Since my boss said not to come back until the 3rd, I decided to spend my last day of vacation appreciating the fine works of the Independent Game Festival finalists.
Battleships Forever
The Pitch: Control glowy line art battleships in real time battles.
My Opinion: Too clicky. It's like trying to control 8 Star Control craft at once, with subsystem targeting for added confusion. Might have worked with a better interface and more intelligent formations. My protector ships would often end up in the back of formations, and if they somehow did end up in front, my glass cannons would rush ahead of them every time the formation moved.
Clean Asia
The Pitch: Fly through non-glowy line art and shoot stuff. Use the parts that break off the stuff you shoot against it.
My Opinion: Not my style. I don't really like shoot 'em ups (shmups for short), and Clean Asia is no exception. It's part of a subgenre called bullet hell where some enemies fire so much crap at you your main task is to weave in between the bullets. Maybe it was just my old fingers using the keyboard, but I had trouble with even the first enemy in the game. Additionally, the clouds of enemy parts you accumulate make it even harder to see enemy bullets near your ship, making the game's core innovation more burdensome than fun. Plus it kicks back to the main menu instead of giving you the option to try the stage again. "Back to film school @#%(^&#!"
Empyreal NocturneThe game doesn't let you take screen shots, which is a pity as one screenshot pretty much sums up the game play.
The Pitch: You control a swarm of triangles which you use to destroy all the orbs on something that vaguely resembles a Chinese dragon. (Have you noticed that geometry is the way most small teams get around having to create time consuming art resources?)
My Opinion: Yawn. Seriously. The gameplay consisted of outranging the bad guy. Minor course corrections for the win? Who cares?
Galaxy Scraper
The Pitch: It's an amazing new concept where you run around on planets! (It's like the Rachet and Clank 2 planet levels from 2003 except you can only run around and kick.)
My Opinion: It's like Mario Galaxy, only not nearly as good. You only have the directly overhead perspective, severely limiting the gameplay. You only have single jump and kick, so there's not much to do. And the collision detection is bad. All that said, the first level's concept, where you kick annoying little blobs into a giant mouth so that you can shoot yourself out of the ass to the next world, was hilarious.
Gesundheit!
The Pitch: Lure pig eating monsters to their doom using your delicious snot. No, really!
My Opinion: Gesundheit was fun for the 12 demo levels. The crayon visuals and mellow music somehow make a game about mucous and animals eating each other adorable.
Mayhem Intergalactic
The Pitch: An easy to learn but hard to master strategy game.
My Opinion: A nice simple multiplayer strategy game. Among friends, this could be a lot of fun. Against the AI (once you've won enough rounds that it actually starts playing), it's largely a matter of luck as the initial planet layout can cause them to to fight amongst themselves, leaving you to clean up the weakened victor or to immediately gang up and crush you before you have any chance to build defenses. Also, the geometric unit progression makes it so that one early defeat (against a neutral planet or an opponent) can effectively end the game.
