Alpha Beta Gamer

Entomophobia is a GameBoy styled Ludum Dare 31 twin-stick blaster, has the player collecting power-ups and defeating waves of icky arthropods on a single chaos-filled screen.

This game, which looks just like it is being displayed on a GameBoy Color, has the player controlling the main and only character and their crossbow. With this crossbow, you must destroy waves and waves of huge bugs. After a wave of bugs are destroyed, a power-up will appear in the center of the screen and even more bugs will appear. These power-ups could increase your range, damage, amount of arrows shot, or just your health. It's completely random as to which power-up appears so each play through is that little bit different. Any power-up that is gained is then shown at the top of the screen, so the player can view their stats.

At first, the bugs that surround the character are pretty simple to kill, but can corner you. This adds a bit of a challenge, but as the waves increase, more challenging bugs appear. Their dead corpses and blood start to decorate the field as you destroy more and more. This game can get hectic fast, but is very addictive and has a great retro GameBoy feel. If you manage to fend off 24 waves enemies, there’s even a big boss battle to top things off.

With fast, fun and addictive gameplay it’s great fun fighting off waves of icky bugs on this old GameBoy styled game. Not just another bug hunt.

Play Entomophobia, Free

Graywalkers: Purgatory is tactical turn-based RPG set in a stylish supernatural post-apocalyptic world with gameplay inspired by X-Com, Fallout, Mount & Blade and Jagged Alliance.

You play the leader of the Graywalkers, a small band of fighters who walk the line between light and dark in this post-‘Rupture’ world where Heaven, Hell and Earth have all merged together.

The Alpha demo is designed to show off the combat system, but the full game will be far more fully featured, with character customisation, levelling up, vehicles, crafting, recruitment and bases. Combat in the Demo is reminiscent of X-Com, with movements, actions and special abilities costing points, but you only move one squad member per turn. As in XCom, it’s pretty tough, you’ll have to use strategy to defeat your opponents - only fools rush in blindly.

Even in these early stages of development Graywalkers: Purgatory impresses with stylish character design, challenging gameplay, an interesting story and deep turn based strategy. Who you gonna call? Graywalkers!

Check Out the Kickstarter & Download the Alpha Demo

Return of the Obra Dinn - from the creator of the highly acclaimed Papers, Please - is an innovative first person mystery adventure where you must explore an eerily empty ghost-ship, and uncover what happened to the crew.

Still early in development, it impresses from the get-go, with it’s striking visual style that’s reminiscent of the artwork in old text based adventures but rendered in first person 3D. It’s set on a merchant ship named “Obra Dinn” which was declared lost at sea after setting sail from London with 200 tons of trade goods, only to mysteriously appear six years later damaged and drifting into a port with no crew on board.

As you explore the Obra Dinn, you’ll come across the remains of the crew, and using a mysterious pocket watch of death that allows you to see the exact time of their death in freeze-frame, you have to figure out who they are and how they died. There’s no hand holding, you’ll have to be pretty observant and use your deductive skills to decipher this salty puzzle. It must be stressed that this is still very early in development, but it’s already a very impressive super stylish seafaring mystery – highly recommended.

Download the Prototype, Free (Win & Mac)

To say Octopus City Blues is weird is a bit of an understatement. It’s glorious old school adventure game featuring some of the finest and most surreal pixel art animation you’re likely to set eyes on.

You assume the role of Kaf Kafkaryan, a cowardly middle-aged octopus blood junkie and tentacle trimmer, living in a city built around a giant octopus. You explore the bizarre octopus city, full of colorful characters, strange sights and tentacles sprouting up from the ground (one of which is your wife), taking part in an adventure that takes place in real life and in your dreams.

Possibly due to the fact that you’re an octopus blood junkie, you experience extremely vivid dreams set in strange worlds populated by freaky creatures. Your aim is to help the inhabitants in your dreams through interactions with characters in Octopus City and also uncover a far-reaching conspiracy. There’s a lot to take in as you roam the city and explore your dreams, there’s also plenty of replay value too, with the promise of multiple endings and consequences of choices.

It’s a weird, wonderful, surreal adventure full of colouful characters, creative design and glorious pixel art animation. To say Octopus City Blues is weird is a bit of an understatement, but to say it’s awesome is an understatement too. The best use of tentacles since Day of the Tentacle.

Play the Alpha Demo, Free

Kraden’s Crypt is a fun physics influenced roguelike co-op dungeon crawler for up to four players, that features an interesting almost QWOP-like way of controlling your weapons, using your mouse or thumbstick to control their momentum.

It features vibrant and colorful character design, with huge bosses and outlandish enemy design, such as walking jelly beans, rock monsters and giant subway sandwiches. You can wield hammers, bows, swords, shields and many spells. Each of these weapons has its own unique combat mechanics. You operate the weaponry by moving the mouse (or thumbstick), and the player speed, weapon speed and enemy speed all factor into the damage that you do.

With a Kickstarter campaign due to start within the newt few days, Kraden’s Crypt is a fun game, bristling with vibrant colors, inventive enemy design, an innovative control scheme, loot, and a pleasantly chaotic co-op multiplayer. Swinging is great fun, especially with friends!

Download the Alpha Demo

Bedrock is a retro pixel art mining roguelike for up to 3 players, where three playable characters with different skill sets dig and fight their way through an endless underground world.

The game can be played in single player, with you switching between characters as needed, but it’s much more fun with local co-op. The three characters each have their own role in the group – an architect who plans where to dig and what to build, a miner who scouts the area and does the building and digging, and a warrior who defends the team against enemies. It could do with a small tutorial, but as long as you understand that the architect has to create a plan before you’re able to build/dig anything, you should work out the rest.

Bedrock is a roguelike in nature with procedural level generation, lots of loot to be found and an ever-increasing difficulty topped with permanent death. It’s still very early in development, so is still a little rough around the edges, but it’s a fun game where players will have to work together to ensure success, or perish in its pixelated depths.

Download the Alpha, Free

The Cow Flew Over The Moon is a creepy and surreal first person experimental adventure game with a story based on the stimulus of dream interpretation.

The game has a foreboding atmosphere, with its vague narrative left open to the player’s imagination, giving half the story through the level progression and leaving the rest for the player to piece together by inspecting and interacting with the environment. In it’s short 15 minute playtime, you’ll explore, search for items and solve puzzles to help you find out what’s really going on.

The Cow Flew Over The Moon shows a lot of promise - an atmospheric, short and surreal adventure. Development has been halted, but we’d certainly like to see more from developer @JonnyWallaceP, who also created the very cool Radical Squad.

Play the Prototype, Free

Chambara is a unique first person deathmatch game where the whole world is only viewed in two colors, with no shadows, shading or lighting effects to highlight the players. This means that the players blend in with the background (as long as they’re the matching colour) able to hide in plain sight and ambush other players.

The binary color system of Chambara is a fantastic concept, that makes your positioning in 3D space critical, as you can effectively be invisible from one angle, but vulnerable from another. The game features split-screen play for up to 4 players, which works wonderfully, especially with players sneaking a peek at other players screens, trying to figure out where they are. It’s like a very stylish game of hide and seek where you don’t have to hide behind objects - you can hide right in front of them.

Download the Prototype, Free (Win, Mac & Linux. Development build will be updated weekly)

Hardland is a third-person open world action adventure game being developed by the people who made two great games on mobile devices called Minigore & Minigore 2. The game is a spiritual successor to the Minigore series but using the power of the PC to implement massive graphical improvements and gameplay changes.

From what can be seen it the tech video, Hardland looks like it’s going to be a gorgeous game with cool environmental destruction effects and fun combat. It’s an open world sandbox game with no pre-determined story, as in Minecraft, the player creates their own story.

Sign-Up for the Pre-Alpha

Cloudfall is a charming explorative puzzle game that forgoes handholding, allowing you to freely roam, experiment and unlock the enviromnments hidden secrets.

It’s a wonderfully relaxing experience exploring the unique world of cloudfall, with no timers and no pressure - In Cloudfall you are safe, nothing can harm you. You just explore and experiment with the worlds unique environment at your own pace, discovering and unlocking new powers.

The game was greated for rpgmakerweb’s 2014 indie game maker contest, and is still early in development so a lot of the artwork is just a placeholder, but already it’s a good looking game. With a world full of experimentarion and discovery, it feels a little like a floating Fez at times, which it no bad thing.

Play the Alpha, Free

Posts tagged indiegames