out an infested colony.  The story is pretty standard sci-fi alien spaceship invasion stuff, but there is a good narrative to the missions: Regrouping with stranded troopers, collecting data cubes, locking important bulkheads, destroying the nest, getting the hell out of there, and so on.

Farro, what the hell are you doing all the way over there?!?! How did you get there?!?!?

The game is turn based and the later missions especially require some thinking about your overall mission strategy.  Toward the end it gets pretty hard, and don’t expect to get all your troopers out alive.  There are just enough inventory and upgrade options throughout the game to add some flair and require real overarching decision making, without becoming overwhelming or boring.  A lot of the skills and kit acquired as you go on are critical in the later missions.  I was hoping for a few more types of aliens, but there’s definitely enough variety in the missions to keep you engrossed.

Gimme gimme gimmeeeee!

Artwork throughout is gorgeous.  It has a fairly distinctive style to it and manages to be fun and just short of cartoony while also having some nice darker hints.  I particularly like the use of shadows, including the fog of war and the vague hints of a larger structure around the borders of parts of the colony you don’t explore.

Perhaps most importantly, the game combines good strategic play with a super intuitive interface.  Unfortunately the release version has thrown in a lot of tutorial info boxes that clutter up and slow down the opening levels a bit, but otherwise the gameplay is extremely smooth.  Essentially no matter where you click, the game takes the action you would want it to take, whether it’s clicking on the map, dragging the map, clicking on an alien, action icons, trooper icons, whatever.  It’s actually one of the most intuitive game interfaces I’ve ever used.

Let the world burn!

All in all, Mission in Space is a rock solid sci-fi strategy game.  It’s actually the only game I’ve played through to the end in years, so I highly recommend it to anyone at all interested in the genre.

There’s a bit more description in the highly positive Jay is Games review.  You can play the game at missioninspace.com as well as a number of portals like Kongregate and Jay is Games.