Gratuitous Space Battles is more management and strategy than action. In this review of the game, Van Wyk Louw looks at the core mechanics, and notes some of the problems of the game.
Nov 202009
Nov 172009
Eufloria (originally named Dyson) made it into the IGF finalists in 2009. It’s a real-time strategy game, where you create space colonies using trees. Gareth Wilcock reviews the game.
Oct 302009
Machinarium is Amanita Design’s beautiful puzzle-adventure game. It is set in a world inhibited by robots, and your task is to prevent the bad robots from blowing up the city. Quinton Bronkhorst tells you what he thinks of it.
Oct 292009
In this article, Quinton Bronkhorst compares World Train Royale with a chocolate cake with too many ingredients: delicious to imagine, but too rich too consume. The early parts of the game work well, but as features get added the gameplay suffers.
Oct 282009
The two Samorost games, the flash games by Amanita, has revolusionised the way we think of atmosphere and art in games. In this article, Rodain Joubert pays homage to the games that set a new benchmark for adventure games.
Oct 272009
Ninjas have them. Batman has one. Bionic commandos have one too. They’re grappling hooks and they are throwy, shooty, swingy good fun. They’re also nothing new in games. The afore-mentioned Bionic Commando could not jump at all and relied on his grappling arm to grab ledges and swing around the place like a crazy cybernetic [...]
Sep 242009
There have been many games that would have ended up on the “games that kicked my ass”-pile if I hadn’t taken to keeping a notepad beside my grubby keyboard. After spending a fair number of hours on them, and even aided by walkthroughs, many old point-n-click adventure games and interactive fiction titles would often leave [...]
Sep 222009
It would seem that I’ve somewhat made a name for myself around her for being the wordy, story dude – because every time something pops up involving stories, epic narrative tales and, well, words in general, it gets passed on to me. Luckily, I really do enjoy these kinds of things, and that’s why I [...]
Sep 172009
So. Hot on the heels of my previous ShellBlast review comes this humble opinion of its new, Xbox-based cousin: ShellBlast HD. Vertigo Games was kind enough to supply me with a review copy for this sprightly bugger, so of course I latched onto it . And hey, guess what? It’s just as good as the original.
Sep 092009
Semi-procedurally generated music, beautiful visuals, and 8 levels of bullet-hell-like mayhem; this is Everyday Shooter, and it’s not ordinary.
Aug 202009
Ed: Yo Nandrew, where’s that ShellBlast review you promised me? You’re already a day late. Me: Ah, er, bad news. I haven’t written it yet. I’ve been banging my head against this level 30 nuke defusal for most of the afternoon, and as far as I know I’ve still got oxidation and time-bombs to unlock. [...]
Aug 072009
Now in development for roughly eight years, Cortex Command is already quite a familiar feature in the mindscape of many gamers. It is a hard one to ignore with its colourful graphics, spiffy tunes and very surprising chaotic outbursts – for example, your heavily armoured heavy-weapons supersoldier may well be disarmed by a lowly unfinished [...]
Aug 032009
Heed is odd. From the moment you start the game up, you get the feeling that it’s definitely not your cookie-cutter point ‘n’ click adventure. Maybe it’s the surreal backgrounds and stylized art, or perhaps it’s the bizarre and moody background music (containing remixed samples from late-19th-century folk music). Either way, Heed feels quite surreal, [...]
Jul 302009
Everything about Use Boxmen says ‘happy.’ The music sparkles in the background, what simple narration exists in the game is silly and smile-inducing and the characters ooze charm out whatever wazoo they might have in their deformed crayoned bodies. It would be such a great setup for a bit of coffee break relaxation. Such a pity [...]
Jul 222009
Last week, the editor brought to my attention a neat little adventure game called Ben There, Dan That!which was making its own little waves in the adventure game pool, at no cost at all. I was also directed to the fact that, as a result of adventure gamers going “OMFGWTF THAT WAS AWESOME!”, creators Zombie-Cow decided [...]
Jul 152009
Are you sick of hearing the now clichéd ‘Adventures games are dead’ whenever fond memories of LucasArts and Sierra classics are shared? Even worse, are you sick of saying it? Because, like all overused maxims, this one also has that shred of truth that led to its conception, but it also led to a whole [...]
