Your Once-A-Day 4X Fix

Galactic Emperor: Hegemony is a multiplayer "4X" (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) game played via a web interface, with one turn update per day. The basic rules behind the game are simple--each player starts with a single star-system surrounded by 'neutral' ones, and the early game is a matter of expansion until you contact your opponents (usually 12 players in a game). Systems produce resources, which you use to build factories (which produce ships), improve your technology, and purchase a few special units. Ultimately, the player who controls the most systems wins.

Real-Time.. Risk? Meets 4X??

Imagine playing Risk in real time, with new armies showing up continually and attacks occurring as fast as you and your opponents can order them. Or imagine a 4X space conquest game stripped down to the barebones essentials. With graphics that look like they come from a minimalist shmup. With games typically taking 5 minutes, and playable online against up to 11 other players...

Sounds wild? It is, and you've just imagined Galcon.

2007 IGF Finalist
And It's Free (Save Your Quarters)

And quarters, rather than dollars, it would be; Gamma Bros feels very much like a game you'd encounter on an arcade machine in, say, 1985, probably one with two joysticks, like Robotron (actually, you use the arrow keys to move and WASD to shoot in the four cardinal directions). It's a space shoot-'em-up (shmup), but unlike the frenetic madness of most shmups, it has a laid-back, almost relaxing feel.

A fun little game.

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.

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.

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.

Q: What's Grendel's Revenge?

A: Grendel's Revenge is an online storytelling game created by Worlds Apart Productions in conjunction with Skotos Tech Inc. It first opened for beta release on May 6, 2002. It is a game set in a high fantasy world where monsters are the heroes and evil adventurers need to be put in their place. It contains strong roleplaying and achievement elements.

Physics Sidescroller with Beautiful Czech Animation
2006 Game of the Year, Game Tunnel

In recent years, something interesting has been happening to the sidescroller--that old, even musty standard of the early game industry--in the independent game scene. Retaining the 2D sidescrolling motion and controls of the genre, clever developers have been freshening and renewing the gameplay, with the use of physics and graphic techniques like particle effects to create different and interesting puzzles and situations. Gish was perhaps the first to do so--but in Gumboy we have a beautiful and worthy successor.