Alpha Beta Gamer

The Aquatic Adventures Of The Last Human is an impressive subsea metroidvania that sees you exploring the ruins of earth after after an extinction event has wiped out the all humanity, and wildlife has reclaimed the planet.

You play an astronaut who has gone through a black hole and has been catapulted through time, crash-landed back on earth, and escaped into a submarine. As you explore the ruins of this once great civilisation, you’ll see many awe inspiring sights, unlock new upgrades and uncover more about humanities fate.

It’s a joy to navigate the delightful and deadly and depths of The Aquatic Adventures Of The Last Human. The Alpha Demo offers up a sizeable chunk of gameplay, with plenty of areas to explore, hidden upgrades an even a few boss fights. The pixel art animation is superb, the gameplay is satisfyingly challenging and there’s a real sense of adventure as you explore the unknown waters. A very promising post-apocalyptic sci-fi metroidvania with 20,000 leagues of depth.

Check Out the Kickstarter & Play the Free Alpha Demo

Defragmented is a cool cyberpunk action-RPG that blends fast, fluid and super tough top-down gunplay inspired by Hotline Miami with looting and RPG elements inspired by Borderlands and Diablo.

The sense of style in Defragmented impresses as soon as you boot it up, as you’re hit with it’s crisp cyberpunk visuals and superb pulsing electronic soundtrack. You play a lone gunman, in a cyberpunk story about cloning, corruption and hacking. What this entails is a lot of satisfyingly challenging, fast paced run-and-gun combat, in which you’ll die a lot, but always stand a better chance the next time thanks to generous loot drops and levelling.

Stealth isn’t always the best tactic in the current build as a lot of the enemies have a near-superhuman field of view, but once you’ve collected some more powerful weaponry and levelled up a bit, full frontal assaults are a satisfyingly viable option. We can’t wait to see more of Defragmented as it’s electric atmosphere, looting, levelling and brutal run and gun gameplay really do impress. Super stylish top-down shooting.

Check Out The Kickstarter & The Free Pre-Alpha Demo (Win, Mac & Linux)

Apartment: A Separated Place is an insightful experience that explores the emotions and thoughts of Nick Connor, a guy who has just broken up with his girlfriend of four years.

You play as Nick, as he reminisces of the time he spent with his ex-girlfriend - from the first time they met to when things start to go wrong. All these memories are locked up within objects found around his apartment. It’s not just your apartment you can explore either, you can explore your neighbours apartments too (which will be much expanded on in the full game), getting a glimpse of their lives, loves and deepest anxieties.

It’s a deep and emotional game, that gives you a voyeuristic glimpse into the lives, innermost feelings and relationships of others. A well crafted look at the memories held within the walls of an apartment.

Check Out the Kickstarter & Play the Free Beta Demo (Win, Mac & linux)

Voice of Steel is very cool next-generation fighting simulation game, that allows you to build, customise, teach and fight your very own Real Steel-style combat robot.

It’s an impressive game, with physics based movements/impacts and an in-depth customisation system - in which you can even choreograph your own moves. This move creation system is an easy to use experience, with the ability to map out movements, positions and speeds precisely as you want them.

It plays very well, with exciting robotic boxing battles and a comprehensive robot building abilities. Building, training and battling your very own combat robot feels like a true next-gen boxing experience. Test your steel!

Check Out The Kickstarter & Play the Free Tech Demo

Sam is probably the worlds first REAL interactive comic - a beautifully drawn comic book adventure that you can actually interact with (not just click through lines of dialogue and scroll through artwork).

The story, told entirely without dialogue, revolves around death - a father and daughter plagued with a mysterious sickness are scraping by on a decaying Earth - a once bountiful planet now almost dead. Then a sequence of events bring them and an (also dying) alien called Sam together, they decide they want more, to live a better life than the one they have.

Each panel in this beautifully drawn interactive comic can be interacted with in a variety of different ways. In some panels you can click on objects in the background to view them up close, others are more interactive, with you carrying out actions or solving puzzles, and one even has you doing bunny hops on a bicycle.

To sell it as purely an interactive comic may possibly do Sam a little disservice as there are gameplay elements too, but either way it’s fantastic. The artwork and audio are superb, and the way you interact with the game/comic feels intuitive and organic - as if this was the way graphic novels were always meant to be experienced.

Play through the well crafted Beta Demo and there’ll be no doubt in your mind - this is the future of digital comics. Highly recommended.

Check Out The Kickstarter & Play the Beta Demo, Free

Upcoming interactive drama Herald is a point-and-click adventure with a branching story that’s dictated by player choices. As Devan Rensburg, players are the steward of a merchant ship, the HLV Herald, in a 19th century world. The game hosts a variety of characters, well-off and less fortunate than others, that make for a divided lifestyle aboard the ship.

Choosing to play by the rules will win players the favor of the authority, namely the captain, who is technically the player’s supervisor. However should one choose to side with the downtrodden and fed up side of the ship, a rebellious method can be used in the approach to game quests. Not only will the player choose what side they want to support, dialogue options available during conversation will change a character’s disposition toward the player, changing the course of the game in another manner.

Finding key items, recording events and findings in a journal, and navigating the 3D-rendered Herald are some of the core features that are already established in this early look at the game. Conversations with NPC’s, making game-altering decisions, and exploring this mysterious and obscure ship are all supporting game elements that complete a foundation that set up developer Wispfire to create an enthralling and interesting interactive narrative.

Check Out the Kickstarter & Play the Free Alpha Demo

Teddy Terror is a creepy 2D horror survival roguelike with a Binding of Isaac vibe, in which you use traps and toys to fend off ghoulish enemies and escape a nightmare world.

You play a little boy who is lost in a nightmare, with only his teddybear as company. This world is a dangerous place, full of freaky abominations an monstrous bosses, but thankfully you can find upgrades, loot and toys to aid your progress. The toys that you find can be used to attack enemies, but your main way of killing them is by luring them into traps and temporally slowing them with your teddy.

It’s a tough game, so you’ll die a lot, but each run will earn you XP, allowing you to level up your character for the next run and increase your chances of success. The passive aggressive gameplay of Teddy Terror makes for a unique experience, with you having to think on your feet as you lure the monsters to their doom. It’s a challenging game with inventive gameplay and gorgeously grotesque pixel art – a nightmare you won’t want to wake up from.

Check Out the Kickstarter & Play the Alpha Demo, Free

Pongo is a fun and surprisingly challenging game that combines extreme pogo-jumping with FPS combat to create a wonderfully quirky 3D action platformer.

You must traverse the beautiful low poly Islands of Flubber, leaping over large gaps, fighting enemies and battling huge bosses. To aid you on your journey you have your trusty Pongo – a pogo stick that turns into a gun at the touch of a button. Most of the enemies don’t present too much of a challenge, but the jumping can be pretty tough – you’ll need some precision timing if you want to avoid taking a swim in the sea. Once you master your Pogo stick though, Pongo is a fun game, with fast paced first person platforming, ideally suited to speed runs.

We’d love to see the pogoing mechanics refined a bit (perhaps so that you’re permanently bouncing a little), as at the moment it feel more like a platformer in which you can jump high, rather than an authentic ‘bouncy’ pogo experience. But as it stands it’s still a fun first person action platformer with challenging pogo jumping gameplay and joyously gleeful aesthetics. Super happy bouncy fun.

Check out the Kickstarter & Play the Free Beta Demo

Izle is a beautiful low poly procedural action adventure game where you must use your terraforming powers to help rebuild your world.

You play as one of a surviving race of light, who after escaping from darkness, must rebuild the last world of light to survive. The game has beautiful looking low-poly, voxel-based visuals, and allows you to you mine and collect resources in this fully destructible world, then use these resources for creating tools and structures.

This is no mere Minecraft-copy though, it’s much more of a story based adventure, with you battling hostile creatures in engaging combat as you try and rebuild and protect Izle (the last world of light), from invading shadows.

Even in these early stages of development, Izle looks and plays wonderfully. It’s an engaging action adventure game full of terraforming possibilities - and voxels have never looked so pretty!

Check Out the Kickstarter & Play The Free Per-Alpha Demo

Wildfire is a gorgeous looking 2D pixel art stealth platforming game where you manipulate fire to scare away enemies and quickly slip past them, avoiding all contact.

You’ll have to use stealth and your fire manipulation skills to a sneak past a deadly army of swordswomen, skilled archers, and vicious animals. Jump from one platform to another, fall on grass and crouch to produce no sound and hide from sight, call forth fire to your hands from a pit of flames and then throw it on flammable grassland to make enemies panic – allowing you to sneak past unnoticed.

As you progress you’ll be able to upgrade your elemental powers, and unlock new abilities such as fire-boosted jumps and riding smoke clouds to break your fall. Even in Alpha it’s an impressive stealthy puzzle platformer. The fire manipulation allows for some pretty inventive gameplay, and the overall presentation is superb, with some fantastic pixel art animation – especially the fire effects. Burn baby, burn!

Check Out The Kickstarter & Download The Free Alpha

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