Shooter

This past Game Developers Conference, Synaesthete took home the Independent Games Festival's award for Best Student Game.

Synaesthesia, for which the game is most likely named, is a rare condition in which different sensations run together. Basically, a person with synaesthesia may be able see a word in colors or be able to taste a sound. Mind blowing, isn't it? True to its name, Synaesthete's visuals achieve an almost blurring interpretation of the synaesthetic process in its unique combination of both audio and visual stimulus. The game's abstract quality perhaps surpasses that of Rez, the acclaimed trance rail shooter that Synaesthete so fondly reminds me of.

You have to assume that Dr. Blob is some kind of mad scientist experimenting on microbia that are so feisty and dangerous that he finds it necessary to mount high-powered weapons around the rim of his Petri dishes so that when they get out of control and threaten to escape, he can unleash awesome energy beams to prevent them entering our environment and destroying the entire human race by infecting us with anthrax leprosy pi or influenzAIDS or something.

Too bad there aren't more people in the 21st century who care about sidescrolling shooters....

One of the disadvantages in being a developer from a country where there isn't much of a development community and not a lot of connection to the modern market for games, is that you may well spend a lot of time, money, and effort developing a highly-polished game in the style of games you love--and then discover that publishers elsewhere aren't all that interested in your title because, well, it is so retro. Nobody makes them like that any more. And certainly not at this budget. And with these production values.

Classroom Doodles Come Alive in a Top-Down Shooter

Like everyone else, no doubt you've doodled little things on lined paper during boring classes. Maybe you doodled hearts and ponies, but more likely spaceships or airplanes. Matt Lucas apparently doodled soldiers and guns, at least by the evidence of this game: the graphics are pencil sketches, the background lined notebook paper.

Robotopia is a cheerful sidescrolling shooter with a color palette remniscent of the arcade, in which you control a robot who can fly, zapping a huge variety of opponents and bosses. The single-player game has scads of challenging levels (ten in the demo); you level up over time and can purchase new weapons and equipment, for an RPG-like experience. And once you've gotten good at the controls (see below), you can go online* and battle others in deathmatch, "capture-the-flag" or "bounty-hunting" play.

In GunMetal War Transformed, players suit up in the one and only Havoc suit, a power-armored vehicle that as "jet" or "robot" can fire tomahawk missiles from one or torpedoes from the other.

Fans of anime like Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Macross Plus, and Full Metal Panic won't need an explanation for GunMetal: War Transformed, the PC version of a popular video game that will quickly remind non-fans of the old Transformers cartoon series or the anime-light Robotech series. The graphics are bright and colorful as you would expect in a "cartoon," but there is nothing cartoon-like about the action and the explosions. The 14 missions are designed to be roughly equivalent to the MechWarrior games, but as should be noted right from the beginning, this is not a "simulation" in the sense of MechWarrior or Heavy Gear with "realistic" physics, damage, and flight model. GunMetal doesn't bog down your enjoyment with "realistic" systems. It is a video game design and follows those conventions more than traditional PC considerations.

2005 IGF Winner for Excellence in Audio

Global Defense Network is, uh, a rhythm shooter. If that's possible. That is, as fast-paced electronic music plays, you shoot various objects whizzing about the screen--as you might in a shooting gallery, except that there are a wide variety of potential targets that behave quite differently. As you play, you unlock new levels, with new music, new targets, and new weapons for you to use.

"Diablo Lite"

Evil Invasion is in the mold of fast, frenetic overhead-view third-person shooters like Crimsonland or Robotron, but with a difference: rather than gory combat with futuristic weapons, this game is set in a fantasy world, the "weapons" are magic spells, and there's an RPG-like character advancement system. You can think of it as "Diablo Lite," if you will; more retro graphics, and not as much depth, but a similar aesthetic. Good gory fantasy fun.

DevastationZone Troopers is not a deep game--but there is a lot to be said for picking one thing and doing it well. And DZT does precisely that: it's a Ramboesque third-person shooter (in nicely rendered 3D) where you run around, gun blazing, and blow things up real good. Cathartic fun, in other words.

Demo Allows Seven (7) Days of Unlimited Free Play

In Arctic Stud Poker Run, you tool around a snowy landscape in a snowmobile. You and your opponents start from the same point, and each must end at the finish line, but you aren't constrained to a linear path. At various points in the play area are poker cards, which you can "pick up" by driving through them. When the game ends--after three minutes, that is--the player with the best poker hand who has succeeded in reaching the finish line is the winner.