Experimental Gameplay Project

Upgrade Roundup

November 30th, 2011

November was a busy, busy month it would seem, and we closed it out with a total of 5 Games.

Ready, steady, go:

Downgrade – the Griefer, by Damocles

Place dynamite and demolish buildings. A fun, low-rez, stylish game.

Poorly Designed Upgrades, by Rahil Patel

Draw your own upgrades to fend off incoming waves of enemies.

Elenin, by Tristan Angeles

Gather mass before slamming into Earth. Good concept, but feels like the controls need to be a bit tighter.

Upgrade, by Peter Reijndiers

A number selling puzzle game. Upgrade and sell your items to progress to the next level.

Upgrade: The Card Game, by Steve Gargolinski

An *actual* card game inspired by Magic:The Gathering. Print ‘em up and give ‘em a whirl!

We’re closing out the year with a new competition, which looks to be very, very exciting!

More on that tomorrow.

5 Comments | In: Games | tags: Best of the Net, Upgrade | #

Offspring Roundup

August 31st, 2011

A number of odd entries this month mostly involving bunnies, balloons, abstract population control, and one very literal interpretation of the Offspring Theme.

All and all 12 games this month:

bheyvr, by ALEJANDRO ECHEVERRÍA

A game about attraction and repulsion dealing with different relationships starting with mating.

Fireflies, by ERIK LEPPEN

Experimental ammo-splitting game with orbiting. Would love to see this concept expanded.

The White Frog, by Rodrigo

Evolve your frog by collecting blue orbs and dodging red ones in this fl0w like game.

Endogame, by Isaac Marco

Definitely the most literal interpretation of the game. Saucy! There’s also a Mac Version.

Capitali$m, by Chrisan Lech

Feed on those smaller than you to get bigger. Reminded me of Osmos.

The Baby Balloon, by JANNE ZABOBIN

Inflate your baby’s head enough to avoid a spikey demise.

Ecosygulator, by Patai Gergely

An abstract species balancing act – make sure no one goes extinct.

Largomorph Reversal, by Sam Garcia

Shoot baby bunnies with left mouse button, right to command them to destroy robots.

Feeding Balloons, by Bubor

Inflate balloons to feed your hungry rabbit. Huh.

Offspring, by Built by Man

A bullet hell shooter. Kill anything that moves!

Thank God It’s Growing, by Vamsi Krishna

Grow a line to deflect balls – a very challenging game.

Biodiversity, by Dave Hooper

A strategic genetic pollinating game. Indirectly control bees to breed the most attractive flowers.

5 Comments | In: Games | tags: Best of the Net, Games, Offspring | #

Cheap Clones Roundup

April 30th, 2011

The Cheap Clones games seemed somehow…familiar. While a few played things pretty close to the vest, a few managed to stray quite far from the source material – making, dare I say, ORIGINAL titles.

For shame, people! Even when you’ve been asked to rip somebody off, you come back with something creative. Still, a lot of people used the opportunity to poke fun at some of the quirks and often confusing conventions of the games industry.

Let’s see what these 18 games brought to the table this month, shall we:

Hero Test, by Steve Gargolinski

Makes fun of a lot of modern conventions. An evil, evil game indeed.

Super Paper Space Invaders, by Ben

Really improves upon the formula – the music and SFX choices are perfect. Would love to see this expanded upon.

Prism Light, by Roan Contreras

A really well-made maze game with some nice light elements.

Escape Cage, by Aaron Oldenburg

An Escape-the-room clone with a great networked twist. Was I playing the game with myself at some point?

Motion Columns, by Troshinsky

A pretty difficult Columns clone. Match the movement of the shapes instead of their colors.

Fleaz, by MADEINPDA

A pet-sim clone played entirely in Youtube. Some great choices and I love the Tamogotchi aesthetic.

Zella, by TWC

I actually enjoyed this game. Does this make me a bad person?

Vexed Hedgehogs, by Barry Atkins

Protect indie gaming from evil, evil cloners. On an iOS platform, it would make MILLIONS.

Landing, by AizenSousuke

A flight control clone that bizarrely has a lot of Mario 64 noises.

Brave Wing, by Alexis Andre

A nice clone of Tiny Wings, which is itself a clone of Nathan McCoy’s Wavespark if you want to get into all of that.

Commander Clone, by Zachstronaut

A run-n’-gun Contra style game. Make sure to play all the way through the tutorial level.

Dable, by Teijo Mursu

A Diablo style clone. Looks like you’ll need a pretty decent computer to run this one.

Mother Lover, by Frank Force

A Metroid/Blast Master hybrid clone – the world seems pretty huge.

Ultimate Pong, by AizenSousuke and Mok Swee Hoe

An intentionally buggy Pong clone.

Brick Whacker, by Calib Leak

A Breakout clone. There’s so little to Breakout, that it’s almost hard to determine where cloning begins.

Tetris, by Mya

A well made Tetris clone. Though as a fairly competent player I miss the instant-drop button.

Dead Bunny Soup, by MisfitByte

A clone of a ByteJacker game, though I’m not entirely sure which one.

Super Skill Jump, by Breakdance McFunkyPants

An intentionally evil Mario clone – this could give the one on the app store a run for its money.

2 Comments | In: Games | tags: Best of the Net, Cheap Clone | #

ASCII Roundup

March 8th, 2011

Last month’s ASCII theme saw a lot of crazy play on words, though oddly there were very few puns. There were, however, a number of different takes on word mazes, more than a few shooters, and a few games that chose to use ASCII art as a style. A few even bended the way you think of words, using them as literal representations, shapes, or weapons. When all was said and done we had a total of 18 games this month.

Word play time:

Pixel Words, by Frank Force

Utterly astounding infinite word game. Dangerously trippy in full screen!

Piping Trebuchet, by Alexis Andre

A puzzle game involving physically connecting letters.

Word Maze, by John

A self contained word game. Spell words by moving toward the target letter.

Wise Up!, by David Croft

Change the perspective of the camera to make the letters form a famous quote.

Word Maze, by TobiasW

Drag letters to form words, then move to collect them. Simple & addictive. Make sure to click on the “?” for directions.

rSPAR, by Ardonite

A fun Rock,Paper,Scissors style fighting game. Actually reminded me a lot of Rocket Slime for the DS.

Kidnapping ASCI, by GAMESCANBE

A typing timing-intensive game where you try to move words in a streams of letters. I think.

Word Catch, by Sid Brown

Spell words by catching them. A great game idea, but man is it hard for my brain to spell like that.

Depression, by Aaron Oldenburg

A camera-only game that uses word art in an interesting way…

Character Error, by Adam Parrish

A word shooter. Shoot letters to spell words and defeat your enemies.

Fortress of Arial, by Greg Czerniak

Use letters made of different materials to protect your citizens from incoming arrows.

Galaxy Run, by Caleb Leak

A shooter with ASCII characters.

Spawn of Helvetica, by MisfitBYTE

An arena shooter that auto-generates enemies based on music and text files.

H4CK, by Dominik Reisel

A racing game, where you can press SPACE to alter the playing field.

Splash, by Roybie

A platformer taking place in a world made of letters.

Death Maze, by Jason Spashett

Navigate the maze very carefully, I hear it’s filled with death.

Excuse Me, by Arnaud de Bock

A poem generator. Press the arrows to progress – more poem, than game.

Cupid in the Matrix, by Airbash

Uses the Matrix aesthetic, wouldn’t work for me though.

1 Comment | In: Games | tags: ASCII, Best of the Net | #

INANIMATE Roundup

January 31st, 2011

Common threads this month were games involving space invaders, indirectly controlling a group of characters, and dolls. Some eschewed art altogether, opting for total blackness or the comforts of words when constructing their games, while others had a completely different perspective.

All and all there were 16 games this month:

NegaKon, by Mahdi Bahrami

While you’re trying to reach the star in every level, that will often require a different point of view.

Ripple, by Jenna Fox

Very nice tonal puzzle game. You’ll need Firefox 4 to play it.

Worst Adventure Ever, by Caleb Leak

Wow, a parallel text adventure game with alternative reality elements? Yes please.

Guided by Rockets, by Leo

Kind of like golf with rockets on an alien world.

All My Base, by Barry Atkins

A tactical invaders style game where you control the position of all incoming invaders. Run them into their own shots to kill them.

Explod-o-mover, by Tayron

Move things with timed explosives. I only wish I could increment time at a faster rate than 10ms at a time.

Danse Macabre, by Barry Atkins

Place the bones back in place before they escape.

Wakup, by Alexis Andre
Scream into your microphone to save napping beachgoers from an incoming tsunami.

Serious Immobilities, by Aaron Oldenburg

Looks like a game where the objective is to stay still. Not sure though – it wouldn’t work on my machine. Anyone have a video?

A Harsh Winter, by Rybie

Repel and attract the blahs in order to save them.

The World of Inanimate, by AizenSousuke

Awakening in an immobile world you must use your limited power to escape.

With RPG Elements, by MisfitBYTE

A cheeky platformer with RPG elements.

Deckchair Invaders, by Built by Man

Invaders style game where shots cost you points.

Giant Doll Velcro Technicolour Sticky Show, by Zed

Might be the craziest game name ever. Place sticky notes on dolls and pray they don’t come alive.

Margatroid, by Nameless Fairy

A shooter about dolls that come to life.

Laze the Lizard, by Praveer

Squash flies before the lizard gets to them.

2 Comments | In: Games | tags: Best of the Net, Inanimate | #

Drawing Roundup

December 31st, 2010

It’s the end of the year, so it must be time for the drawing roundup. This month we had 11 entries with a nice assortment of tracing games, physics drawing games, and even a bullet-shooting art game.

Game on:

Shoot-Em-Art, by Troshinsky

Shoot bullets to make art!

Lienzo Fértil, by Fernando Ramallo

Neato elegant indirect drawing game with a number of interacting systems. Strangely enough, the main control involves attracting flies to your cursor.

ARTaSpLoDE!, by David Byers

A fun drawing toy that challenges you to make something before destroying part of it.

Ball Point, by Greg Czerniak

A nice crayon-physics styled game. Draw and erase to get the ball into the cup.

Crap Drawing, by MisfitByte

A Drawn-to-Life inspired platformer. Draw your own character and world then make your way through it.

Composer, by Marcos

A creative music-drawing game. Draw staffs to match the target melody.

Snowboggan, by McFunkyPants

A 1st Person sledding game. Try to hit snowmen while dodging trees.

I and U, by MohammadKad

Make your own mazes in MSPaint or Photoshop, then share with friends!

Hidden Eraser, by Roan Contreras

Draw around until you uncover an invisible eraser. I’d love to see this expanded upon (e.g. the eraser could leave trails that invisibly cuts into what you draw).