Great indie game reviews.
Yep, Haiku the Robot is about robots, although you're more likely to catch on fire before most of its poetics! It's a dystopic pixel platformer with a variety of routes to navigate through. The tunnels are left from the aftermath of an apocalyptic turn. It does have somewhat of a narrative for the first minute. Mostly, you'll be in the heat of battle. You are thrown into the general theme of trying to find your way around immediately. Thankfully, maps are available.
Back with another Indie Game Collective showcase for Rotund Zero. It's a precision platformer with a Game Boy monochrome style that uses directional keys only to solve puzzle levels made of bouncing blocks. It's only $1.99 on Steam at the moment and encourages problem-solving in timed runs. You have 5 minutes to complete as many levels as possible, and there are 26 levels, 1 for every letter of the alphabet! You'll be on your toes to speedrun all of those levels, but the pressure is mild. Watch the YouTube video at the top of this article to see me run, a genuine but beginner, 5-minute run. I've been trying to cover more Game Boy-style retro games, so thank you to the developer and publisher Dahku for providing the key!
I love these platformer games that emerge from the woodwork every single day. Today, that game is Jaded by Shellsnore games, up on Steam. It's a standard platformer with directional keys, jump, attack, and a special mechanic which is a time warp. Although the time warp mechanic is more of a cacoon slingshot kinda thing, it works pretty well. I was able to bind my controller to the basic keys with no problem. Let me share a tad more here for you.
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Peglin is a great game where you complete levels by dropping a ball into a destructible pattern of mechanic activating orbs. You can activate critical strike boosts, or replenish the board. And, before I gloss over too quickly, the purpose of this strategy is to rack up points which can then be used to attack mob health points, in effect winning the level and moving on. I was lucky enough to find the demo on Steam, although the main game has been covered elsewhere. Anyway, I'll give you a brief rundown of Peglin.
I'm going to try something new here. I have been known to review demos in the past, but they get kind of buried under other projects. I really want to dedicate time to as many as I'd like to. All things relevant, I made a post on Twitter about needing to play for Game Boy style indies. I got a great tip from cshPinecone of Indie Game Collective about the game BIOTA from "small bros." It's a shmup--aka shoot 'em up.
It's been some time since a game like this has been featured on MrDavePizza, but Labyrinth City: Pierre the Maze Detective absolutely belongs. As a game that originated in a book series, the game takes many cues from the visual classics of growing up. Incidentally, I was a big fan of books like Where's Waldo? and Eye Spy, which are similar in scope and content as Pierre the Maze Detective--perhaps you remember too. So, let's get into this, what is Labyrinth City? It's a top-down puzzle game with hand-drawn characters in a visual feast of eccentric characters and scenes, through which you must navigate through a maze of people to track down the devious "Mr. X." I spent some time playing it so you can know what to expect from this delightful indie with a charming and surprising origin to a perfectly playable game form. Okay, let's have a look.
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Let's jump right into Ducksoup Dungeon. It's a free web browser playable rogue-lite on Itch.io by developer Richard Lems, also known as Blastmode Games. You might have heard of Lems' work on the game Mighty Goose. In the game I'm discussing here, Ducksoup Dungeon, you choose one of four heroes. It is playable in a web browser or can be downloaded. Starting with "Slashchicken," the first hero is a chicken. With amazing firepower at your side, you'll blast your way through and collect coins. Each play's collection can be used to unlock the other three heroes. Every level features hidden procedurally generated areas, meaning it can be a different layout every time you play. The levels, of which there seems to be an infinite number, are filled with containers destructible for coins, reached by eliminating various mobs.
Dogurai by HungryBear is a Game Boy-style indie Metroidvania. I know about it through, a couple of co-creators from Indie Game Collective. Thank you, Jaunty Adventures and Pursuing Pixels. Their taste is superb, as this turned out to be an exciting game. I've covered very few Game Boy titles here, aside from Lasagna Boy and... actually, that might be it. It's a great genre if you want to get into indies. In summary, the designs are aligned with the palette and rendering of old-school Game Boy games. This one in particular is a nice platformer/Metroidvania that takes you through some moderately challenging levels. There are ruffian henchmen, shielded hulks, and old-school SMB 3-style bosses. In my video, I had to jump around like more of a ninja to obliterate the first boss.
I've got a great video up for Bum Ballon on my YouTube channel because I found this game on a Steam sale for 89 cents! With some investigation, I narrowed down some impulse options for pixel art platformers in the likes of some recent faves like Grapple Dog (which hopefully I'll get to) and PomPom. It's a game with unique characters and a traditional SNES-type side scroller plot--a game that personally puts me into an optimized chill mode. Basically, hop in a cannon, and, after blast-off, interact as you're taken for a ride through a colorful world with unique obstacles and moderate challenges.
