General Gaming Snap judging pixel art indies: Spooky month 🕸

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 1 hour

Rating: ***½

 

2d mini-golf roguelike course with obstacles and power-ups that give you more shots and special abilities.  The music is particularly great, it really gives that catchy 16-bit sports game vibe.  Golf-wise, it has the smart idea of letting you reset the power of your shot.  You only lock it in when you pick your angle, which works like egg throwing in Yoshi's Island.  It's just enough friction to work and make you still sweat your shots.

 

The only thing I'm a little skeptical of is the balance of the "ace cards" you collect.  Some of them seem a lot more pointless than others, such as the practice shot card.  And 18 holes feels like a lot, especially if its hard enough to not beat on the first run.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: **½

 

A 2d platformer that follows a similar structure to a game like Minit.  Instead of having a limited time for trial and error, the differing paths lead to different endings. I'm guessing there's a true ending out there, but you'll be restarting from the same place over and over, which games like Minit avoid by giving you new checkpoints in the world.  You do however begin as new characters with different abilities like a higher jump as the old ones die, so that seems to be a form of progression.

 

Overall, it's alright?  Not a bad time, but kind of unremarkable as the look of it.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: **

 

It's not low effort, but it's a clone of 2d Mario like Giana Sisters.  In fact I'm pretty sure it references that game more directly.  Controls are decent, but it feels like your left/right momentum increases in the air more than on the ground.  I beat the first world and boss, and it already had a few too many single-tile jumps for my tastes.  Music is a step below the rest of the presentation.

 

Should be 16bitboy.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 10 minutes

Rating: **

 

Captures the NES aesthetic to a fault.  4:3 screen ratio, flicker and slowdown.  Its commendable that they were able to emulate that, but not so cool for a modern game.  Unlike Contra, you can't aim up or diagonally, but do get a quick moving jetpack that lets you fly for a while.  Enemies with more health have i-frames after being hit, and often spawn other enemies, which isn't a good design decision.

 

Overall, its very skippable if you've played any decent NES platform shooter.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: **

 

This might be one of the more obscure games on the list.  Was part of one of those itch.io bundles, as an early access project (which it never left).  It's a roguelike where you evolve new abilities based on what you eat.  There's some light survival elements that require you to munch on things to survive.  As it stands, there's not really much of a goal other than to eat a flying thing and go to the sky.

 

Love the concept, but as it stands its a bit too shallow to recommend.  I'll stick to E.V.O for now.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 40 minutes

Rating: ***

 

Another surprisingly good one.  You've played a game with its concepts before: grapple movement and enemy tossing.  What elevates it is the level design.  Each stage has a different goal or central mechanic hook, which has yet to repeat in the 8 or so levels I played so far.  No bottomless pits either.

I can't say its a great looking or sounding game compared to some of the others here.  I've never been a fan of the Genesis sound chip, and it goes for that vibe.  It animates well and feels good to play though.  So if you enjoyed Treasure games especially, there's something worth checking out here.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 45 minutes

Rating: ***

 

A Metroidvania with a slightly garish color scheme, justified as you returning color to the world.  Gameplay-wise it's very castlevania inspired, all the way to including a backdash.  The character outline makes me think they were most inspired by GBA/DS ones.

 

There's a Hollow Knight-like mechanic where you can recharge your magic/shield health by attacking enemies.  Difference here is that you can optionally recharge this meter after it depletes completely (leaving you with individual health points left).  So you can technically spam shots from the corner of a room at basic enemies.  Just don't get hit unaware.

 

Overall, its nothing unique, but is fun of what I played.  Progression and map design feels a little hollow.  The style points are probably the biggest thing going for it, as is the animation, but I'd still call it an acquired taste visually.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 15 minutes

Rating: **

 

This game has gotten high praise as an indie darling.  It could be that there's some big payoff later I'm just not seeing at this point.

 

Controls feel surprisingly great due to some heft to your cursor (even with the mouse).  But I quickly noped out after learning I had placed a bunch of items incorrectly, according to some unexplained rules running behind the scene.  I'd rather not waste my time guessing what the creator's OCD patterns are, which is the opposite of cathartic to me.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 15 minutes

Rating: ***

 

Action platformer that takes influence from a number of places.  You have three air jumps/dashes, and can wavedash like in Smash Bros Melee (love it!).  Every form of jumping and dashing is mapped to the same trigger button, so its never too cumbersome.  There's also a Viewtiful Joe styled zoom in + slow down mechanic.  And lastly, it's a dual-stick shooter where you fire with the right analog.

 

Like Viewtiful Joe, I think the slow down mechanic becomes an excuse to ramp up the difficulty, which I'm not a big fan of.  Visuals are a bit to simplistic for my tastes as well, maybe even a step below Grapple Force Rena.

[crispy4000]

 

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ****

 

Turns out digital crack is just as addictive as digital cocaine.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 15 minutes

Rating: **

 

Metroid 1 with better controls, but also slightly unresponsive.  Bosses are bland, enemies are bland, graphics are bland, etc.  Like Elliot Quest, it didn't need to exist, but its not nearly as offensive to play.  There might be a decent game here still if you bare it out.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: ***½

 

Another big surprise from EGS this week.  This has everything that makes Samurai Gun fun, plus space combat that controls surprisingly well.  In space, you can shoot out a wider spread if you conserve for a bit, temporarily activate protective shields, and use a dash boost.  After destroying a ship, the pilot is left to float around and needs to be ramned into or shot again, or else their ship will regenerate.  Then you can take the battle indoors, where ships (or ship bullets) can't travel.

 

I wish I tried this with some others instead of just myself, but I can absolutely see the potential.  It's not Killer Queen Black levels of amazing, and the art is rudimentary, but overall, I'm much more impressed than I expected to be.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: **½

 

Single-screen puzzle platformer with a teleporter gun, where the bullets you fire will warp you upon hitting a wall.  The core concept is good, but then they tell you that you can jump midair after hitting a wall, but it never seems to consistently work.  Worse, there's off screen locations that you may have to use this mechanic to reach.  I can appreciate it being a linear puzzle game instead of yet another Metroidvania, but it's forgettable.  Play VVVVVV instead.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ***

 

This one is also hard to judge at first play.  It's WayForward putting their Contra chops into a Metroidvania.  Visually its expectedly goregous, like Zero Mission mixed with Castlevania vibes.  But it's also very bog standard Metroid design, without any cool powerups seemingly.  You get better weapons, but they use ammo, which you can get from enemy drops.  The controls lock you out of left/right movement while you hold the trigger to aim diagonally.  Even mid-jump.  They either should have given you 360 aim control like the Mercury Steam Metroid games, or let you still run like in Zero Mission and such.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ***

 

On the surface of things, it hits most things right.  Cathedral looks to the be the Shovel Knight of Metroidvanias, and other than music, largely succeeds from what I tried.  There's no retrieving lost gold here thankfully, and the punishment is pretty marginal (losing 10%).  Controls are responsive and fluid, level design is interesting, health drops are plentiful.  Supposedly there's a punishing difficulty spike or two, but I could see myself returning to this.  It just doesn’t do anything original.

[dualhunter]

1 hour ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ***

 

This one is also hard to judge at first play.  It's WayForward putting their Contra chops into a Metroidvania.  Visually its expectedly goregous, like Zero Mission mixed with Castlevania vibes.  But it's also very bog standard Metroid design, without any cool powerups seemingly.  You get better weapons, but they use ammo, which you can get from enemy drops.  The controls lock you out of left/right movement while you hold the trigger to aim diagonally.  Even mid-jump.  They either should have given you 360 aim control like the Mercury Steam Metroid games, or let you still run like in Zero Mission and such.

 

I'm pretty sure you can move while shooting diagonally if you don't use the trigger. Unless I was just not holding the trigger fully, I just remember there were times I'd fall while shooting diagonally because I was moving forward. My main complaint was the lack of full health refill, so you have to keep entering and leaving a screen to respawn the trash to shoot for health drops. 

[crispy4000]

Just now, dualhunter said:

 

I'm pretty sure you can move while shooting diagonally if you don't use the trigger. Unless I was just not holding the trigger fully, I just remember there were times I'd fall while shooting diagonally because I was moving forward. My main complaint was the lack of full health refill, so you have to keep entering and leaving a screen to respawn the trash to shoot for health drops. 

Yes you can.  Which is why a movement lock when holding the triggers feels so inhibiting.  There’s no reason for it, other than making the game feel harder to play.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: **

 

Interesting platformer where you 'jump' up ledges by warping to them with a cursor.  And can attack enemies by slashing through the line of your warp.  Your cursor itself can take damage.  It feels like a long lost Nintendo DS game, retrofitted for a modern game controller.

 

There's one huge achillies heel: the game runs at a 24fps lock.  Seriously.  It looks and feels awful by modern game standards.  There's no hacks or mods to undo this either.  Your character's relatively slow movement ends up feeling even worse.  It's playable, but an incredible shame for what could have been.

[stepee]

25 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: **

 

Interesting platformer where you 'jump' up ledges by warping to them with a cursor.  And can attack enemies by slashing through the line of your warp.  Your cursor itself can take damage.  It feels like a long lost Nintendo DS game, retrofitted for a modern game controller.

 

There's one huge achillies heel: the game runs at a 24fps lock.  Seriously.  It looks and feels awful by modern game standards.  There's no hacks or mods to undo this either.  Your character's relatively slow movement ends up feeling even worse.  It's playable, but an incredible shame for what could have been.

 

What in the world were they thinking with that!!

[crispy4000]

Going for that filmic look I guess.

 

The developers said they were looking into 60fps, years ago.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: ***½

 

The pseudo SNES look and sound of this game is nailed perfectly, like a cross of Chrono Trigger and Trials of Mana, with more visible real estate for modern screens.  I'm not well versed in traditional tile-based roguelikes, but just for the presentation, this could be the first one I'd get into.  Lots of jobs, abilities and classes here, and plenty of other systems running in tandem.  It seems overwhelming on the surface, but that's the only thing I'd take from it.  The tutorial bits are very text heavy, and I still have no idea what your stamina meter does.  Fortunately there's an easy mode for novices, which I'll probably use when I start it again.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 45 minutes

Rating: ***½

 

A lighthearted cyperpunk JRPG.  The pixel art animation is outstanding in battles, almost 2D Fire Emblem good, and the game has a very slick vibe and presentation overall.  The battle system is typical turn-based fare, with limit breaks, elemental weaknesses and and turn orders.  It tries to spice things up a bit with phase shifting to swap in spells, but you can easily expand how many of them are equipable at a time, which defeats the point somewhat.  There’s a lot of upgrade choices at shops, but what you should buy ends up being fairly obvious at the start.

 

I could see the story being forgettable, so it may not hold up as something outstanding in the long run.  But this should be a good time for anyone who likes basic JRPGs and can dig the aesthetic.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 15 minutes

Rating: **½

 

Very minimalist 2d platformer.  You can place checkpoints at any time on solid ground to respawn at.  No fun physics interactions or anything, and you've seen its platforming concepts elsewhere. It feels good and mostly fair, but loses points for lack of originality.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 15 minutes

Rating: **½

 

Same lack of originality as Love, but I found this one a little more fun.  There's modern touches like wall jumping, but otherwise you just climb up can shoot magic in the cardinal directions.  Your character does a little bounce when falling from a high surface, which is a little frustrating.  There's very limited lives and a password system, which is odd given that NES games did have save backups.

 

Overall, it's the game you want to remember Kid Icarus being, if it were actually decent.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 45 minutes

Rating: ****

 

It feels so good to play, and isn't frustrating in the way that the games that inspired it are.  The art is wonderful, arguably better than Shovel Knight's look.  Gaining mid-air jumps back by hitting things is a really good idea, I'm a sucker for this sort of canceling shenanigans.  This will definitely be one I return to, so it gets the full 4 stars.

 

[dualhunter]

1 hour ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Time Spent: 45 minutes

Rating: ****

 

It feels so good to play, and isn't frustrating in the way that the games that inspired it are.  The art is wonderful, arguably better than Shovel Knight's look.  Gaining mid-air jumps back by hitting things is a really good idea, I'm a sucker for this sort of canceling shenanigans.  This will definitely be one I return to, so it gets the full 4 stars.

 

 

I really liked it. Maybe it was just because of the gap between finishing it twice and the release of the DLC but I hated the DLC and never finished it.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 45 minutes

Rating: ***

 

Relaxed 2d metroidvania.  There's something lulling about the character's relatively slow movement and jump animations.  Once you get into a rhythm with it, its enjoyable.  It's low stakes compared to the other NES-inspired indies I've looked at, which I can also appreciate.  Not everything needs to kill you all the time.  Frequent checkpoints are also nice.  There's still nothing here you haven't seen before, but the puzzle focus elevates it.

[dualhunter]

On 3/22/2024 at 4:38 PM, crispy4000 said:

 

Time Spent: 45 minutes

Rating: ***

 

Relaxed 2d metroidvania.  There's something lulling about the character's relatively slow movement and jump animations.  Once you get into a rhythm with it, its enjoyable.  It's low stakes compared to the other NES-inspired indies I've looked at, which I can also appreciate.  Not everything needs to kill you all the time.  Frequent checkpoints are also nice.  There's still nothing here you haven't seen before, but the puzzle focus elevates it.

 

There's an actual NES version of the game too (that you can play on NES emulator). The sequel is even better, though if you play the pacifist mode back up your saves.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 20 minutes

Rating: **½

 

2D puzzle platformer with character switching.  There's powerups that each of your 3 characters can take to transform, giving new abilities.  The main twist is that the view is fractured into different viewports scattered almost randomly, some overlapping.  I've seen this gimmick before in JRPGs (Baten Kaitos comes to mind), and I like it better as a palette cleanser than as the crux of a larger game.  It over-complicates the puzzles artificially.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ***½

 

As a Zelda-like, I don't think it feels particularly great, certainly not better than Blossom Tales.  But the shop managing and persistent upgrade systems give it a twist that makes it feel much more replayable.  I love run-based games where progress carries over, and this does that in a more interesting way than most.  The art and animation in particular is also fantastic.  The DLC goes for very cheap, even on Epic where the base game was given away ... I might snag it.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ****

 

Is it truly a roguelike if your experience, health, skills, etc, stay for each run?  Even more than Moonlighter, your progress goes with you.  Like Hades, there's some light storytelling between missions.  Combat isn't imediately as fun as that game or Voidogo, but still, there's something here that is addicting all its own, and very approachable.  The visuals look like they painted something then reduced it to pixel art form, which becomes more apparent when the camera zooms out.  Overall its great. Maybe not the strongest 4-star game I've looked at, but I'm really going to have to return to it.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 30 minutes

Rating: ***

 

I expected this one to be much worse, but came away pleasantly surprised.  Metroidvania where you toss your luminescent bat around to light different parts of the room.  You can choose either a character with a sword or wolverine claws... so the sword guy might as well not exist.  Looks and plays fairly good on the whole.  Level design isn't specacular, but I like how you find map fragments that fill out part of a zone instead of the whole thing.

 

The one big gripe I have is with leveling: you can upgrade visibility, defense, or attack.  You don't actually get to choose, but instead play a slot machine mini-game for each one, which is hard to time.  Why was this needed?

[crispy4000]

On 1/13/2024 at 8:28 PM, stepee said:

Might be one to add to your 32bit list @crispy4000 or anyone who likes old school beat em ups @legend

 

Fight'N Rage on Steam

STORE.STEAMPOWERED.COM

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Fight’N Rage is a brand new old-school side-scroller beat’em up. Inspired by the classics from the “golden age”, and with an art style that mimics the aesthetic from the 90's arcade gems, this game pays...

 

Found this buried in a humble bundle from 5 years ago never redeemed and tried it out yesterday. Seems very solid with great pixel art! 92% on Steam so it’s not just me.

 

 

Just found this was bundled recently here:

 

Build your own Play on the Go Bundle - Spring 2024 | Fanatical

WWW.FANATICAL.COM

 

Anyone have any recommendations for others here?  Boomerang Fu and Yes Your Grace are amazing, but I've already got them.

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 15 minutes

Rating: **½

 

There's a lot going for it, tight controls, solid animation, a muted color pallet that makes it look distinctive.  But the idea of a 2D platformer racing game doesn't appeal to me.  I'd question if all the power-ups are fairly balanced.  One literally just makes you move faster.  Some are more about killing enemies easier, but why would you want to spend time doing that?

[crispy4000]

 

Time Spent: 15 minutes

Rating: **

 

Push block puzzle Metroidvania with story elements.  It's a boring concept, and the art is both okay at times and downright ugly at others.  Music sucks, which doesn't do it any favors.  Not really a fan, but it is functional.