Abstract

Knytt was one of the first freeware titles I ever downloaded; Niflas's atmospheric mood piece was a deciding factor in my burgeoning interest in indie games. The game was an exercise in minimalism that eschewed complexity and difficulty in favor of tone and 'feel.' Whether or not you cared for Knytt will determine how you'll feel about !Xorpl. If Knyttis a Brian Eno mood piece, !Xorpl is this song
minus the vocals.

The popular first-generation arcade game meets the next generation of fluid physics in this awesome abstract game. The basic rules of Pong still apply (move the paddle to reflect the bouncing ball), but in addition, you can project (by pressing the left mouse button) or absorb (with the right) a jet of a color-changing, plasma-like fluid from your paddle, which fills your screen, making it look trippy, and in which the ball will move according to the fluid dynamics.

Everyday Shooter is the ultimate genre orgy. We see a lot of stuff that subverts or explores the mechanical design space of a specific genre, particularly in the realm of shmups, but this here is the king crab of shoot-em-ups, the Kermit the Frog of shmuppery.

Mark Johns considers this his best work. There's a reason for that. Standard Bits is pure. It's the first kiss under the desk in Kindergarten. It's jumping off a fifty-foot cliff into a river while blown. It's an attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. It's the subtle, asexual infatuation you had with The Secret Of Mana's level designs when you were four.

Have you ever taken psychedelics? Have you wanted to, but feared the legal complications?

I have the solution for you. Read up on the Hawaiian Baby Woodrose plant. You can order seeds of this legal plant cheaply, and plant them. They are not intended for human consumption. Recommended dose is 4-6 seeds.

Then play Mondrian.

Tilelander is certainly unusual: Sometimes playing it feels like playing Go, sometimes like playing Space Invaders, and sometimes like playing Brickout, but fundamentally it's a puzzle game, with each level requiring some thought to solve.

How's that possible? In each level, you control a sprite that starts at a fixed location on the screen (your base). Your objective is to (as in Go) capture territory by encircling it. You move your sprite in the four cardinal directions with the mouse, laying bricks behind you, and when you've enclosed an area, it fills with bricks (not incidentally eliminating any opponents within the encircled area).