Tell us about yourself, Bryan (Lunduke).

Who am I? Not much to tell, really. I’m your average software and game developing, tech magazine and comic book writing, public speaking goat herder.

What is L.E.A.I.T?

The Lunduke Experimental Artificial Intelligence Terminal is a terminal with an artificial intelligence (she loves bad jokes) that you can hang out with while you browse around your file system. Then a virus begins to infect your system and the AI goes slowly insane. It’s your job to try to save whatever is left of the sanity of the poor AI by deleting your own files in order to isolate the virus from spreading further.

Where did the idea come from?

Wait. This isn’t a standard game genre?

No. Were there many people (you think) that are scared that the game will erase your files? I know Paul sounded a bit freaked out.

A few people thought it would. Which I got a kick out of. Part of what makes LEAIT fun (or “really stressful” depending on your viewpoint) is the act of typing something like “del MyWeddingPhoto.jpg”.

How does the tech work? How did you get the game to pretend to delete your files in-game?

LEAIT really is browsing your file system. Just like any normal terminal program. No black magic there. (Though it doesn’t actually delete or infect your files. I’m not that mean.)

What does purchasing the game unlock?

The ability to actually delete files and save the AI. Before purchasing all you can do is watch in horror as your poor computer descends into madness.

What did you use to make the game? Any tips for aspiring programmers?

Just blood, sweat and tears.

As for tips for aspiring programmers… Here’s my own philosophy of making games:
1) Come up with an idea.
2) Make it.
3) Second guess myself.
4) Release it anyway.

You have some other creative games as well as some software. Feel free to tell us a bit about them.

Thanks! I also make Linux Tycoon (a Linux Distro simulation and management game) and 2299: Episode 1 (an old-school, point and click adventure game set in the distant future where the brains of all humans have been transplanted to spaceships).

Aside from that I also make visual app/game building tools (Game-Make-inator and App-Make-inator). Which are also awesome.

Any parting thoughts?

San Dimas High School Football rules!

Thanks for your time!

Game Link: http://lunduke.com/?p=4360

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Nathan prefers his last name not to be known. He’s probably a high-class superspy, but we don’t mind. Point man for interviews, and occasionally he takes a blowtorch to a game to see whether it measures up to his standards. Visit his game development blog: http://wonderlandgamesblog.wordpress.com/

Sometimes the kid in all of us wants to get out. That’s the case in Ostrich Island, a platformer/adventure by MeDungeon Games. Available for Mac, Windows and Linux, a demo is available, as is a $7.99 full version.

The opening intro cutscene didn’t explain the story very well, although it was well-staged. You play as Ostrich the ostrich who lives on an island with his family in relative peace until a volcano erupts, and the island’s inhabitants evacuate – all except Ostrich. He must now race to find his family!

There is a good amount of levels that you can choose from and replay (you have to unlock some first). Gameplay in the levels is pretty casual-based, whether you play in Relaxing mode or Escape mode. In Relaxing, you just run around, collect as many eggs as possible and explore the level. It is indeed relaxing and not hard at all, but there is something that always hooks me about collecting, besides the online leaderboards. This is a cute, simple game that rewards exploration. Simple puzzles sometimes come up also to break up the sometimes slow action, like kicking down trees with your foot to make a platform. Sometimes, however, it doesn’t quite work and the trees fall into the water, leaving you stuck.

Like I said, in Relaxing mode it is pretty hard to lose a life (a life system is used – once all your lives are gone, you have to restart the level). However, in Escape mode, things are turned up a notch with rising waters. However, while they were trying to capture two audiences and give two different experiences with these modes, Escape doesn’t have the tension and impact it really should because the rising waters feel kind of slow.

Just to add a little more to the game, once you reach certain score milestones you receive bonuses (which is, I guess, the RPG elements they mentioned in the description). For those collectors out there, there is also an island accessible from the main menu that lets you view your collection of eggs and other collectibles, as well as costumes you can have Ostrich wear. It is cute and good for kids, which really sums up the game.

Indeed it does. The graphics are simple but they need not be amazing rig-destroyers, and the animations and sound effects are decent, as is the music (that isn’t anything too special but isn’t hard on the ears). Charm is everywhere, from the concept itself to the cute idle animations. Got your head in the sand, dude?

This game is recommended for the kids and the kids at heart, but nobody else, if you don’t like cartoony ostrich casual platforming adventures. That really isn’t a demerit to this little adventure though. $7.99 isn’t a bad price to pay to become young again.

Buy Ostrich Island on Desura: http://www.desura.com/games/ostrich-island

Ostrich Island homepage: http://www.medungeon.com/

IndieDB: http://www.indiedb.com/games/ostrich-island

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Nathan prefers his last name not to be known. He’s probably a high-class superspy, but we don’t mind. Point man for interviews, and occasionally he takes a blowtorch to a game to see whether it measures up to his standards. Visit his game development blog: http://wonderlandgamesblog.wordpress.com/

Indie team Machines in Motion, developers of the lovely game Borealis, have unveiled a new and much more ambitious project. The Kingsport Cases is a 3D, first-person horror game like no other. It promises exceptional replay value and fresh scares every time you play. How will it achieve this? Two words: procedural generation. Not only are the maps procedurally generated; but so are the people you meet and the mysteries you solve.

The game casts you in the role of an inexperienced 19th-century detective who is assigned to the shadowy port town of Kingsport. The town recently lost their only policeman to a horrible accident, and now it falls to you to poke around in the dark corners of the place and see what crawls out. The plot is procedurally generated, based on a number of “story blueprints”, so the terrible secrets of Kingsport will be different each time you play. Actions you take and choices you make affect the plot, and the story adapts itself as you uncover it.

You’ll encounter and interact with characters that have their own goals and their own opinions of you. The NPCs are dynamically generated and harbor their own agendas, so it can be hard to tell who’s a murderer and who’s a friend. You will explore four different locations while investigating different mysteries. Each case is estimated to take 2-3 hours to solve, and you’ll take on about 4 of a possible 20 or so in each playthrough

Horror games generally rely on deliberate set-ups and scripted interactions. While this can be incredibly effective, it does diminish the suspense on subsequent playthroughs. A great deal of horror–especially that of the cosmic, Lovecraftian variety–plays on our fear of the unknown. In The Kingsport Cases, you will never know what’s going to happen to you next, even if you’ve played through the game before.  Each time you play, the game prioritizes unseen content, so you can play several full games before you will see something familiar.

NEXT: Stay tuned for Part 2 of this preview, where we hear from the head designer of The Kingsport Cases!

The best way to ensure that The Kingsport Cases meets its development goals is to support it on Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1374511342/the-kingsport-cases

The final release is still a projected 9-10 months away, but you can get a taste of the terror with the newly-released Kingsport Cases Alpha Demo: http://www.kingsportcases.com/p/demo.html 

You can also vote for The Kingsport Cases on Steam Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=143558159

More information is available on the game’s homepage: http://www.kingsportcases.com/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Paul Hack, or Phack, (@indiegamehunt) writes and edits articles here on IndependentGaming and is on the staff at GameJolt. He posts stuff at indiegamehunt.tumblr.com and contributes to indiegames.com. But most of his time is dedicated to raising his precocious toddler.

The game development industry is divided into two: the AAA, and the indies. They aren’t inherently “rivals”, but they sure are different. Unlike the big guys, the indies are usually smaller and less significant. They have less budget (but surprisingly, they manage a lot more than what a big boy with tons of cash could achieve given the same amount of time), but they are more relaxed. It’s the indies who usually innovate, because they haven’t got a lot of bucks to lose anyway. However, the lack of budget usually means a less polished  experience.

Many gamers at heart wish they could write their own games. I’m sure that every single one of you has at least two or three ideas lying around, waiting to be made into full-blown games. Hey, that’s why we’re human. But how many of you actually decided to do something with them? If you’re reading this, probably 100%.

I’m sure we both see that a AAA company won’t even look at your idea, so the decision is made for you. Go indie! There are plenty of indie communities out there, willing to lend you a hand in time of need (one of them is tigsource, where Minecraft  originated. Link: http://www.tigsource.com/). But that’s just it – “Lend you a hand”. Nobody’s going to do it for you.

Well, how does that help you? First, let me go over the creative process.

• Think of an idea
• Prototype
• Release it to the public
• Get feedback
• Change the idea or scrap it
• Repeat from step 2 until audience is satisfied
• Scrap all work, write from scratch
• Make assets
• Add assets

As a side note, but a very important one, if you see that the prototype sucks, don’t be stubborn. Scrap it. Don’t waste your time, and don’t waste others’.

The guys at those communities will help you make the assets, but as you can see – that’s a late phase. They expect a substantial amount of contribution on your end. Of course, you will probably find some people that are willing to help you once you have a prototype done, but you need to have a prototype done. So I’ll help you make your prototype. Uhh… No, not design it. Don’t ask.

The first thing you have to do is pick a technology. You could use a full blown engine (like Unity3D, GameMaker or Unreal Development Kit), a framework (like Ogre, Cocos2D), or a library (like Irrlicht, SDL, OpenGL, SFML). You might want to learn a tool, and stick to using it for all your games. Because of that, a solution that’s valid for both 2D and 3D is probably the best. My personal choice is SDL+OpenGL, but you could as well use Irrlicht, Ogre, Unity3D or the UDK. Of course there’s more to it than just that, like supported platforms; but that’s up to you to research (A comparison of them all would be a whole article long!)

By the way, if you’re an artist, there’s a different path for you to choose: Flash. It integrates 2D vector graphics with coding in the ActionScript language. It’s probably most comfy for you, even though you do have to learn coding ActionScript. If you have some experience with web development, there’s another path for you. HTML5 + JavaScript is also fine for prototyping games.

I will stop going over special cases now, because there is so much tech out there. I’ll never end this if not now.

The next step, after you’ve picked a technology, is to learn it. Say you’ve picked Unity3D. Now you need to learn C# or Javascript, and to use it’s editor. With the UDK, you’d have to learn the in-house UnrealScript and the unreal editor. With the other options, you’re kinda less restricted. SDL has bindings to many languages, and so does SFML and OpenGL.

If you’ve been paying attention, I’ve listed a couple of programming languages you have to learn. Yes, you absolutely must learn coding. A good source? Ask on IRC. Usually, the best thing you can do is buy a book and read it. Online tutorials sux. Well, if you REALLY insist on not learning coding (even though it’s a damn fun and practical thing to know), you could go with GameMaker. It requires minimal amounts of code (but still requires some).

Well, once you’ve made your pick and learned your tools, write your prototype! Once that’s done, and you’ve followed the algorithm I listed earlier, you should be able to find somebody to help you with the full game. And if your game fails, don’t lose hope! Keep trying (but with different ideas, of course). Who knows? Maybe someday you’ll make a hit. But indie is not always about hits. Just have fun!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ivan Rubinson is a dev, gamer (and now) writer. The dude’s lurking the tigsource forums, looking for awesome indie games to play (and now write about too!), and hopes to someday post a finished game there. According to his research, his PC is a 5 year old piece of junk, made from whatever can’t play Battlefield 3 faster than 24 FPS. Hence, Indie for the win!

Tell us a bit about yourselves.

We are SemiFormal Studios, a small group of indie developers working on our game, Ensemble Online, while trying to give other small teams the chance to experience E3.

What is Indies Crash E3?

Indies Crash E3 is a little campaign we came up with to help make E3 more indie-friendly. We’re getting 10 indie teams into the expo and attempting to gain enough traction to effect a more overarching change in indie exposure there.

Where did the idea come from?

The idea kind of sprouted while working on getting our own booth put together. The experience was very trying: everyone’s expecting to deal with big corporations so they don’t make rules, prices, or logistics that work for the little guys. A great example is how booths cannot be split between multiple teams without paying $5,000 per team. That gets rid of great opportunities like the Indie Mega Booth where small teams band together in a single area. We decided we were going to get indies in this year and try to make the expo more indie friendly in future years.

How does it work?

People can nominate an indie team on our site, IndiesCrashE3.com, and try to garner votes for it. The top 10 nominations in terms of votes will get 4 E3 passes: 2 for the nominator, 2 for their indie team. The top nomination will receive flight and hotel for all 4.

There has been controversy, with reports saying that the whole project is sketchy. How did you feel seeing that and how did you respond?

(Original Article – Info Not Accurate: http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/free-e3-passes-bought-twitter-followers-and-indie-games-the-sketchy-tale-of)

(New Article: http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/indies-crash-e3-will-be-allowed-to-give-away-e3-passes-to-fans-and-indie-de)

We’ve been in communication with E3 since before we started the Indies Crash campaign. From the beginning, they’ve assured us that the way we intend to use our passes is fine. The article that spread the controversy was based on some confusion because the author was talking with E3 and us separately which bolstered a lot of miscommunication. We quickly got back in touch with E3 and let the author know that they were working with us to straighten things out and dispel any misinformation but he had a deadline and posted the article anyway. After it was posted, E3 got in touch with him at our request and he posted a follow up, but the damage was done. It was frustrating to have such a negative article written about us and it most definitely damaged the campaign, but now we’re just looking forward and trying to pick back up momentum as the campaign comes into its final week or so.

People have also said it is a bit of a personality contest. What do you say to that?

Right now the contest is based on votes. We were originally going to just pick our favourites but we thought that it might be a little arrogant to say we know what games are most deserving. We also didn’t want people to be upset about us picking the “wrong” game. The ironic thing is that we’ve been getting a lot more criticism for letting the public choose. The contest boils down right now to who can get the most people to support their game. It’s something you can certainly accomplish without any resources by just applying a lot of dedication, but some people don’t like that system. We’ll take a lot of the ideas we’ve received into account when planning next year’s campaign.

What has been the most popular game (in votes) thus far?

Doorways, a game by Saibot Studios, is #1 right now. That nomination has garnered its own share of controversy due to getting a large majority of it’s votes from an Argentinian YouTuber named Alfredito. What a lot of people don’t realize is that Alfredito has had a long running relationship with the developer of Doorways and that he’s been one of the biggest supporters of the game.

While you are here, tell us about your studio and your new game, Ensemble.

Our studio is based in Fresno, California; we’re a small team working on a very ambitious project. Ensemble is an MMO, sandbox, city-building game. Players explore a massive desert, gathering resources, building cities with friends, and battling other players all while trying to defend land they’ve captured. It’ll be released this June as we arrive at E3.

Any parting words?

This campaign has been harrowing! We never would have guessed we’d rustle up so much anger and criticism for trying to help other indies. Even if your intentions are good and you aren’t asking for anything in return, you still have to be careful how you do your good deeds!

Official Site: http://indiescrashe3.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/IndiesCrashE3

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Nathan prefers his last name not to be known. He’s probably a high-class superspy, but we don’t mind. Point man for interviews, and occasionally he takes a blowtorch to a game to see whether it measures up to his standards. Visit his game development blog: http://wonderlandgamesblog.wordpress.com/

Well, I guess us humans seriously have to stop deforestation. We haven’t so far, so the animals are taking it into their own hands with the upcoming Lumberwhack - Forest Defense by Koloss, a one-man dev company, using the Unity engine.

Lumberwhack should be coming to iOS and Android by Spring 2014. Until then, all we can do is talk about it and drool at the beautiful visuals. They fit perfectly and wouldn’t look out of place in a full-budget cartoon.

You play as a monkey, fighting to defend trees from onslaughts of lumberjacks of different types, wielding everything from rifles to dynamite. The further you get, the more you have to fight, and the different weapons, enemy types and tactics will grow. Of course, this will be a tough fight all alone and so you can rescue other animals to recruit to your cause, each with their own skills and attributes.

To further help you, you collect acorns during play which can be used to buy new upgrades for you and your friends. It should allow for some tactics and customization as you see what combo of allies and skills are best for each level. New items can be found or unlocked too, readying you for more battle.

There should be plenty of content as well, with a planned 66 levels to unlock. The game isn’t linear – choose levels from the world map and play them in the order you want, or replay them! Also, an endless mode will be available to hone your skills.

Pricing is unknown but the game should be worth every penny when it comes out next year. I’ll likely go bananas for it.

Link: http://www.kolossinteractive.com/Side-scrolling-Defense-Game-Lumberwhack

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Nathan prefers his last name not to be known. He’s probably a high-class superspy, but we don’t mind. Point man for interviews, and occasionally he takes a blowtorch to a game to see whether it measures up to his standards. Visit his game development blog: http://wonderlandgamesblog.wordpress.com/

Tell us a bit about yourselves and how the business started.

Xona Games is a two-man indie game studio that started in 2008 with the coding of a Duality ZF prototype with hopes of winning Dream.Build.Play 2008. Our hopes were high, but we thought we could win the entire thing. Turns out, no. But next year we placed 7th and the year after that we placed 5th. Not bad for a worldwide gaming contest that covered over 100 countries. Our placing 7th in 2009 is what set us off in the media and put our studio on the map. Our first interview, ever, was with CBC News. (You can find a clip of it on xona.com.)

The true story starts many years early, back when Jason and I were seven years old. We got a TI-99/4A for Christmas. It was the competitor to the Commodore VIC-20, which predated the C64, in case you are not familiar with it. We started coding games then, and never stopped.

How is it like being a game developer in an area not really used for game development much (Nova Scotia, Canada)?

We’re asked this question a lot, especially considering all the help we get from Nova Scotia and Canada to attend GDC each year. This is how we have a GDC booth. It’s not free, by any means, and it always is an expensive trip for any indie studio, but we are helped. And the push to go to GDC was from our government. Governments tend to get trashed on but it was specifically a few individuals, Chris Richards and Jayson Hilchie, who taught us that we belonged at GDC, when we thought we didn’t. News to us. We fit right in.

So, the answer to your question is biased, for a few reasons. Firstly, we’d be doing games regardless of where we are from. We just happen to be in Nova Scotia. Secondly, Nova Scotia helped us connect with the rest of the world precisely because they want to grow their tech sector, so being in a non-gaming place is what helps us game. So to answer, it is amazing to be here. And, even without the help, we’d still love it. Nova Scotia is beautiful.

Agreed. Nice beaches. What can you tell us about your latest games and the “intense retro” style?

Our latest release have been Score Rush and Decimation X3, both #1 rated games in Japan on the Xbox LIVE Indie Games channel*. Our games are basically recreations of games from our youth. Rather, recreations of games we wanted to code in our youth. Decimation X has a TI Invaders feel, and we developed many precursors to it. Score Rush is a game mode removed from Duality ZF that we decided to release on its own, where as Duality ZF has a Raiden and Thunder Force feel.

Our games are our own. I feel the need to state that clearly. There’s nothing like them. We innovate, although game reviewers are rarely qualified nor experienced enough to understand the innovations. The shmup genre is 30 years old and has matured. The subtleties within it can only be appreciated by those in touch with the history of gaming, as Jason and I are.

Our games are gameplay centric and skill-based. It is all about the gameplay, and depth therein. This is why we have cult followings of our games in Japan, as the games continue to work with your skill as you get better, instead of against you. It’s a difficult feature to label, but the ability to have your game be challenging and yet able to be dominated is a feature lacking in most video games. I think Jason and I have a grip on this, as we are expert gamers ourselves. We have beaten notably hard arcade games, such as OutRun and R-Type, and I just won the PAX East 2013 Geometry Wars tournament, as examples.
“Intense Retro” just means the merge between nostalgic concepts and modern day intensity and gameplay. To be clear, we bring back the experience that was had 20 years ago, not the games.

*That’s, of course, before our ratings were hacked down. We told Microsoft to fix this as we have to mention this fact each and every time we speak about one of our top achievements, and here I am again jumping on a negative when the feeling should be positive.

What game was your favourite to work on? Why?

Score Rush was, as it was mostly my design as I worked on it while Jason worked on Decimation X3 which was mostly his design.

How have Xbox Live indie games and Windows Phone treated you?

Xbox LIVE Indie Games and the Windows Phone 7 platforms are among the worst well-known platforms out there, for sales. Our sales were so bad, however good by comparison to other games on the same system, that we’ve lost contracts to sell our games on other platforms. So not only did they sting us once, they indirectly stung us again.

I think it’s important to be truthful when the truth matters.

This type of pain happens with most indie developers. We all must find our own way. If it hasn’t happened to a dev team, then they were either lucky enough or talented enough, or both, to skip the pain. Lucky devs.

Counter point, XBLIG and XNA have been amazing first steps for us to make it in the industry. But it would be unfair to let other upcoming game developers think they can succeed on XBLIG without selling out and making Minecraft clones and avatar games. I’m not interested in making games based on the market and also based on the wild west nature of the XBLIG storefront, so that’s why our games did not sell “well”. Others would disagree.

I believe there should exist a place for $1-$5 games that are not sell-outs, on a console platform that connects to a living room TV. I wished with everything I had that XBLIG would have been that solution. It could have been. Microsoft did not support it and poorly executed what was an amazing platform to be with amazing technology (XNA) behind it.

Our Xona Proposal (xona.com/proposal) was pushed to the co-founder of the XBLIG initiative to try to fix the problems, but it was ignored as was XBLIG as a whole.
Windows Phone 7 was ten times worse in sales. And go try to find Decimation X2 on a Windows Phone. You will not succeed. We don’t even show up in the search results. And we were a launch title. Ouch.

The negative side of the story said, XBLIG and XNA have allowed us to make Xbox games. And all three of them placed #1 in Japan, and, for a while, sold #1 and #2 in multiple countries. It’s amazing. People now know of Xona Games and love our work. Publishers are now waiting for our next games to bring them to better platforms. It’s sad that these platforms may not be Xbox’s. I want to make games for the TV. Maybe OUYA will be the solution. I see their “Discovery” storefront is akin to our proposal ideas.

You guys have had a ton of critical acclaim. What do you say to that?

It’s great. The positive response from gamers and game reviewers matters to us most on the days where we questions our own abilities to make great games. People have no idea what their good words and appreciation can do to others during a time of need.
We love it. And thank you all.

Any interesting or funny stories involving any of your games’ development?

Too many to mention! I’ll just pick a cool one. When I first spoke with Imphenzia, the creator of the Decimation X series and Duality ZF soundtracks, it was over ten years ago. I very loosely promised that if I ever got into making games for real, I’d use his music. It was pretty cool to come back to him and use his music when we started making Duality ZF. Apparently, even though Duality ZF hasn’t been released yet, its success in content inspired Imphenzia to make game music and has done so for many other projects now.

It’s amazing what can happen when you involve yourself into something you love. That goes for both Imphenzia and ourselves.

Do you think you will ever move on from retro games in the future or is that the niche you are sticking with?

We will move on from it, but I believe all our games will have a retro feel and definitely will concentrate on gameplay. I cannot see us ever making a game that runs under 60 fps for example. If you ever see us make one, please ask me why and refer to this answer right here! I’ll be interested to know my own thoughts!

Do you have any tips for aspiring game devs?

Start small. Do what you love. Don’t be scared of failing. Learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of others. Balance business and pleasure if you want to do your day job with it. Make a great game. That’s the path to success as we see it.

Any parting thoughts?

Thanks for the interview. Introspection is always great!

Thanks so much for your time!

Official Site: http://xona.com/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Nathan prefers his last name not to be known. He’s probably a high-class superspy, but we don’t mind. Point man for interviews, and occasionally he takes a blowtorch to a game to see whether it measures up to his standards. Visit his game development blog: http://wonderlandgamesblog.wordpress.com/

Unbeknownst to humans, the insides of thunderclouds harbor entire ecosystems. Small beings called bobbles live off the electricity and leap around as if the clouds were composed of a series of platforms. Sometimes, an invasive species, known as meanies, takes over and sets up house, forcing the native bobbles to find another thundercloud. But one day, one bobble decided that it wasn’t going to be thrown out. This is its story.

In Electro Bobble, you control a lone bobble waging a one-bobble war against the electro meanies that have invaded its thundercloud home. The game is essentially a premium blend of two types of game: vertical-scrolling jumper and bullet-hell shooter. The pairing works so well that I wonder why I haven’t seen it done many times before. But the great gameplay of Electro Bobble is a credit to the hard work of developer Diado Gaming (creators of Hexxor), who deliver an impressively smooth and polished action experience.

The graphics are vibrant and crisp, and the gameplay is fast and fun. It’s also challenging: I found that progressing vertically while shooting requires much more coordination than using the keyboard and mouse simultaneously in a sidescroller. You use WASD to run and jump, and the mouse to aim and fire (alternatively, you can use an Xbox controller).  The screen is constantly scrolling downwards, and you have to keep jumping from platform to platform to avoid falling out of the cloud and losing a life. You can also lose a life if your health bar is depleted to nothing by enemy shots or by collisions with said enemies. You can pick up weapon upgrades and powerups to aid you in your struggle, such as my favorite, the jetpack.

Electro Bobble offers superior replayability, with its procedurally generated levels, 9 different meanies to fight, 6 boss meanies to conquer, and 3 different bobbles to control. You can download a demo of the game here: http://www.diadogaming.com/go/electro-bobble-demo-installer/

Once you’ve seen how awesome it is for yourself, you can buy it for just  €3.99 on Fireflower Games: http://fireflowergames.com/shop/electro-bobble/

Electro Bobble homepage: http://www.diadogaming.com/games/electro-bobble/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Paul Hack, or Phack, (@indiegamehunt) writes and edits articles here on IndependentGaming and is on the staff at GameJolt. He posts stuff at indiegamehunt.tumblr.com and contributes to indiegames.com. But most of his time is dedicated to raising his precocious toddler.

You use the arrow keys to move and the spacebar to call out for your son. You can call out periodically, when an icon is present in the lower-right of the screen. When you call for your son, you will see an arrow indicating the general direction you must travel to find him. Pick your steps carefully and pay attention to the cacophony of sounds emerging from the night. The sounds are not only frightening, they are useful navigational tools. The sound design in this game really shines.

Dangerous things lie in wait for you among the trees: snakes, bears, and something… worse. If your light reveals more than a tiny sliver of danger, it’s back to where you started the level. You’ll actually need to be caught a couple of times to progress in the game. You’ll know you’re moving forward by the numbered warning signs nailed to a tree when you continue. And you don’t want to miss this ending.

Originally an Android game, Reunion is now available to play in your browser via the Unity Web Player. Reunion was developed by Maan Ashgar (artist), Ahmed Al-Haddad (designer), and Abdullah Konash (game design/programming) of HakoGames for the GameZanga Game Jam, a 48 hour jam hosted by the Arabic language gaming portal GameTako. This year’s theme was “lost”, and Reunion explores that theme in frightening, unexpected ways. Highly recommended.

Android version on Google play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.HakoGames.AlLeka

Unity version on GameJolt: http://gamejolt.com/games/adventure/reunion/14079/

HakoGames website: http://www.hakogames.com/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Paul Hack, or Phack, (@indiegamehunt) writes and edits articles here on IndependentGaming and is on the staff at GameJolt. He posts stuff at indiegamehunt.tumblr.com and contributes to indiegames.com. But most of his time is dedicated to raising his precocious toddler.

The game’s clichéd but charming story has you playing as the mysterious Spy, as you help Jules (the agent of Spy) as he tracks down a international weapons smuggling ring after casually coming across it while investigating a masterpiece (a great artistic work or an artist’s best work) robbery. The catchy retro chiptune music (which, I might add, gives a lot of variety, from electronic to jazz) and the simple retro-style sound effects fit the art style, which happens to be simple tile-based 2D graphics which are good but not quite amazing. Not that that would matter anyway. By the way, if you like the soundtrack, it is available to download on Desura for free.

Most of the time you will be doing stealth-puzzle missions which involve traversing various rooms, moving crates, activating switches and other gadgetry, finding stun-gun ammo (which happens to just be lying conveniently on the floor), dodging and stunning guards and robots, and just generally avoiding getting hurt while you solve simple puzzles to continue exploring. It can be a bit complicated to beginners, and thankfully there is a tutorial and a good clear HUD (which fits the spy theme) in the game. The controls, however, can take time getting used to.

The solutions to the puzzles generally differ from one another and can take some trial-and-error and time to solve but the levels are cleverly constructed and the deaths are usually fair (you have one heart, or “life”, and if you get hurt you are thrown back to the beginning of the level). I died so many times in one room but I kept going for some reason. Sometimes you can get stuck, but thankfully you can restart levels from the pause menu.

The other part of your time with the game will either be timed-escape levels or shooting levels. The shooting levels consist of vertical-scrolling shooter gameplay which is fun and challenging even if it feels a bit out of place in such a game. The timed-escape levels are often long and tense and can be frustrating, but the more failures you have the farther you get in the next try.

The value and quality of this game is very high and the game is recommended if you figure you would like this sort of game. Just prepare to be challenged a bit. And hooked.

XBL Page: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Spyleaks/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258550bb2

Desura Page: http://www.desura.com/games/spyleaks

Greenlight Page: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93781967

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Nathan prefers his last name not to be known. He’s probably a high-class superspy, but we don’t mind. Point man for interviews, and occasionally he takes a blowtorch to a game to see whether it measures up to his standards. Visit his game development blog: http://wonderlandgamesblog.wordpress.com/