A sequel to Coin World, Coin Planets brings back the same character (Colin the Coin) in another straight-forward but well executed run-and-jump platformer. This time, the levels are set on the nine planets of our system (and the sun), with opponents and puzzles appropriate to each. As with the previous game, there's nothing hugely innovative here, but if you like a good platformer, it's worth a try.

Okay, you've seen the gameplay before: Coin World is a classic run-and-jump platformer. You play "Colin the Coin," and you need to collect all the coins on each level to proceed. The levels are themed by 'nationality', with your enemies different with each nation (Chicagoland gansters in the US, Ninjas in Japan, and so on). Each level gives you a limited time to complete--you don't lose if you don't, but a nemesis you can't kill (a bank note) shows up and pursues you until you do complete it, or lose a life.

Innovative? No. But well executed, for what it is.

Lemmings Meets The Incredible Machine

In Eets, as in Lemmings or Junkbot, your job isn't to control your character or critters directly, but instead to place items on the screen that affect their behavior, and guide them to the exit point of the level. In the case of Eets, the "exit" is a puzzle piece placed somewhere on the screen, and you have a single "eets" -- a cute little animated guy -- whose abilities are determined by his "emotional state," which you can alter. A scared eets will stop and turn around when he comes to a ledge; a happy eets can jump short distances; and an angry eets can jump big distances. Typically, levels consist of several platforms--and you have to figure out how to guide your eets from one to the next in order to get to the puzzle piece, by placing little powerups that he eats, changing his state to make sure the right jumps happen at the right places.

Arrgh! Die!

Here's another genre they don't make any more--2D third-person platform shooters, like Duke Nuke'm back before the Duke went 3D. Developed pretty much by one guy (Dusan Stevanovic), it's a damn impressive effort for a one-man shop. If hopping about and blowing crap up sounds good to you, well, pally, that's what the demo is for, eh?

That's Gibbage as in "gibs," from "giblets"--the body parts strewn across the screen in FPS games like Doom and Quake.

Gibbage is a truly odd and heart-warmingly gory game that combines the mechanics of retro platformers with the aesthetic of the modern first-person shooter. The graphics are cartoony, and would not look amiss on a NES or pre-CD-ROM PC; the gameplay is deathmatch shooting madness. Your avatar runs and leaps about, gathering powerups and dispatching your foe with massive firepower, a 3D game's gibs replaced with pixellated blood.

2005 IGF Award Winner
Reinventing the Platformer with Physics

At first glance, Gish might appear to be a classic arcade-style game, something like Sonic or Mario Brothers. First glances can be deceiving: yes, this is a sidescrolling platformer, but the actual gameplay is very different, because it's based on a physics engine. Gish, the tar ball who is the title character, needs to get momentum to get up and over objects, controls how high he jumps by compressing and extending himself, can move objects by gaining momentum and running into them, walks on walls and ceilings by making himself "sticky", and so on.

2D Platformer with the Attitude of Doom

In Glow, you play a badass guy with a sword invading the depths of Hell, apparently because your equally badass wife is so badass that Satan has taken a fancy to, and abducted, her. As you might expect in a platformer, there are secret areas, carefully timed leaps, puzzles, and so on, but as you might expect from the theme, there's also quite a lot of frenetic combat with the minions of Hell--not just with the sword, but a pistol and a slew of magic spells (which you pick up over time) as well. As a result, the feeling is more like that of Doom, or Crimsonland than, say, Super Mario Brothers.

An interesting juxtaposition, in fact.

Platformer for Golden Agers?!?

Picture someone playing a platformer, and what do you see? Probably a teenage boy, sometime in the late 80s, with the controls of a SNES or a Genesis in his hands. Its a game style that seems very much tied to a particular time--and a particular demographic.

Now take a look at Granny. Suppose you wanted to sell a game into the casual market, where the typical purchaser is an older woman. Presto, take an existing and well-established game genre, and make the protagonist an older woman! Who, on each level, has to rescue all the dear little stray kitty cats and water all the flowers. While evading enemies, of course.

This is either one of the most cynical marketing ploys the industry has seen--or else an admirably successful attempt to expand the market for a much loved genre beyond its stereotyped market. Or, perhaps, both.

Slyly Self-Referential Puzzle Platformer

In Lighthouse Lunacy you play a fella named Fred who runs around a lighthouse--actually, along platforms fixed to the site of a lighthouse, jumping from one level to another. The puzzles mostly involve getting boxes to the bottom of the tower--which sounds simply, but actually some of them are fiendishly difficult. Luckily, this is quite a polished game--you have any number of retries, and if you fail sufficiently often, the game will show you the solution.

The puzzles themselves are well executed--the developer is obviously a student of the genre--but what really makes the game shine is the framing device. Fred is quite aware that he's in a video game; he's moonlighting for extra cash, and is employed by "the game designer," a shadowy figure at the top of the tower who makes his life a living hell by facing him with these damn puzzles. Between levels, the two bicker enjoyably with each other--so enjoyably, in fact, that getting to the next such segment is a draw to completing the puzzles.

Guitar Hero? How Crude. But Opera Slinger--Cossì Specializzato!
Student Showcase Winner, 2007 Independent Games Festival

In Opera Slinger, you sing opera--into a microphone. It's a quasi-beat matching game, but your score depends on hitting the right notes as well as singing them at the right times; before you play, you choose the male (tenor) or female (alto) role. Your "opponent" is controlled by the AI, and the game's conceit is that you are competing with him or her for the regard and adoration of the audience--which changes more in your direction the more accurately you sing.

The game transpires in a 3D modelled opera house, and periodically you have to sprint to another location to hit your next mark--and can lose points if your "opponent" does so in time to begin the next number while you're still navigating the space.