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It's been a while since we've checked in on Mr. Venbrux, a fan favorite over here at PTT. His latest outing is a portmanteau of two of his previous works; it combines the dreamlike tone of Pazzon with the planetary-hopping gameplay of Frozzd. Since both games accomplished their respective aspects quite well this mash-up title doesn't feel as innovative as it should, but that's forgivable. The aesthetic here is wonderful, with soothing background music and an oblique art style. It's fairly short as well, but may require a second playthrough to reach the proper ending. No overwrought analysis this time around, but if you dug his previous work I'd advise you to check it out.

We're All Plain! 2 SE is a little level-based Flash puzzler created for the Global Game Jam. On each level, there are an array of colored orbs. They're on springs; you can pull one back and let it go. If it intercepts an orb of the complementary color (red/gree, blue/orange, purple/yellow), both turn white. To clear the level, you must turn all orbs white.

In addition, banging an orb into a non-complementary color changes the target into the intermediate color (e.g., banging blue into red turns the red orb purple). At higher levels, the springs have limited pull-back, so quite often you cannot change to white immediately -- instead, you must manipulate the orbs, changing to intermediate colors to establish an array that can then be turned white.

The resulting puzzles are actually quite challenging, given the simplicity of the underlying scheme. Graphic designers, to whom the color wheel is second nature, will doubtless find it easier than I, of course.

A Visual Novel about breaking up with your girlfriend? That's indie in more ways than one -- we're dipping into indie music territory here. This is a game for everybody who's been in a bad relationship that lingered on more than it should have, which should cover just about everybody in attendance. The backstory is vague enough that you can impose yourself into the role of the protagonist, who is struggling with ending a courtship that isn't exactly healthy. The game plays out as a series of conversations with the young lady supplemented by your own interior monologue. Occasionaly you're prompted to choose between two options, which usually either relent and placate her or push towards ending your entanglement. The game's short so exploring the various options doesn't take much time, and the dialogue is well written and easily identifiable with. The pixel art has a clean and appealing style to it but the tinny chip music wears thin after a while. Instead I'd recommend some early Elliott Smith to set the mood. With that in mind, give it a shot and come back for spoilers and musings. I'll promise to not pull out my acoustic guitar.

Crafting a game in under a week is hard work; making a game fun is harder still. Managing to pull off both with aplomb is by no means an easy feat, so I have to hand it to Mr. McCoy here. Every 168 hours this man graces us with another short-form game that isn't only just playable, but actually pretty fun. The game mechanics that are the crux of these two titles are solid and well designed. Admittedly the two games I'm highlighting have spheres for protagonists, but who plays indie games for sexy graphics anyways?

Wavespark is the lovechild of Excitebike/Truck and RunMan. It takes the positioning mechanic of Excitebike -- but instead of tilting a bike you merely have to land on a downwards slope -- and combines it with a satisfying sense of speed. It's a one button affair, press any key to increase your sphere's gravity. It's ultimately a test of timing and momentum. Land on a downwards slopes and you'll get a speed bonus, but land on an uphill section and you'll grind to a near-halt. It doesn't sound exciting on paper but trust me, it's an absolute blast. There's four modes of play, of which Time Attack is my favorite; the time restriction lends itself well to quick-play sessions for whenever you have a few minutes to kill. Once you get the ball rolling (Editor's Note: because putting these in somehow qualify as an excuse for a shitty joke) and get a hang of things you'll most likely get addicted to its simple yet charming gameplay. Now how about an iPhone version?

If the above sounds too Jay Is Games for your taste (which it shouldn't, you snob) Dragondot should give you a reason to break out your prosthetic Hyrulian ears. It's an action RPG that's in the vein of Game Boy Zelda titles or, say, Shining Soul for Game Boy Advance. You take control of a dragon, erm, dot and fight your way through screen after screen of enemy dots. It controls fairly well, imagine wielding a sword and Roc's Feather in LoZ and you'll have a good idea of combat. Despite the lack of innovation in the character designs the enemies have distinct movement and combat patterns. There's also a nice attention to detail; if you're savvy enough you can have enemies whack each other a la Wind Waker. The game exploits your hard-wired love of doled-out progression by having an RPG system in place that gives you extra health and the occasional attack to your solitary combo. It's pretty basic but good and stupid fun.

Both of these games aren't especially deep but are solid foundations for larger projects, should McCoy want to pursue these further. The quality of these weekly experiments have been consistently fun, so I'd keep an eye on this guy if I were you.

In write-up of Daniel Benmergui's talk at GDC, it's mentioned that a "friend" showed him the poetry mechanic that he adapted for his game. That friend was Agustin Perez Fernandez and I know because I was there in the room rolling a J. His latest work could be his most defining yet, at least in terms of its artistic poise.

El Beso ("The Kiss") is a sort of performance art art-game, you wield the mouse as a lure for a sort of ethereal fluke draped in ribbons of light, trying to kiss against red squares to turn them blue and then grey, harvesting points. The dynamic is that these squares come in all sizes and vectors, overlapping and forcing you to dance your way through them. The opera track highlights this dance while sometimes giving an apophenic sense that the music is somehow responding to your actions, some actual procedural sound would have been an interesting feature to explore but it works. The opera also lends the game a certain air of, as the French say, "I don't know what". It's almost enough to make you pop your monacle.

After your first play through you'll notice some more things that make it come together as being more than just another experimental Jackson Pollack love explosion. The game times your overall session and doesn't really penalize you in a "game over" sense, but instead just slows you down, which affects your performance. So the better you dance with the mouse in-between the cascading overlaps of red squares, the better your score. You are the opera. Give that fat lady a kiss.

Anna Anthropy continues her degradation into commercial work --which began with the tightly-crafted squealer When Pigs Fly -- and I couldn't be happier. With her latest release she moves away from the masochism she's infamous for and instead weaves a tale of a lone space traveler. It's, dare I say it, actually pretty charming. While the lack of bondage is suprising her knack for marvelous game design (which is apparent in her earlier games and level design lessons) is still intact. Selling out hasn't been this well-crafted or fun.

Anthropy has a fine sense for graphical composition; her pixel art has an elegantly clean style to it. The music by Amon26 (of Au Sable and All Our Friends are Dead fame) is also top notch -- I'm actually listening to it as I type. The game's minimalist story echoes Knytt by establishing that the protagonist has lost roughly two dozen gems and must regain them through exploration. Your sole verbs are walking and a low-gravity leap, which ends in a slight bounce if you fall long enough. The game's main mechanic is the dual polarity of red and green platforms; if you touch a red switch, for example, red blocks disappear and green blocks materialize. Like Terry accomplished with V^6, Anna wrung out every conceivable application of this mechanic and the game's three pitfalls of robot, laser, and electric pit. The level design is absolutely stellar. The difficulty is also fairly low-key, the platforming isn't by any means sadistic and save spots are frequent. Playing through Redder and exploring its landscape shows that you can create a mainstream-oriented experience without dumbing it down or diluting it.

Not much else needs to be said, except this: thank you ma'am, may I have another?

Decepticolor is a remarkably polished little game, for a 48-hour game jam effort. It's a puzzle game, supposedly for two players (one using WASD and the other the arrow keys), but in fact it can readily be played by a single player manipulating both, although it's sometimes hard to remember which of the squares under your control is controlled by which set of keys this way.

Each player controls a square that contains a simple pattern of 16-bit colors. Somewhere in the game are are two "target" squares. You must move your squares to the target squares in such a way that when they overlie the target squares, the pattern of colors matches.

The keys "flip" your squares -- left or right moves you one square distance and flips the pattern across the vertical axis, while up or down flips across the horizontal axis. In addition, if on player flips his square, or part of his square, atop the other player's square, the underlying square assumes the overlying pattern. Thus, on many of the higher levels, you need to figure out how to strategically flip squares atop part of each other in order to build the target pattern. (In the screenshot above, the target squares are all blue, so the two manueverable squares need to be manipulated to transform each other to an all-blue state.)

The result is quite an interesting set of spatial and logic challenges. Only twelve levels, but then that's pretty good for 48 hours.

Semblante is a Global Game Jam entry from a team at the Catholic University of Paraná. As is typical with GGJ games, it's more of a prototype than a complete experience; just a single level.

What's notable about it is the atmospherics; darkness, an eerie soundscape, shadow enemies gliding in the depths. Periodically, there are overhead lights, and when you pass through the light, you glow for a time and can defeat enemies until the glow fades. Jumping atop them helps you not at all. Consequently, navigating the level is a combination of platforming and using the strategically placed lights to advantage.

Also, you can scream with the X key, but I don't believe this has a game effect.

Ostensibly, your character is named Jung, and you are exploring the recesses of your own mind.

You can see how a fuller treatment might be emotionally effective -- and certainly, the complexities of the human mind and its fears is a motif that lends itself to introducing additional gameplay elements over time.

Towlr is a puzzle. Towlr is an art movement. Towlr is an aesthetic with its own manifesto. Sort of. Towlr is frustrating. In Towlr, the cake is not a lie.

Towlr has a + sign in the screen. It has no meaning.

Towlr provides no rules, no tutorial, not even a minimalist statement of goals. You must deduce the goal.

Towlr tells you when you have failed, in a most annoying fashion.

Towlr displays only simple, geometric shapes such as you might see in an Atari 2600 game.

Towlr rewards success with cake.

In Towlr, the appropriate response when you succeed is "Doh!".

Towlr looks simple; but actually, there is a highly refined sensibility at work here, one that could only and can only derive from games. It's a sort of minimalism that rejects almost everything we know, or believe we know, about games. There is no hand-holding, no increment in skill, only a puzzle, with no hints and no support. The purpose of Towlr is to figure out how to play, and once you have, you are done.

And just as stark as its gameplay are its visuals and soundscape.

The first Towlr was created by PoV for a Ludum Dare competition, but a bunch have been created since. They are all available at the Towlr site. Some are web-playable, others are downloads, and the downloads vary in what platforms they support. But you should check them out, if only to experience a remarkably different aesthetic of the game.

Sidescroller. You are a repulsive drooling green guy, chasing a woman. Cops chase you; space-bar to kill 'em, up-arrow to jump. If they get you, there's a brief interlude telling you you're restrained and jailed for one year, then back to the pursuit.

When you "get" the girl, you're on to the next level. Tougher cops. The woman's baby is now a girl. Difficulty ramps up by level, you're still obsessively chasing the couple. Songs about love and incest. A definite story (with, apparently, multiple endings, although I only played to one). Weird sound effects, difficulty getting to the bullet-hell level (though this is no shmup). Disturbing. Smoothly executed. Hard to play (though the designer claims there's dynamic difficulty adjustment).

This is actually, in its own odd way, quite a polished game. Quite funny, with an uneasy edge to it, like -- wait, that's not actually funny.

Worth a play, yes.