Dojin

Elona is a Japanese-developed Rogue-like with a nice tileset and considerable depth for a one-man project. As you might expect, it has graphics reminiscent of 8-bit JRPGs; there's a fair bit of NPC dialog, some of which is moderately humorous, although you do run into the occasional Japlish.

The UI is a bit confusing -- it's entirely key-driven, but with pop-up menus and odd key choices for selection and navigation. However, Rogue-like "hot-keys" give you access to the most common options, and while the tutorial doesn't tell you about them, as with most Rogue-likes the "?" key is your friend.

Some people really dig genre pieces, works that stick to convention and don't really deviate from the norm. You experience them because you enjoy the tropes of the genre and the familiarity of it all. This game is a standard hop-and-bop platformer, but if you have a platformer fetish like I do you'll most likely squeeze some enjoyment from it. Obake takes elements from Mario and Kirby and mixes them in a not-too-radical fashion, but does it with a decent amount of polish and a fair amount of charm.

I should probably be ashamed of myself, but I'm having too much fun. I still have a couple of medals to earn in RunMan, and I've been skimping on my Spelunky sessions. I tried to rekindle my old friendships with Fallout 2, Deus Ex, and Alpha Centauri but I can't seem to find the time. I've got tons of games at my disposal, but whenever I get free time I turn to this unassuming ROM hack of Super Mario World. You probably think I'm crazy but hear me out, because this game is a fucking masterpiece. Brutal Mario is the Cowboy Bebop or Tarantino flick of platformers, take your pick. Either way its a masterful blend of Nintendo's best, and if you have any fond memories of the SNES era you shouldn't miss it. If the above seems like hyperbole, just check out the screenshot there. That's a boss fight with Mammon Machine from Chrono Trigger. I rest my case.

Journey is a charming Japanese dojin game in which you play a pith-helmeted archaeologist attempting to recover all artifacts from a particular underground complex. It's not particularly challenging, at least for experienced platform players, but it is cute, and there is a bit of puzzle-solving involved in figuring out connections between areas of the game world.

My first experience with games (and one of my first memories) was with the Ninja Turtle arcade game. I was standing on my toes, staring upward, and savagely mashing the attack button in ecstasy. I was Donatello, of course. There is some inherent fun to be had from decimating countless waves of foes via an intuitive control scheme -- which is what Sky-Whirling Geo offers. Cowabunga.

Just another dating sim designed by refugees from 4chan as a result of an anonymous post on /a/. Also, all the girls are disabled in some way -- Katawa is roughly translatable as "retard" or "cripple;" it's not a nice word. Heartwarming, right?

But, shockingly, it's the best portrayal of people with disabilities I've ever seen, far outstripping those you see in the mainstream media, mostly because those are limited to Professor X.

Transmover is a 2D platformer game in Flash out of Japan that has some of the feel of Portal. You move with the arrow keys but have a "zapper" you can shoot with WASD, and "green blocks," when zapped, swap position with you -- no matter how far away.

Transparent platforms can be zapped through, while brown ones cannot; as is typical for a puzzle platformer, there's a key and a doorway on each level. Get to the key, then get to the door.

Genocide Automation, which was featured at Sense of Wonder Night (an indie game showcase at the Tokyo Game Show), is less a game than an exploration of flocking behavior and cellular automata.

Two swarms appear at opposite corners of the play space, and attempt to destroy each other (it's not entirely clear what the combat algorithm is). Individual motes in the swarm obey some set of flocking algorithms that seem to be represented by the data displayed in the right column, though it's hard to know what that's showing, since it's in Japanese. Both sides "learn" from failure, modifying algorithms next time to try something else -- I'm not clear whether evolutionary learning algorithms are used, or whether behavior modification is simply random.

One of the games featured at the Sense of Wonder Night, a showcase for indie games at the Tokyo Games Festival, Nanosmiles is a 16-level little arena shmup with interesting gameplay and control scheme.

Your ship has no weapons; instead, on each level there are a number of subordinate ships you can take over by moving into them, beginning near your initial position. You move with the arrow keys, and the subordinates move with you, circling you when idle. Holding down the Z key (also used for select in menus) sends a radar ping out from your command ship, and when it intersects an enemy, your subordinates converge on and destroy it.

The game that inspired Battleships Forever. If you enjoy space shooters, you will probably agree with me their most fun element is fighting gigantic, badass, fire-spreading bosses. Well, in Warning Forever, that's what you will be doing from beginning to the end.