I don't mean to insult anyone in saying this, but as I'm playing more and more of these games, evidence is leading me to postulate that there are three different classes of games in this catalog:
1) Lines of code and design documents that were strewn about in an effort to scrounge together a passing grade (e.g. A Series of Tubes or Aether)
2) Games made with limited time and resources made for the same purpose as class 1 but with genuine attention to detail and care for video games as an artistic medium (e.g Astrobunny or Amaia)
Base Invaders belongs to the third class: Games with the same kind of spirit as those in class two but with the time and resources that come from being designed to win a prize or gain extracurricular prestige. In fact, Base Invaders took home the 2007 IGF Student Showcase award and was also a finalist in the Slamdance Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition of the same year.
Indeed, Base Invaders must have had a good amount of time spent on it for this kind of quality. Caveat: when I say "quality" I'm referring to the kind of polish that makes it seem like it was made by professionals rather than students. That does not necessarily make it a better game than other games without this polish. For example, I enjoyed playing Arc Angle much more than I enjoyed playing Starfox: Adventures, even though the latter is far more polished.
I've gone on the record saying I don't really like tower defense games, and Base Invaders is literally a tower defense game. I still found it to be really enjoyable, though. Why? Simply, it doesn't force you to sit by and watch your defenses fail. See, in most tower defense games (and really strategy games in general), either you're restricted from modifying your defenses once the battle begins or building up defenses costs money, leaving you defenseless once the green well dries out. Base Invaders fixes this problem by giving you a base attack which costs no money to utilize. You pick up and throw your enemies, much like in Defend Your Castle. This keeps gameplay fun and tense, as not only are your strategic skills tested, but your reflexes are too.
In addition, there are a wide variety of baddies to fling about, each with a particular ability, meaning each enemy must be disposed of uniquely. This adds many layers of depth to the game, which left me frantically clicking around and running a million calculations in my head after just level 3.
The graphics are pretty and stylized, showing off not only a good amount of aesthetic sense but also that much touted polish that I raved about mere paragraphs ago.
Sound direction is competent. The music is enjoyable and the high-pitched monster voices are more adorable than they are annoying, giving the game a cutesy kind of charm like a kitten with a little pink bow on its head.
I think what I like most about this game are the little things. Little things that let you know that the game cares about you. Like enabling a stage select from the get go but still including all the story/tutorial elements or the fact that the little monster guy on your team shouts "hey, where are you going?" when you exit the game.
And that's pretty much all there is to say about Base Invaders. I'll be honest, in my effort to play these games as swiftly as possible in order to meet my schedule, I didn't have time to play the whole game. However, the parts I experienced provide me with enough evidence to support a hearty recommendation. Enjoy.
Until next time, stay safe (use lasers).
Links
Invasive Base: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=441
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Bang!
It's 9:33AM and already this day has left me dazed and confused.
The first time I started up "Bang!" or as it prefers to be called, "Exclamation Point: The Game," I experienced the most miserable crash in my entire career as a gamer. It brought me to some grey screen with a pulldown menu where I could select from 1pt to 6pt thickness on some kind of line. As I desperately fumbled with my keyboard, trying to regain control of my laptop, the music from Astrobunny started playing! I was convinced this was part of the glitch, so I restarted my computer and tried again.
Once I got Bang! to behave itself, I was treated to a beautiful menu screen. And by beautiful I mean holy hot damn, it's pretty. Couple that with the very pleasant and calming background track and...wait...this sounds familiar...oh no.
Much to my dismay, it actually wasn't a glitch that caused the music I so ardently praised in my Astrobunny review to be played. That's actually the menu music.
I felt quite betrayed having discovered this. Bang! was created the year before Astrobunny was, and the two games had different sound designers. I don't know what kind of plagiaristic game the folks at Digipen are playing, but I don't like it. It gives me a weird feeling that anything I praise or critique in these reviews might be rendered moot because the project I'm commenting on might just be a carbon copy of another one on this list.
Oh well, beyond that, Bang! is a very fun bullet hell shooter. The thing that bothers me most about it is that there's nothing new to it. It's just a bullet hell shooter. A rather minimalist one at that. The best you'll get in terms of power-ups, which are usually the trademark of bullet hells, is the ability to fire 4 shots at once instead of 1 in a perfect straight line. Not very impressive.
Unlike those in Aether, the projectiles in Bang! can actually harm you, giving a very tangible sense of threat when the screen fills up with enemy fire. Killing an enemy will immediately wipe all his bullets from the screen, which may seem like broken gameplay, but trust me, it's only there to keep the game fair in the later levels, and is a very necessary mechanic.
Graphically, the real game isn't as pretty as its menus, but is still pleasing to look at. I genuinely can't tell if the characters are 3D models or 2D sprites, but either way they are definitely the hardest things to look at in this game. They're just so minimalistic when compared to the backgrounds or power-up sparks.
There's not much else to say about this game. Try it out. It's worth your time.
Until next time, stay explosive.
Links
whoosh pow kabloosh: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18590
The first time I started up "Bang!" or as it prefers to be called, "Exclamation Point: The Game," I experienced the most miserable crash in my entire career as a gamer. It brought me to some grey screen with a pulldown menu where I could select from 1pt to 6pt thickness on some kind of line. As I desperately fumbled with my keyboard, trying to regain control of my laptop, the music from Astrobunny started playing! I was convinced this was part of the glitch, so I restarted my computer and tried again.
Once I got Bang! to behave itself, I was treated to a beautiful menu screen. And by beautiful I mean holy hot damn, it's pretty. Couple that with the very pleasant and calming background track and...wait...this sounds familiar...oh no.
Much to my dismay, it actually wasn't a glitch that caused the music I so ardently praised in my Astrobunny review to be played. That's actually the menu music.
I felt quite betrayed having discovered this. Bang! was created the year before Astrobunny was, and the two games had different sound designers. I don't know what kind of plagiaristic game the folks at Digipen are playing, but I don't like it. It gives me a weird feeling that anything I praise or critique in these reviews might be rendered moot because the project I'm commenting on might just be a carbon copy of another one on this list.
Oh well, beyond that, Bang! is a very fun bullet hell shooter. The thing that bothers me most about it is that there's nothing new to it. It's just a bullet hell shooter. A rather minimalist one at that. The best you'll get in terms of power-ups, which are usually the trademark of bullet hells, is the ability to fire 4 shots at once instead of 1 in a perfect straight line. Not very impressive.
Unlike those in Aether, the projectiles in Bang! can actually harm you, giving a very tangible sense of threat when the screen fills up with enemy fire. Killing an enemy will immediately wipe all his bullets from the screen, which may seem like broken gameplay, but trust me, it's only there to keep the game fair in the later levels, and is a very necessary mechanic.
Graphically, the real game isn't as pretty as its menus, but is still pleasing to look at. I genuinely can't tell if the characters are 3D models or 2D sprites, but either way they are definitely the hardest things to look at in this game. They're just so minimalistic when compared to the backgrounds or power-up sparks.
There's not much else to say about this game. Try it out. It's worth your time.
Until next time, stay explosive.
Links
whoosh pow kabloosh: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=18590
Ballocks
Well this was...strange.
I think the best course of action here would be to just recount my play experience. The first thing I notice is that the game is only 7MB. Wary of this, I start up the game and am greeted to a wonderful background track and a demonstration of the stylized, cell-shaded 3D aesthetic to come. Suddenly, a crude pencil drawing of a panda emerging from a chicken egg appears to give me its salutations and then swiftly disappears into the night, never to be seen again.
Ignoring that, I click the play button and am brought immediately to a server menu. "Exciting!" Thought I, wondering which of the many servers to choose from. I could pick:
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
oh, here's a fun one: N/A
N/A
N/A
or N/A
Since none of these obviously functional servers responded to my click, I figured the best course of action would be to click "host" and hope the game was courteous enough to include some AI for me to whack about.
Sadly, no such thing happened, and I was left in an empty world rolling around merrily and zapping the occasional environmental block.
You know what's strange, though? I still kind of like this game. I definitely recommend it more highly than I would Bacon Pirates in Space or many other on this list. You won't get more than a minute or two of playtime out of it, sure. But bouncing, rolling and zapping my way through an empty, cell-shaded planet has and odd kind of appeal to it. It offers a much more low-key catharsis than Attack of the 50ft Robot, which I consider gold star-worthy.
I wish there was more to say, but nope. There's not. Maybe if I can convince a bunch of my friends to download it and come over to my house, we can get a LAN game going. Don't hold your breath, though. That's pretty low on my list of priorities.
Until next time. Stay bouncy.
Links
The game with the funny title: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=416
I think the best course of action here would be to just recount my play experience. The first thing I notice is that the game is only 7MB. Wary of this, I start up the game and am greeted to a wonderful background track and a demonstration of the stylized, cell-shaded 3D aesthetic to come. Suddenly, a crude pencil drawing of a panda emerging from a chicken egg appears to give me its salutations and then swiftly disappears into the night, never to be seen again.
Ignoring that, I click the play button and am brought immediately to a server menu. "Exciting!" Thought I, wondering which of the many servers to choose from. I could pick:
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
oh, here's a fun one: N/A
N/A
N/A
or N/A
Since none of these obviously functional servers responded to my click, I figured the best course of action would be to click "host" and hope the game was courteous enough to include some AI for me to whack about.
Sadly, no such thing happened, and I was left in an empty world rolling around merrily and zapping the occasional environmental block.
You know what's strange, though? I still kind of like this game. I definitely recommend it more highly than I would Bacon Pirates in Space or many other on this list. You won't get more than a minute or two of playtime out of it, sure. But bouncing, rolling and zapping my way through an empty, cell-shaded planet has and odd kind of appeal to it. It offers a much more low-key catharsis than Attack of the 50ft Robot, which I consider gold star-worthy.
I wish there was more to say, but nope. There's not. Maybe if I can convince a bunch of my friends to download it and come over to my house, we can get a LAN game going. Don't hold your breath, though. That's pretty low on my list of priorities.
Until next time. Stay bouncy.
Links
The game with the funny title: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=416
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