Category: lounge

I accidentally came to know about this great freeware game because it’s getting rereleased as WiiWare by these guys and here is how it happened.
When the game got released back in 2004, TIG was the first to take an English interview with its Japanese author Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya.

Doukutsu Monotagari aka Cave Story is a 2D non-linear platformer in its most true sense. 🙂 It makes you feel back in the nineties, the graphics are pixelish and the music and sound effects are so cheesy, but that is all just part of all the fun! I am certainly no hard core platformer but when I started playing this game, I just couldn’t stop until I got defeated by some boss. 🙂 So I’ve warned you, it’s quite addictive. 😉

The gameplay is extremely well balanced and there is quite some variation. I don’t know how big the game is, but at the current pace, I’ve seen quite some environment variation and weapon upgrades. It’s quite fun to clear the screen with a rocket launcher at level 3. 😀
All in all, it’s quite a polished game, you just gotta love it. 🙂

Try it yourself:
First, download the binary (hint: he only made 1 game in 2004 ;))
Then patch it with English translation

Btw, it runs fine on wine/linux!

As a huge portal fan, I’m delighted to read we can already taste some prequel goodness through this great mod.

Apparently, the author worked on it very secretly for some time so obviously he was very disappointed when Valve announced it would also make a prequel. 😉 However this motivated him to finish it as soon as possible. Also, Valve didn’t see any problem or violation in this project and even offered its help.

Thanks to Klaas for the tip.

I discovered this great game site: The Independent Gaming Source which is all about indie games. While those games really feel back-to-basics, they also feel back-to-roots; you know, what gaming really is about. 😉 While I admit to be colored by some nostalgia, it really makes you ponder what good games really are about.

Due to the size of big game companies and the money involved, refreshing game concepts are too risky to try out. But this doesn’t affect the indie game developer who has nothing to loose. So we actually shouldn’t be surprised to find some very entertaining game concepts in the indie camp, be it maybe somewhat less polished or technically advanced as its ‘commercial’ siblings.

I just played “You made it” (runs fine under linux/wine) and although the concept is so simple, I was surprised how addictive it was and how I loved the added difficulty induced by a non clearing backbuffer. 🙂

try it for yourself