Goats vs Nazis, then, is the latest game project to kickstart their development with the platform.

I don’t even know where to start – or end, for that matter. Certainly, Goats vs Nazis looks to be one part game, nine parts marketing campaign – heck, that’s exactly why we’re mentioning the project on the blog! The actual novelty value of juxtaposing goats to nazis is obviously up to the funder/player/developer to decide. If you DO feel that it’s a good idea, then off to Kickstarter you go!

As if Goats vs Nazis wasn’t enough for just one post, I also stumbled upon Jay Tholen’s Dropsy. Dropsy seems – by my estimation, anyway – to be a Windows-bound point and click adventure game about a… clown… that is manic, depressive or both? The hero, “hand-less, unintelligible, and questionably human” … “will also encounter colorful characters and mind-stretching logic puzzles in surreal, off-kilter landscapes”. Sounds a notch like Toonstruck to me.

Other than that, I haven’t the faintest idea as to what is going on here. But fret not, for there be video! The Kickstarter video gives you a fantastic idea of what you might be getting. (You’ll be getting crazy, that’s what you’ll be getting). Keep in mind that Mr. Tholen has set the funding bar for the game very, very low indeed, so don’t be afraid to pledge just because the measly sum of $225 has already been fulfilled.

P.S. Can’t believe I just wrote this post.

Glorious October Carnage Sale! In celebration of a fantastic year (releasing Avadon and putting out our first titles on Steam and the iPad), we are permanently lowering the prices of everything we sell by 20% or more! Even better, for the entire month of October, all of our products for Windows and Mac will be 10% off!

In his blog, Vogel also outlines his motivations for the change in the company’s overall pricing structure:

A LOT of money is being made by selling games for cheap. So now , instead of selling our games for $25 or $28 (!!!), we’ll sell them for $20 or $15. I know this still seems like a lot, but I haven’t backed off on the key thing I’ve long said … People Who Write Niche Games Can’t Charge a Dollar. If you’re making a pretty, shiny, highly casual game with cartoon squirrels and you think you can find a million fans for it, go ahead. Charge a dollar. You’ll have to. But if you write games like mine? Low budget, old school, hardcore RPGs with lots of content? If I charged a dollar for it, I’d have to sell a copy to pretty much every interested human everywhere to have a chance of making money.

The end result of the price drop? Geneforge 1-3 go for 15% and 4-5 for $20; the same pricing structure applies to Avernum, too. Throw in the extra 10% October discount and you’re looking at some pretty cheap stuff. Avadon, now $20 on the website, is actually cheaper still on Steam right now, so you might want to take a look at that, if you’d like some extra DRM to go with your games!

“Ah, but The Indie Stone is a brave-faced stone.” -Brendan Caldwell

In what can only be described (in suitably hyperbolic tones) as the most unfortunate development process ever (Duke Nukem Forever, you say? Ptsch! Ptschhh!), the Indie Stone have had their dev laptops stolen. According to the team, the latest update – and as such, months of work – to Project Zomboid was lost due to the game being backed up between the two stolen machines, yet seldom externally. A massive, repetitive witch-hunt by the gaming community subsequently ensued on both Reddit and Twitter, resulting in emotional distress, self-flagellation and many a brain cell lost.

Yes, perhaps the lost data should have been backed up better, but after such a costly setback, the isometric open-world zombie survival game developers need all the financial and emotional support they can get. It’s not like “Backups!!” weren’t the first thing they thought when the severity of the situation first unraveled.

The burglary is only the latest episode in an inexplicable series of unfortunate events; the team has had their Paypal funds held hostage by the evil bank-like corporation (also experienced by the Xenonauts team as well as Mojang); only shortly after the Paypal debacle, the Indie Stone also got a similar receipt from Google Checkout, who blocked new orders and revoked access to their funds.

A man blows himself up in a car next to the aforementioned flat; their expensive web servers crash. A development build leaks.

Once the team finally gets back on track, solving their issues both with Paypal and  Google Checkout by ingeniously pairing joke games to actual pre-order subscriptions – then, the burglary.

Gosh, these hard-headed, brave-faced guys, they’ve got stones all right, having already promised to “come back stronger”! You should preorder Project Zomboid now – just to tempt the fates, spite the gods, piss off the demons and so forth. Surely something somewhere is trying to put and end to Project Zomboid. Let’s not let it, shall we?

For those potentially coming fresh off Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the cyberpunk action-adventure of the moment (also included on our list of recent cyberpunk titles), Flying Wild Hog’s début throwback FPS Hard Reset might take some getting used to. After all, the game’s name could and should be taken in reference to its status as an earnest homage to “all those forgotten Dooms, Quakes, and Painkillers”.

What the ex-members of CD Projekt RED, People Can Fly, City Interactive and Metropolis do is literally drop the you onto a dank, bleak futuristic alleyway, with barrels and crates strewn across the street, glowing power-ups beckoning. Efforts to interact with this architecturally impressive scene will prove much in vain, however, with items merely bumping, bouncing and rolling about; If you discover an explosive barrel or a glowing transformer, you can rest assured its only function is to act as a stationary tool for tactical destruction.

Stuff blows up. Big time. End of story?

Hard Looks

In its outstanding presentation, achieved with a tailor-made in-house engine called Road Hog, Hard Reset presents most importantly a functional façade. The environments are immaculately detailed and flesh out overtly familiar sights for any fan of cyberpunk: The city streets are grungy and gloomy, littered with machinery and debris. Above, a stunning skybox; a vast sprawling future city booming with electronic activity.

At ground level, there is plenty to take in, with dynamic neon lights, signs and electric blue arcs providing mood. In an interesting visual opposition, detail textures are high-resolution while generic world-building textures remain smudgier, illustrating the griminess of the surroundings. For a pure-bred corridor shooter, Hard Reset offers a surprising array of locations. As paradoxical as it sounds, the game’s otherwise generic hallways, streets and corridors remain engaging throughout – at the very least for the very generous 5-7 hours of play the game has on offer, perhaps thanks to the game’s solid aesthetic sense.

While players might not experience much of the city outside the designated corridor, they are certainly able to hear it: Terrific sound design is utilised just as much for combat and action as it is for world building. Interactive advertisements and vending machines are multi-purpose, serving not only as electrical conduits to snare enemies with, but also in creating a sense of place and belonging.

Patrolling hovercars whir past overhead, sirens blaring, with public service announcements imploring players not to vandalize public property (you will vandalize public property). The combat sounds are both heavy and meaty metallic, with satisfying *thunks* and *clanks* and *fizzles* of exploding machinery. In this way, the sound effects accentuate the physicality of Hard Reset’s combat, wherein robots topple over, skitter and crash all over the place. Explosions feel appropriately devastating.

Excellent environmental music by Wojchiech Blazejczyk, ambient and atmospheric, plays in the background intermittently. Heavier, industrial-infused electronic beats are dropped in to heighten the intensity of combat while the more tonal and textural synths are reserved for the quieter moments.

The Flash-animated motion comic cutscenes – clearly done on the cheap, but well enough – stylistically develop slightly as the game proceeds, from slightly tacky to relatively nice. In-game storyline exposition is achieved via radio transmissions, though the gravelly, foul-mouthed main character only speaks during these animated cutscenes. The voice acting itself hardly leaves a lasting impression.

Hard Restart

Old is the new new. Hard Reset inhabits the kind of standard cyberpunkian fare where corporations rule the day, personalities are digital and rogue robotniks are rolling and hating on the streets. Players fill in the shoes of the good Major Whatshisname, working as robot enforcer for yet another Corporation – with a capital C, right? Right! – and nothing, dear readers and players, is ever as it seems.

The names, the faces and the places – Bezoar City, Sector 6, CLN-16, that sort of random thing – are certainly there, but frankly, the game’s exposition is a disjointed, comedic, and often simply nonsensical mess, its dialogic substance formed mostly of curse words and detached technobabble. (Once Greek mythology gets dropped in, one cannot but smile. It’s all very silly, yes, but also curiously endearing.)

“Bezoar this, Sector that” is all pretty much beside the point, though: After all, there are plenty enough bright neon lights and signs, shady streets and exploding robots; that’s as elementary and as visceral a cyberpunk gaming experience as it gets. Klaudiusz Zych in fact states in interview that “[The plot]’s not something you have to pay attention to if you don’t want to – you could just storm through the levels.”

You can indeed clickety-click through cutscenes as soon as the game is done loading the subsequent level. “It’s a shooter, who cares about story!” Some context, a looming MacGuffin, is all you need to kick some shiny ass metal butt. But an uncomfortable feeling lingers, a regret that emerges from this collision of beautiful sight and sound in comparison to the lack of substantial narrative, with the knowledge of merely going through the motions, passing through these corridors and arenas, never once truly connecting on a more sophisticated level with this admittedly fascinating and visionary place.

Despite its obvious narrative failings, Hard Reset does nevertheless create a terrific sense of “being there” given the richness of the world and the physicality of the combat. Sense, it never once makes. It doesn’t… have to?

Hard Shoot

Precognition, shooting experience and luck. These three dimensions play the largest part in the action, which proceeds with minimal bouts of exploration interspersed with waves… and waves… and waves of enemies. Any one battle, poorly anticipated or assessed, can and will result in getting sandwiched and/or cornered. Individually, enemies are seldom very tough, but especially the very first attempt at each major fight can be a tough pill to swallow.

Combative situations are foreshadowed in several ways; there will often be an upgrade station waiting, a closed door to be opened or an electronic shield turned off, and exploding barrels and machines shining in the distance. Often there will also be something intriguing going on in the distance, a little robot scurrying ahead, signalling an imminent encounter. On the “Normal” difficulty, the game is very manageable, (This is why there also exist “Hard” and “Insane” modes.) and indeed many of the rocket-spraying, forward-dashing robots can be avoided with a rudimentary understanding of positioning and circle-strafing, and obviously the streets the are littered with highly necessary environmental elements for electrocuting and blasting the enemies. You can and must create traps with stasis fields, slowing down the advancing onslaught.

Tactical positioning and planning do play a major part in the very biggest of the shoot-outs. Less useful for the player’s survival is a comically short-lived dash, which is often barely enough to get away from enemies, and more often still a fine dandy way of getting caught up in the environmental rubble, a trash bin, a protruding fence, or worst case scenario, an exploding barrel. Bang! Reload. Admittedly, a prolonged run key would have made the game all that much easier. Crouching is not included.

The lavish suite of weapons available consists of two main categories, projectile and energy -based. The two guns, initially an assault rifle and a plasma blaster, neatly transform into the different weapon subtypes, such as a shotgun, a grenade launcher or the compulsory RPG. The upgrade route is altogether familiar and very much resembles that of the Power to the People stations in BioShock. Shooting does have an extra dimension to it, as the forever forward-dashing enemies have to be held at a distance. Many of the weapons have an unlockable secondary fire for this very purpose, and sometimes switching weapons for such defense is key to your survival.

Switching between the subtypes as well as the categories is slow and cumbersome, and often the game is reliant on planning out your each weapon switch beforehand. The switcher also does not loop, instead scrolling back and forth only, which is absolutely an added headache in the heat of battle, especially as the different modes of either weapon are hard to differentiate visually. The game will also fail to register some of your switches and changes, and especially the bigger, more explosive weapons take extremely long to reload or re-energize.

Each these weapons – as well as defensive measures – can be unlocked and upgraded once you discover and amass enough experience pickups, improving them or adding features. As these are littered, for the most part, in the scenery, the game very much rewards a little bit of old-fashioned exploration. Those willing to seek out secret areas will be vastly better-equipped.

The developers make much noise of the engine’s capabilities for havo… Havok, having tailor-made “the Road Hog engine for the kind of game that [the team] wanted to make”. Indeed, the Hog manages to create a nice enough illusion of destructibility and mayhem even though realistically speaking not all that much gets blown up; beyond a few utterly, beautifully destructible sequences interspersed among the game’s more ordinary scenes, what the Road Hog, a powerful little steam engine if any, does very well to cover this fact up.

Upgrade management as well as general terminal usage are self-contained in the game world a lá Dead Space or Doom 3. The decision not to break the ludic experience with yet another tacked-on interface is a great way of preserving and even enhancing immersion, as the terminals are tactfully made. What does potentially break immersion, however, is a constant battery of holographic backsides plastered over the landscape.

Hard Rest

Hard Reset’s PC exclusivity surely denotes no “Press Start” in the menu, right? Right. In addition to its robust configuration options, ranging from controlling input lag, changing cutscene volume (Wow!) and utilizing a gamepad (though who would, right?), you can also designate a specific monitor to play on in your hardcore dual-, triple- and quadruple monitor get-ups. In addition, the game’s performance is top-notch even on a more modest rig, as Hard Reset performs extremely well even on the highest ‘Ultra’ settings, hovering between 40-60 FPS during most scenes. In the most chaotic of moments it drops right down to sub-20, but the game remains playable even if one doesn’t have the heart to change a thing for those few rare occasions. On a slightly newer system the game slowed down only in the two most demanding scenes and remained playable throughout. The only knock on the engine is that pretty as it is (see image on the left), its stylish and animated main menu is dreadfully slow to navigate with each click taking some seconds too many. Fortunately, the developers have listened to player feedback and have included a “fast menu” option in a recent 175mb patch.

Worst for last: As most of you have heard by now, Hard Reset does not contain a save game function (unless you delve deep into the game’s configuration files to bind the quicksave, which does supposedly exist, but is unbound and unadvertised). Instead, checkpoints. CHECKPOINTS. CHECKPOINTS. Let it be in bold. Strangely enough, checkpoint ‘saves’ can be loaded at will, but actual saving is not possible.

As up in the arms as I am about this (in principle! PC players are above all wo/men of principle!), the checkpoints are fairly well-sprinkled out and are not so much an issue as they are an annoyance. But just one single problem with loading and/or saving can nevertheless have a devastating effect on progress. For instance, after crashing to desktop after nearly completing an end-level battle, I found myself set back three big fights and some fifteen, twenty minutes of play. Fortunately for me, the game had just loaded the wrong checkpoint, but what of other players facing similar situations?

As with many indie games – intriguingly, the game followed an all-new fast-track promotional style by Evolve PR, whom also supplied The Slowdown with a review copy – there was minor worry that Hard Reset might not quite reach its proper bloom over the course of its modest length. This fear is and was, for the most part, unfounded. Though the game definitely stays the course throughout, the difficulty level offers a fine curve; while players will quickly learn the ropes, the game never becomes a repetitive experience thanks to the broad array of weapons and environments available. Larger-than-life surprises are not to be found here, but essentially, the game is well-paced and -structured. If you’re thinking Drug Wars (or Merchants of Brooklyn, as the game was called), you shouldn’t.

The game also has achievements, of course – all 80 of them – which cover both natural progression and additional challenges. Flying Wild Hog’s Hard Reset is available on Steam today; a demo can also be downloaded right now.

The game, a film noir/sci-fi adventure, is of two separate halves: Players control Azriel Odin, with the help of his partner Kane Harris, sneaking into the colony of Barracus in search of an informant known as Matthieus Howard. Interwoven between Azriel’s sections also figures the mysterious prisoner-patient Delta-Six, an amnesiac confined to and conditioned in a sterile facility with totalitarian, Pavlovian means.

An equal split between the two halves exists not only narratively, but also visually: On the surface of Barracus (a “New Pittsburgh,” as it is described), where habitable conditions are sustained by weather towers, where the constant presence of rainfall plagues the colony, its hammering rattle contrasting strongly with the sterile silence and cleanliness of the facility Delta-Six remains confined in. Where Delta-Six is a silent, worn-down man deprived of his humanity and personality, Azriel is a keen-eyed man of action and freedom, constantly entangled in danger, shootouts and the narrowest of escapes.

Indeed, in Gemini Rue, it first appears altogether unclear as to how these two different portions of the game, so completely binary and at odds with each other visually, thematically and narratively, could possibly relate to each other. Yet this is the very reason why Gemini Rue is, within the adventure gaming genre, the most sophisticated meditation of identity, destiny and memory (IDM for short – more on this later on the blog) since the Revolution Software classic Beneath a Steel Sky. Like BASS, Gemini Rue discusses the role of human-made predestination and its effects on society and the self.

The game – skilfully paced and constructed – ropes you along with the tiniest of details, notes and hints; a major portion of the game indeed consists of detective leg work done on communicators and terminals that Azriel uses to find various clues and people.  The terminal interface is well-suited to the game’s toned-down, realistic take on science fiction, and little interfacial improvements, like dragging and dropping in clues to search – that is, instead of having to type in words – will delight players.

To reach his goals, Azriel has to use his powers of persuasion and even violence to get the continuous fix of information that he desires. The same holds true of Delta-Six, of course, but in a vastly different scale: Where Azriel can use equipment and information to his advantage, Delta-Six clings to whatever he can to make some, any sense out of his predicament. In terms of controls, there are four operational modes to the interface – eye, hand, mouth and foot – and while the inventory to the game goes beyond even the most minimal of designs, the game nevertheless has an admirable and fresh focus on physical (and even corporeal!) puzzles, placing much emphasis on the main characters’ physical interactions with everything – including physically co-operating with other human beings.

Elevator music echoing in the lobbies of hotels, composed by Nathan Allen Pinard, creates a magnificent and bleak mood that is further enhanced by fantastic decisions of sound design that take into account, for example, such minor but poignant details as ambient effect volume changing based on whether a door is open or closed. The game’s soundtrack fluctuates beautifully between sombre silence, rainfall and poignant, melodic ambient electronica.

Although we have only briefly touched upon Gemini Rue here on The Slowdown before, noting Nuernberger’s interest in visually directing the player, I have privately witnessed the game improve with waves of continuous overhauls of graphics, audio and polish, rendering my personal collections of screenshots and videos from various builds of the game hopelessly redundant, and for the better. In a similar way, we have all witnessed the game shed its original, harder-to-type yet more descriptive title (psst, Boryokudan is Japanese for a “crime syndicate” or a “gangster organization”!) and transform into a hot topic amassing attention from the likes of PC Gamer and Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

All that needs be said is that Gemini Rue is, within the rather tight confines of the indie adventure gaming sphere, such an exhaustive and sprawling study that although I have now pretty much covered the ground that an ordinary “review” would, Gemini Rue simply remains a game that demands much more attention on to its intricacies that an overview such as this can offer.

Hence the parentheses for the letter “P” in the headline. Therefore, do see the game for yourself: GameFront go go. ‘s goo’. The full game, which offers 4-8 hours of gameplay per playthrough (of which you shall most probably have more than one), is available from Wadjet Eye Games right now, for the price of $14.99.

You play as space Captain Viridian whose crew is scattered across a space station in a strange alternate dimension. The controls are extremely simple, you can move left and right, and switch the direction of gravity. There is no jump or changing direction in between a la And Yet It Moves – you can only either fall downwards or upwards. The mechanics don’t change or become more complex than this; within this basic framework Cavanagh pits you against the environment and enemies in ways that will test your reflexes and your muscle memory. The game is compatible with a controller, but the keyboard is absolutely sufficient. The acceleration curves may take a little getting used to; while the controls are responsive, your affable avatar carries momentum which may leave some players grumbling about his delayed stop.

The initial few minutes of the game have you negotiating a series of rooms with traps and creatures, but the game soon opens up and you are given much more freedom in your exploration and the order in which you rescue each crew member. In addition to the main objective, there are various trinkets placed around the world, requiring you to do the near-impossible to reach them. Believe you me, some of them are a downright bastard to get. Getting them all unlocks a postgame feature, but I suspect the self-satisfaction and bragging rights will be reward enough for your persistence. Every now and then you may encounter a computer terminal that will impart snippets of story or reveal a new area on the map. Talking to your crew once you have rescued them also expands on the story, which is surprising.

What makes it surprising is the fact that VVVVVV has all the appearance of a game from the Commodore 64 era. Pixelated graphics with elemental colours and patterns, a chiptune soundtrack – all in seeming tribute to the 8-bit aesthetic. And yet these ‘retro’ stylings are in conflict with the more modern additions to the package such as the story and meta-features, making its faux-retro nature slightly startling. There is a clash between aesthetic and content, though I don’t say that as a knock to the game – for that matter, it was intentional. The minimalism doesn’t detract from the game’s ability to exude personality; Viridian traverses the hostile surroundings with a determined cheerfulness, until something goes wrong and that smiley face turns to a heartbreaking frown. The psychadelic music by Magnus “SoulEye” Pålsson adds an upbeat sense of exploration and discovery.

It can be aggravatingly, hair-pullingly difficult at times. Just watch the video above to see what I mean. That one multi-screen puzzle is for a trinket, a trinket, and yet I retried that area over and over again until I landed on the other side unscathed. VVVVVV’s brand of difficulty has somewhat of an addicting quality, so rather than throwing the controller at the wall and ragequitting the game, I found myself trying ‘just one more time’ to reach the next room. There is in fact a statistic that keeps track of your deathcount, and die many, many times you will. Checkpoints are very generously given every few screens, ensuring that you don’t lose much progress, and teleports help you get around the map much quicker.

At any one time if a particular route is too challenging, the openness of the game lets you come back to attempt it later. There is no filler, puzzles don’t repeat themselves and there is always something new to see. Total playtime will be around a couple of hours, but there’s more to get out of the game with the achievement-like trophies, which offer ironman and speedrun challenges, and unlocks such as Flip Mode, which, as you can probably guess, is the whole game turned upside down. It’s more devious than it might seem.

VVVVVV is available on the official site, as well as other outlets such as Steam for $4.99. The soundtrack, entitled PPPPPP, is available for purchase separately at SoulEye’s site for $4.

We did a lot of thinking.
As a result, we come to the conclusion we abandoned to release it in 2010.
Because, it’s better to enhance the completeness instead of completing it roughly in a hurry.

We are so sorry.
…
We are really frustrating to our ineffectuality like being stuck at such a thing.
Above all, we are sorry for the people who are waiting LA-MULANA.
And also, we are sad to be considered that NIGORO is always late.

Luckily for the team, Nigoro’s western fan base seems to be a highly appreciative bunch; both in the comments of the post, and on Twitter, (for instance, @TheUltraJMan tweets, “I’m sure the final product will be amazing, I’d wait years for this release if I had to! Here’s to an amazing 2011 release!”) fans have already started literally pouring in messages of encouragement! *cough* Whatever happened to all the good old-fashioned obsessive-compulsives?

In any case, if you’re seriously bummed out about the minor delay, there’s always the massively long PC original, translated by Aeon-Genesis. Plus, to make up for the delay, Nigoro also promise to release their first DLC, “Hell Sanctuary”, in conjunction with the full WiiWare game.

That moaning sound in the background? That’s just the good ladies and gentlemen from Impulse, GamersGate and Direct2Drive sighing audibly – the Treasure Hunt has been a devilishly good move from Valve to get more players introduced to Steam’s lesser-utilized features. It has also turned out to be an excellent opportunity for highlighting many smaller titles from developers that may not always have the marketing muscle to stand out from the admittedly crowded Steam storefront. Indeed, the Hunt has been a time to shine for games such as Bob Came in Pieces, Beat Hazard, Droplitz, The UnderGarden and Chime.

Another such game is the aptly titled Shatter from New Zealander niche developer Sidhe. Originally released on the PSN, Shatter is on the surface a high-definition rendition of the Breakout genre, perhaps resembling most closely the classic Arkanoid. Shatter’s claim to the throne, then, is its frustration-free flavour; where other games of the genre may have traditionally strained players with punishing difficulty, Sidhe have altogether subverted the problem by introducing a mischievous sucking/blowing mechanism for your bat, used not only for gathering shattered energy fragments that dissipate from broken bricks, but also allowing players to gently guide their ball’s trajectory curve both left and right.

This intriguing mechanism lends itself to precision play and thus very much eliminates the usual annoyance of not being able to hit your very last remaining brick for prolonged periods of time. In a further twist, the sucking/blowing mechanism applies not only to your balls and fragments, but also loose bricks and other debri. This is especially important in levels with hazardous gravity and bricks in patterns that move around. Bricks in the levels – seemingly forming parts of a larger machine – often have specific functions as joints, motors or even explosives. End-level bosses (and bonus levels, too) change the pace somewhat, requiring a specific, if often straightforwarded, tactic to beat. The player’s bat comes coupled with a powerful “shard storm” attack that is especially useful for handling boss fights.

In terms of its overall difficulty, Shatter is highly adaptive: Players doing poorly will discover 1-ups a plenty, yet see none during a superlative run through the game. In fact, it is largely up to the player to juggle risk and reward: One can take a cautious approach, spending ample time but in turn losing the highest of scores, or choosing to launch arrays of multiballs in the hopes of score multipliers and faster completion. In an unfortunate move, Valve actually incorporated the game into the Treasure Hunt with a rather difficult task related to the game’s undemonstrative Bonus Mode, “not one that [Sidhe] would have chosen and definitely the weakest in the game.”

Shatter’s candy-coated graphical psychedelia is reminiscent of the neon and glitter often associated with the Japanese arcade scene. The only real downside to the graphical fireworks is the loss of readability, an unfortunate but compulsory trade-in with Sidhe’s chosen style. In fact, the most typical cause of losing a life is simply not being able to properly discern the fast-moving balls beneath all the debri and effect work. Important objects like power-ups can similarly either drown balls or be drowned out themselves by the full-on visual assault.

Despite its PSN heritage, Shatter has been ported very well and plays much like a true PC game, taking advantage of Steam’s achievement support and even co-operative play, in addition to a neat selection of other gameplay modes. As a minor blemish, however, the game’s leaderboards seem plagued by blatant cheaters sporting impossible scores. Minor environmental glitches at the very edges of the game’s bottled-up levels can also occur, usually not resulting in anything worse than a lost ball or two however.

Last but not least, cute robots:

Cute robots?! Above, you can view the rad music video to the track “Amethyst Caverns” from the game’s award-winning soundtrack – currently on sale at 50% off at Bandcamp until the 20th of December – which is an award-winning work, written “in close collaboration” with Sidhe, from the artist Module. The utilization of electro on the one hand, retro game music on the other, results in quite the exciting blend, often ambient, other times full-on techno. In fact, the soundtrack is also available as a hard copy on CD Baby.

You can purchase Shatter now on Steam.

Exactly like last year, buyers can choose how to best split their payment between the five games and two charities, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child’s Play; in addition, there now exists a new option for tipping off “Humble Bundle, Inc.” itself, as reward for the actual running of the promotion. So far, bundle #2 has already proved to be a massive success like its predecessor, netting over 500 000 dollars in just over a day, and at the time of writing, more than 100 000 bundles have been sold. An all-new development is the transformation of the “top contributors” list into an advertisement board, with clever individuals – like Minecraft developer @notch – using their contributions to advertise businesses and Twitter accounts.

image via http://diglett.blogspot.com/

So, what does [insert price tag here] net you this time around, exactly? There’s Braid (‘Nuff Said), the ambient reverse propulsion clickathon Osmos, the delightfully pixelated Worms-influenced multiplayer blastfest Cortex Command, the cutiepie point and click Flash adventure Machinarium, and finally the highly fashionable and stylized RTS/TD romp in Revenge of the Titans  – overall, quite the diverse cast, as you can see in the image above!

This time around, however, many players already happen to own a copy of Braid here, an Osmos there, with an extra Machinarium to go; Jack Monahan goes so far as to say that you “need to question your indie-ness if you don’t already own practically all” of the aforementioned! Tough but true, I’m sure!

With so many avenues for digital distribution these days, it has actually become standard practice in the indie gaming scene for gamers to buy the same game over and over in support of their favourite devs. Therefore, you could very well think of HIB2 as a Cortex Command/Revenge of the Titans license, for instance – either game is more than worth it granted both are still actively developed, and Humble Bundle owners will be entitled to all future updates. If you don’t yet have Osmos, you might want to know that its soundtrack is loaded, absolutely loaded with well-known ambient artists such as Loscil and Biosphere. And so on.

A curious common thread that unites this particular batch of games is the Independent Games Festival – like the 2006 “Innovation in Game Design” winner Braid, Cortex Command, Machinarium and Osmos all three took part in the IGF 2009 Main Competition. That leaves Revenge of the Titans the dark horse of this bundle, right?

As a further aside, like you might already know, I’m not altogether convinced by Braid’s inclusion in the bundle: Due to its massive budget and popularity, I do think its status as a game suited for such a bundle is highly questionable. However, I do admit to understanding the game’s presence in the bundle as a lure; it doesn’t so much belong in the package as it does bring in some additional prestige and legitimacy to the bundle.

In fact, the question of prestige very much relates to getting the aforementioned games activate on Steam. As you know, a message was just sent out only weeks before that the original bundle can now be activated in its entirety on Steam. Obviously, neither Cortex Command nor Revenge of the Titans are yet on the service at this juncture, but when inquired, Wolfire’s head honcho and Humbe Bundle co-ordinator Jeffrey Rosen stated that he feels “optimistic” about future Steam activation. Furthermore, the Humble Bundle does absolutely have a great dialectic effect on the Steam application process: If the aforementioned two games weren’t notable enough for inclusion before the bundle, now they surely are!

Finally, don’t get so excited as to forget all about the ongoing WikiLeaks situation – please do stay away from Paypal and Amazon Payments and go with Google Checkout if at all possible. Let’s keep it cool and collected – you still have five days left to ponder how much exactly is going to a good cause!

December 19th Update:

For having broken the one million dollar barrier earlier today, the developers have enabled Humble Bundle 2 to register on Steam much like the earlier pack. As neither Cortex Command nor Revenge of the Titans are yet available on Steam, they will be added to the Steam library on a subscription basis as they are released.

In fact, there are already three promising Unreal Tournament 3 mods that have not only made the jump over to the UDK but also gone commercial, and curiously, UDK is not the only factor that binds all these three projects together. Each these teams also took part in the Make Something Unreal 2010 contest arranged by Intel and Epic Games. (In fact, two out of three of the above projects are included in the UDK showcase.)

It’s only fair to begin this showcase with Swedish Toltec Studios’ The Ball, given the game is to be released in a matter of days on October 26th. The game can already be preordered from Steam at 10% off the normal price of 17.99 €/£14.99, and is actually published by Tripwire Interactive, who have delightfully chosen not to remain complacent with simply developing more Red Orchestra, but are also taking other teams under their wings. The first of their, uh, protégés was Unreal 2004 mod Killing Floor. Quoth Tripwire president John Gibson, not at all missing the uniqueness of the first MSU winner publishing a second wave participant:

“When we first tried The Ball we knew this was exactly the type of game we would like to publish – fun, creative and a blast to play. … This is all the more exciting for us as the winner of the previous ‘Make Something Unreal’ contest to have the opportunity to help a winner from the latest MSU contest take their game commercial.”

In The Ball, players helm an archaeologist trapped within a cavern that turns out to be the entrance to massive ancient ruins. Shortly afterwards, the player discovers, wait for it… wait for it… the ball – “a mysterious artifact … gold and metal shelled” and the game’s primary gameplay twist becomes apparent: Instead of being “The Ball,” the player controls it to solve puzzles and vanquish various enemies. This distinction can be very much attributed to the runaway successes of Portal and perhaps more importantly still, Half-Life 2‘s gravity gun. Unlike Half-Life 2, where the puzzles exist to pace the action, in The Ball, the puzzles play a much larger role.  These comparisons aside, its gameplay remains unique enough to be best explained in Toltec’s pictures:

Though now soon to be released in retail, The Ball is also available for download in demo form. The original version of the game came in second just behind The Haunted (see below), and while the game has already been receiving some excellent scores in the press, I nevertheless recommend taking a look at the demo as the game is already extremely playable and polished in its demo form and gives you an idea of the game’s style.

I might be in the minority – there are “mummies and exploding monkeys” in the game after all – but I personally did find the demo to be a little on the boring side. Steam aside, The Ball can also be found on GamersGate, Impulse and Direct2Drive, and is even going to be available as a boxed copy in Europe!

The Haunted: Hells Reach, the 1st Place Grand Prize Winner in MSU 2010, is a third-person co-op shooter that pits human players against hordes of shambling demons and as such will most probably remind most players of Left 4 Dead; the twist here, though, is that instead of allowing – or even favouring – holing up in a corner to find the best defensive spot, The Haunted demands players to adopt a vastly more aggressive playing style from the get-go. This is achieved with non-linear, scenario-based level design, and the gameplay is decidedly arcadey thanks to its high pace.

As a mod, The Haunted managed to find its own space sandwiched somewhere in-between Killing Floor and Left 4 Dead. Some of this can be attributed to its western-tinged look, but perhaps better still helped by the fact that there are many weapons, secrets and upgrades to be found and unlike the other two, the game actually rewards more adventurous players instead of punishing them. As with the other two games of this post, a downloadable version of the mod is still available at Moddb, and is very much worth the price of admission.

Being this year’s top MSU team, The Haunted was awarded a full free commercial license of the UE3 engine, something that should bode well for the future of the project and hopefully ensure a smooth transition over to the retail space. Below, you will find the latest trailer for the game, fresh from the oven:

Last but not least, I would like to mention Sanctum, a first-person tower defence game with a clean and shiny ultra-futuristic sci-fi look that contrasts interestingly with the jungle that swallows the playing field. The game was assembled at the University of Skövde, also in Sweden(!), and took home the 4th place in the educational category of the Make Something Unreal competition. In the game, players control an elite female soldier who is tasked to protect her home-town from swarms of incoming hostile aliens.

Although the original alpha version of Sanctum dates back to September 2009, Coffee Stain Studios have just released an updated demo in preparation of their participation in the forthcoming Indie Game Challenge. In terms of their commercial release, the team aims to finish the game “Q1 2011 and release it on ESD channels.” Below, you can see a quick glimpse of the game’s action:

P.S.S.T.

In addition to the aforementioned, you could also take a look at Prometheus, which can be acquired free from Impulse.

TL;DR

Download The Ball: Cahua, The Haunted 3.0 and Sanctum Demo.

In addition to this interview, we have also simultaneously published our review of the first chapter of the game here at The Slowdown. “Over the Edge” can be downloaded from Skygoblin right now.

The Slowdown: Starting off, I would like you to return to the origins of the series for a minute: In the manual provided with “Over the Edge,” you reveal how the game’s origins actually lie in brainstorming sessions with your colleague, Mathias Johansson. How big a catalyst, though, was simply finding the correct tool to work with?

Theodor Waern: There’s no point denying that when me and AGS first laid eyes on each other, we both knew it was love. I realized right from the start that this was THE tool for me. The learning curve was perfect. I had a problem, I banged my head at it, I solved it. I had another problem, I banged my head some more, and I solved that one too. It has been that way ever since I started production on the game and I doubt I will ever come to a complete stop.

For a guy like me who knows what he wants, knows a little about basic scripting, and doesn’t mind the fact that making adventures actually is a bigger adventure than playing them, AGS truly is the perfect tool. We have had a rather stormy relationship though, me and AGS. But in the end my bugs have always been solved and we’ve made sweet, sweet adventure game love again.

l think the Journey Down might have had a chance without AGS though , the setting and characters just needed to get out of my brain. It would however most likely not have been a game. Maybe a graphical novel or just a large series of paintings or something. I’m incredibly glad it turned out as a game though. I have learned so much from the experience it’s just ridiculous.

The game’s storyline has seen quite a few revisions since 2005. When you finally hit on the current plot as we players will get to know it – what was it that made you go “This is it!”? Four chapters of storyline is no joke to commit to, after all.

Honestly, I think what made me finally lay down the script and say “this is the way it’s going to be.” was the fact that I felt I just kept pushing things around and never actually got around to finalizing the first chapter. Let’s face it. Four chapters, as you mentioned is a HUGE effort. I certainly hope I will release all four of them but who knows?

Now at least I can be certain part one got released. I would however not have released, had I not finally landed in a version of the plot that I felt comfortable with. Simplification was the key here. Strangely I found that the more twists and important characters I removed from the plot the better it became.

Bwana, Kito and Lina

A major part of development for you indeed seems to be polish – especially in terms of pacing and balance. We already know, from your deleted scenes thread, how you ultimately decided to scrap a considerable portion of material from the game. On the one hand, how hard is it to leave materials behind, and on the other hand, how important do you consider it for a designer to be able to swing the axe?

Making games is all about swinging axes. I work with online games for a living, mostly making content. I know for a fact that when we develop new features, try unproven techniques and new ideas, 80% of what we create is thrown in the trash. Not because it wasn’t good, but because it was for one reason or another, just mixing up the experience and blocking the parts that really mattered. I am convinced that throwing away stuff that confuses the player is incredibly important, and learning to do this is a must if you want to deliver a game with good flow and pacing.

To my surprise, you had stated before that “Most characters in the Journey Down are based on African masks of one sort or other”; while playing the game, I was almost certain you were utilizing Maori Tiki and/or Polynesian Moai as the foundation for the game. So, my question is this – you’ve actually not utilized a specific culture or mythology, instead going for a more eclectic mix of influences?

Kito is based on a east African style called Makonde, while Bwana, Lina and the main bad dude are all based a central African style of carving called Chokwe. Most of the other characters are actually just a big mess of different ideas and influences. There are definitely some Tiki and Moai influences in there somewhere! I have a couple of African art books that I like to skim through a couple of minutes before I go to bed now and then.

I haven’t copied any masks from them but I’m certain they have influenced me greatly. When it comes to designing characters for such a low res game though you really need to cut a lot of corners and remove a lot of the fine details, this changes everything a lot, so in short, let’s just say it’s a big mess.

What about the names – like Bwana, Kaonandodo – are these broadly African too?

Most names were just randomly given to the characters without any research whatsoever. There are however some exceptions. One of the two goons name’s is “Bunga” (not sure if this is mentioned in chapter one) his name, Bwana’s and Matoke’s are all Swahili words (Tanzania, Kenya). There are probably more of them in there somewhere I just forgot they have a meaning heh. So to actually answer your question: Correct, it’s a mess of different styles/mythologies/cultures.

While many players have already pointed out various parallels to Full Throttle and Grim Fandango – the first being thematic, the other stylistic – I strongly felt the episode also carried a Monkey Island feel to it. Apart from Kingsport, there are seven bays that surround St. Armando; will this maritime aspect return in the forthcoming chapters?

Yep. For some reason the maritime theme and adventure games go well together, no point fixin’ that which ain’t broken eh?

Aye aye! What probably reminds people most of Full Throttle, then, is probably your skilful combination of 3D CGI with 2D animation. How early in development did you make the decision to complement 2D with pre-rendered 3D?

It is fun that people have spotted the similarities with Full Throttle visually. This was my number one source of inspiration when it came to mixing 2D and 3D. I have looked at those cutscenes many a time and wondered why on earth they looked so damned good.

I think the first 3D item that appeared in Over the Edge was the crane. I knew what I wanted the puzzle to be like and I realized I would never have the patience to draw the crane in all of its angles so I made a simple non-lit 3d scene and without any real effort it melded nearly seamlessly with the 2d art. That’s when I  realized I could stick 3D in there and get away with it. After that I just kept going with the car in the intro and the airplane. I even had a quick go with Bwana as a 3D model but I gave that up fast. Character rigging and animation is a whole other science in itself and I would have no chance making that look as good as I wanted it.

Over the Edge’s puzzles gelled and rolled like no other adventure game in my recent memory. Is there a specific game or series that would exemplify the tradition and style of puzzles that you’re aiming for?

Adventure gamers in general won’t agree with me here, but my personal opinion is that a good puzzle is an easy puzzle. They make things flow and since they are easy they are more common and hence give the player feedback more often. It keeps people engaged and interested when things are happening. The only downside with an easy puzzle is that you need many of them to compensate for how fast you solve them.

What makes a puzzle a good one to you, then?

Admittedly a good difficult puzzle can be a lot of fun if it is well written and perfectly balanced, this however is seldom the case. I think the mood in an adventure game is totally ruined by “rub all items on all items” brute force puzzle solving. It flattens the whole experience. So do walkthroughs. If the player resorts to either of these, it is my opinion that the game has failed in keeping the player within the game world and has let them wake up from the experience that is the game. That is obviously a bad thing.

However, all games no matter how well written are full of moments when one resorts to brute force though, I’m sure people playing “Over the Edge” have done so as well.

A Waern puzzle!

One thing that does set your game apart from many other AGS-built adventures is your use of the 1995 “big” sprite style that is principally more about lines, shapes and forms and less about individual pixels – something that I’m sure is not lost on players. Did it take you long to discover a suitable workflow for doing art and animations in the very modest resolution of 320x and, more importantly, as a developer, what do you like best about the miniature work space?

The small workspace is great for efficiency. I love having those kinds of limitations. The more limitations you got the faster a project can be finished. On the character side however, I honestly think work might have gone faster if I had higher res and better alpha, as I would have less of a headache battling sharp pixel edges, so I’m not quite happy with the workflow I ended up with on them. Had I aimed for a more of a “pixel art” style, low res would be a blessing, now though… it mostly slowed things down. The best part with going low res is definitely how much faster work goes on cut scenes and backdrops, and the lovely retro vibe you get from the low res certainly adds to the mood as well. The low file size of low res games are nice as well.

I’d like to know a bit more about the background music. Beyond D’souza’s bubbly contemporary reggae stylings, what really stands out to me is how there seems to be a specific theme for every location, no matter how quickly they may be traversed by the player. It would be very interesting to hear about the way you two come up with a suitable tone and style for each scene.

Once I had explained the overall mood I was after, the reggae mixed with the jazz, Souza just went balls out crazy and started churning out tunes like mad to the different environments. We had a very simple workflow there where I made some short notes on what I wanted focus to be on, he made a first test, sent it to me, I give him some simple response (usually regarding what tempo things were in), he made the fixes, and we stuck it in game. He has been great at handling my feedback and implementing it immediately, just amazing.

The cut scenes were a lot more work though. I had to film the movies and send them to him so he could synch the music 100%. Also, the music in the cutscenes is split up in lots and lots of small bits, so the music wont break if people start skipping dialogue etc. I’m very proud of how well we made that work. Next time though I’ll most likely disable clicks during cutscenes, the result was good, but I’m not sure it was worth the effort.

The swift-but-sweet sax interludes, then, how did those come about?

That is a pretty interesting story actually. These sax samples were the first I added. Why? Back then I didn’t have any music, and I desperately wanted some. I headed to freesound.org and started hunting for jazzy little tunes to go with my slapstick animations to give them some punch. Just something temporary. When I thought I was starting to wrap the rest of the game up I figured it was the right thing to do to send an email to the author and ask if it was ok that I used his samples for a game. Amazingly enough he answered: Sure. Do you need anything else? My simple response to this was:  I need an entire soundtrack. He charged into the project head on with no sign of hesitation whatsoever and has produced things like crazy for me since. I owe him a lot.

Finally – and this is something that is very often brought up with AGS titles with great production values – what’s your take on voice acting and indie adventure games? I personally kept on reading Bwana’s lines aloud along the way, mon!

Heheh, me too, mon. I love it when games have good voice acting, it adds so much depth it’s just mad. There are actually lots of good freeware games out there with quality voice acting. Where they get the talented people from, I have no idea. I would love a voice over version of “Over the Edge” but I really don’t have a clue how to pull that off. It’s a BIG project, and honestly voice acting needs to be good, simply “ok” voice acting sinks a game in my opinion.

Hopefully, some time in the future, a voice acting solution will come my way. I too would love to hear Bwana’s nice relaxed attitude pour out of my speakers. One day this might come true!

Thanks again to Theodor Waern for his time and answers. While chapter two of The Journey Down, called “Into the Mist,” is slated for a summer 2011 release, “Over the Edge” is available right now at Skygoblin.com. Finally, if you didn’t yet get your full share of information on the game, our review can be read here, and there exists a production thread with big versions of some of the paintings for the game, and another post contains sketches and deleted scenes from Waern.

At this juncture, I would love to point you all to our interview with the game’s designer, Theodor Waern, published in conjunction with this review. In the interview, we discuss the game’s unique look and feel, Waern’s inspiration for the game and find out more about the game’s history and development.

The first chapter, “Over the Edge,” finally released after being four years in the making, tells the story of Bwana and Kito, brothers abandoned by their adoptive father captain Kaonandodo, whose abrupt disappearance left the brothers struggling to make a living. Apart for some slight “financial instability,” the duo has been running Kaonandodo’s Gas and Charter ever since, that is, until the Armando Power Company throws a proverbial wrench in their gears.

Suddenly, deus ex machina, a damsel in distress appears both willing and able to bail the twins out of their predicament; only, this mysterious bookworm – the university assistant Lina – soon reveals their adoptive father is somehow tangled up in a mysterious conspiracy related to the Armando Power Company. In the backdrop also looms the mysterious, forbidden Underland.

By far the most distinctive feature of The Journey Down is its unique graphical look and feel that, much like Grim Fandango’s (the closest point of comparison), also extends beyond the surface into a more coherent fantasy.

On the outset, I expected Waern to have utilized Polynesian materials as the base for his graphical style, but instead Waern has put together a real hodgepodge of various African sources. For instance, according to Waern, Kito – Bwana’s sidekick – was based on east African Makonde style, while some other characters, like Bwana, were inspired by central African Chokwe carvings. It is utterly striking how these designs seem to inhabit the very same space that the Calaca occupied in Grim Fandango.

In our interview, Waern also explained that while many of the game’s characters were simply given names without research, some of them are actually traceable to Swahili and other African languages. In this way, the game is, like Waern himself described the game, a “mess of different styles.”

Apart from the strikingly designed facial features for each character and the awe-inspiring presence of the metropolis that is St. Armando, looming in the background, the primary strength of the game is its immediacy and welcoming style of gameplay. The game succeeds in capturing the player’s interest at once simply by making the game’s fiction understandable in mere minutes – something that classic adventures always seemed to excel and even take pride in: A pirate wannabe? Check. A bad-ass biker? Check. An undead travel agent? Check. You’re instantly at home, pointing and clicking Bwana around Kingsport.

Now, beyond the unique visual direction and the aforementioned game influences, there exist at least three potential points of contention in “Over the Edge” that relate to the game’s allure.

Firstly, the game exhibits an uncanny ability to roll forward with superb momentum, constantly leaving you pleased with your puzzle-solving performance. In fact, some of the game’s puzzles are deviously simple, and as the game is medium length, it should offer an hour or two of gaming for most players. But this is no complaint – truly, where the game excels is in its carefully crafted balance, polish and eye for pacing; many locations were simply left out by the developer in order to maintain better and smoother playability, and Bwana indeed traverses Kingsport at true and tested LucasArts speeds (something that Telltale mucked up in their “Tales” series, for instance).

Like many adventures, the central puzzles figure around gathering ingredients – luckily made easy by the game’s highly intuitive (read: standard) interface. A directional arrow that appears when hovering over doors helps pinpointing passageways and entrances. The inventory is standard fare, too, with combination puzzles to go. Having only one save game slot is one of the few bigger offences towards adventure gaming aficionados.

Apart from the puzzles’ easygoing nature, another feature that may be divisive – and potentially a real deal breaker – is how in “Over the Edge,” Bwana has to have a reason why for his actions. If he is yet to find a meaningful use for an object or an item, he’ll simply shrug it off for the time being. I personally view this aspect to the game simply as successful writing, but others may disagree with Waern’s chosen method.

Finally, the game does utilize Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer -like meta-level comedy and writing, and thus often pokes fun at the common threads found in adventure games, including the kleptomania that so deeply permeates the genre. There may be moments in the game where these aspects of the writing can take players out of the game’s base-level fiction.

There does exist a slight lack of polish with the writing, primarily typographical, but easy to shrug off as characterization appropriately remains its chief focus. Intriguingly, several dialog trees also exist with choices that can only be accessed on separate replays.

While the game’s debt to both Full Throttle and Grim Fandango – the former thematic and technical, the latter stylistic – remains obvious, the game primarily operates closest to Monkey Island, and not only because of Kingsport Bay, an industrial cargo dock and one of the seven bays that surround St. Armando. In conversation, Waern explained to me that he simply believes the maritime theme and adventure games go well together. “No point fixin’ that which ain’t broken eh?,” he quipped.

Simon D’souza’s bubbly and energetic reggae compositions also highlight the aforementioned marine parallel; furthermore, almost every location in the game impressively has its own musical theme or jangle. Surprisingly enough, it is also the sound effects that play a major part in the creation of the game’s ambience – a fact quite hard to believe as the game’s canvas of sound has been assembled strictly with the help of the Freesound project. You wouldn’t know that, though, as the sound effects never take you out of the fiction by sounding of poor quality or out of place.

Of special note is the very final stretch of the game, during which the game takes a brilliant audiovisual spurt and leaves players on a game-high note and expectant of the follow-up chapter, “Into the Mist,” which is slated for a summer 2011 release.

Visit Skygoblin.com for a download link to the game. For those more interested in the inner workings of the game, there exists a production thread with big versions of some of the paintings for the game, and another post contains sketches and deleted scenes. Combined, these make for a neat “making of.”

Finally, do remember to take a look at our interview with Waern.

Once more, don’t forget to cast your vote! The compo is still ongoing and lasts until the 17th of May.

Hard Space

Our first entry today, Hard Space: Conquest of the Gayliks, continues on the path already taken by Shane “ProgZmax” Steven’s previous game, Limey Lizard: Waste Wizard!, only to bring the parodic aspects even more to the fore. Stevens is also responsible for the vastly, vastly different Mind’s Eye, one of my all-time favourite AGS games.

I do absolutely have to get this out of the way: Hard Space is a parody of the original Star Trek, built entirely on the solid foundation of cock-jokery. The game, set on the ISC (or is it I.S.S.?) Penetrator, “a ship crewed almost entirely by male homosexuals,” discusses the all-star entourage of Captain Jack Hardin, “the black sheep of the Interstellar Commonwealth.”

Admittedly, the foundations for a game like this do exist; not only do we have the legacy of Interplay’s Trek point and click adventures 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites, but also this (never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be linking it here):

Also aboard the starship are the Vulvan Cmdr. Spunk and Lieutenants “Scatty” Scatman and Tagai. I’m sure you get the gist. The captain, visibly shaken by the loss of the only female crew member on the ship to a tragic accident, bounces into a pair of levitating on-screen boobs that divert the ship’s course over to Fallux V in the Boner System.

First things first: Our good Cpt. Hardin has a permanent, raging hard-on (see screenshot on the right). Now that we have that out of mind (but not out of sight, especially now that I just subjected you to a screenshot, sigh), what we have here is an extremely full-fledged one-month project, a whole package. Intro? Check. Unique visual style? Check. Animations? Check. Inventory? Check. Gadgets? Check. A music volume slider?

Chekov! In fact, the game is so full (of itself) that it simply has no regard to the compo’s rule set: not only is the game made by three people (in addition to Stevens, Jim Reed contributed backgrounds and ShiverMeSideways music), but it also blatantly breaks the one-room rule! The nerve!

Some issues with the game’s interface are inherited from the aforementioned Limey Lizard: I would have absolutely preferred a revolving cursor – especially since only three actions plus look at exist – instead of having the buttons sandwiched in a cluttered, super-duper-miniature interface. Additionally, for sci-fi tech, Hardin’s WristCom (on the left) is positively retro-grade: For scrolling text, the communicator has buttons for left and right instead of the more semantic and logical up and down. Also, while its database access works by inputting searches on the keyboard, you still have to switch back to using the mouse to actually enter one. There’s always the chance, though, that Stevens is a fan of Tale of Tales, and these gaffes in the interface have been included to illustrate the incompetence of the Interstellar Commonwealth…

To the game, then: The first puzzle proper, fixing the “Transputter,” (on the right) is unsolvable to me. Now, I don’t know whether I’m confused by the letters X, Y and Z normally being used for denoting axes in a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system, or whether I’m too much of a humanist to understand how the circuit board is supposed to work here, but with zero feedback from the game and several hours of cracking open the puzzle for the sake of a democratic write-up, no can do!

As the compo’s voting period is all but over, and the two games below warrant equal space, time and attention – and since many other players have reported similar troubles – we will have to leave the very tangible flaws of this puzzle for Stevens himself to solve (for instance, why does the circuit barely cover one fourth of the available screen, when more explanatory details could be shown?).

The tragedy of this all is that I have yet to see whether Stevens’ marketing of the game (“Do you love ACTION and SEX and MYSTERY?”) as an adult-oriented experience has any bearing on the game’s subsequent content. Whether the game is smart, funny, crude or simply distasteful, I cannot know until I fix the damn ‘sputter. April is the cruellest month, huh?

To end, let me just briefly discuss what I think is to blame here, that is, beyond the aforementioned puzzle: Much like Limey Lizard, Hard Space has to be considered a descendant of Space Quest. As we all know, the series is both particular and persnickety – like The Many Deaths of Roger Wilco puts it, “finding all the ways of killing off Roger is half the fun of playing” – and overall, quite the exercise in masochism (or sadism, if you happen think like the website above) and foolhardy persistence.

In these terms, in an era where the rest of the adventure gaming scene is increasingly moving away from the Sierra style and towards the more forgiving structures of the LucasArts tradition and even into the casual (see Eternally Us, for instance), Stevens’ stubbornness has to be lauded – at the very least – for retaining versatility in the, uh, the space-game adventure gaming space.

Fin.

P.S.
I’ll let you know of any progress in the comments section. Do let me know if you got the puzzle.

Snakes of Avalon

Igor Hardy, perhaps better known for maintaining the excellent adventure developer hub A Hardy Developer’s Journal, has also produced an April game together with Alex van der Wijst. Their entry, Snakes of Avalon, concerns the decidedly psychedelic and hallucinatory story of Jack the barfly, who accidentally happens upon a devious murder pact. As he begins to uncover the dastardly plot, despite his obvious self-caused no-go condition, Jack holds a meeting with his conscience and proceeds to try and make a difference – even if only within the confines of his neighbourhood watering hole.

Only, nobody else around wants to lend an ear to the poor soul; zero faith is placed on Jack’s abilities, his perceived agency so diminished that the only thing seen to move him at all is booze. In these terms, Jack often seems defined by other people’s responses to him. Bob the barkeep, for instance, predicts but an early grave for Jack, mocking him of his addiction to cheap liquor; Mike, the compulsory chiselled local tough guy, has fun at the expense of Jack’s physical shape.

A major thread to the game is then how Jack constantly tries to prove his doubters wrong despite being already somewhere far beyond mere alcoholism. Hardy characterises the game the following way:

…consider the fact that there always happen to be snakes in rat-hole. In this particular case, Jack happens upon a particularly nasty conspiracy organized by a bunch of them. He takes an oath to give his best to stop them. Too bad then that he is a complete drunk, who has trouble discerning reality from hallucinations. And of course it all happens on Avalon – the ancient, mythical island.

Avalon, the bar that functions as the setting of the game, feels like a spin-off of the legendary Lefty’s; both are decorated with the antique head of a moose, for instance, forming an intriguing lineage (see the screen captures on the left and below). Equal emphasis is placed on the presence of the bathroom, too.

But not much else here is derivative. What the game truly excels at is the decidedly unique spin it puts on the competition’s spatial restriction: By utilizing a mid-screen division of high and low, the game offers an example of what we often call the “seedy underbelly.”

Equally important, in the context of the compo, is Jack’s refusal to leave the bar, a manifestation of his psychological dependence and addiction. In this way, better than any other game in the compo, Hardy and van der Wijst’s entry explores the one-room concept to its very limit.

The titular hero, much like the aforementioned setting, is of the Lafferian archetype. In fact, the game’s graphics, while vastly more Paint-erly, are still reminiscent of the Leisure Suit Larry series, with especially the background art recalling the ever-so-slightly skewed structures of the latter-day Lowe-crafted Leisure Suits.

While the game’s looks hardly hold a candle to commercial ventures, they are nevertheless in no way detrimental to the overall experience. Indeed, a great deal of entrepreneurial diligence has been applied to the graphics: Nearly everything is animated, and the bar’s population is constantly changing and revolving, creating not only a fantastic sense of liveliness, but also of time passing.

Much of the storyline is also augmented with semi-animated cutscenes, which a great deal of work must have gone into; for a MAGS entry the game indeed sports massive amounts of action and movement. Some interesting artistic touches, like the crazy train (on the right) exist; a selection of music, which I assume to be from the public domain, is not quite as successful in creating ambience, instead serving to confuse the temporal placement of the game.

Curiously, the mouse buttons for look and use are inverted here compared to the usual paradigm, something that threw me off for a brief moment: Cognitive lock-in, I guess. As far as the puzzles go, once you get the gist of Jack’s internals, they become a smooth sailing, as the game constantly takes advantage, both in regards to its puzzles and its narrative, of its setting; only one or two inventory puzzles went decidedly beyond what could have seen to constitute Jack’s muddled-up inner life.

A thread of magic realism penetrates the internal logic of the game in a way that makes everything that happens to Jack still seem human-size and understandable. All in all, the game is a helter-skelter collage of events and occurrences that ultimately render its otherwise tragic protagonist a sympathetic – and quite a bit heroic – figure, even if only for a fleeting moment.

Two things of note: The game’s LucasArts metaphor is surely not lost on players! On that topic, do check out our story on goodwill and LucasArts. What the Arthurian Avalon has to do with all this I haven’t the faintest of clue, though.

Space Pool Alpha

Last but not least, Space Pool Alpha by Steve McCrea, Sheldon Moskowitz and Mark Lovegrove (against the rules, again?!) is a highly polished arcade experience that illustrates the inconceivable yet surprisingly potent combination of, yes, Asteroids and pool.

Let’s just… let’s stop and dwell on that for a moment: While the authors sell the game as an “intergalactic arcade sports simulation,” I don’t think that particular turn of phrase sufficiently illustrates all the different layers of the game.

What Space Pool Alpha is, really, is a video game whose mechanics are loosely based on the real-life ™ game family of cue sports, games played on a specifically designed table and with cue sticks and pool balls. This real-world game and its varying rule sets have been abstracted and subsequently brought into the computerized realm, as a symbol-based simulation, with another such abstraction – the science fiction of a space shuttle stuck in an asteroid belt, shooting its way out – layered on top of it.

This mixture of simulation-upon-simulation is then transformed together, by Mr. McCrea and co., into something entirely different. On top of everything, all this has been conceived and executed – successfully, if I may add – on an adventure game development system! Goodness, there are so many facets to this erratic entry that I simply cannot fathom how our brains cope with it all.

But I have played Space Pool Alpha and survived. In fact, it all could not be simpler as you are playing the game. The whole concept only becomes a brain-buster when you start thinking about it.

(Sorry.)

The graphics, then, pay successful homage to the original wireframe-based Asteroids style, retaining these ultra-familiar translucent shapes down to a tee. The sound effects similarly enhance the fiction, of a retro game, very successfully. The enemies, in arcade fashion, all have colourful portraits and background stories that tell players more about their opponents’ temperaments. The bots are largely competent and the gameplay is a polished experience, with no apparent issues sans some advantageous shooting methods. All in all, there are four modes of play: A quick tutorial and separate modes for practice, tournament and 2P each.

While I did find Lovegrove’s midi stylings to be somewhat more jarring here than usual, the problem has much to do with my idea of pool being better suited to a loungier, jazzier style.

That’s all from me, folks – and what a task it was! So many interesting entries this month. Again, the entries can be voted for up until the 17th of May, so you still have some time to familiarize yourself with the rest of the entries. Also, many of the games mentioned in part I, part II and here have also seen further revisions and updates since their original release. You can find more about these improvements by checking out the corresponding threads in the Completed Game Announcements section of the AGS forums.

Finally, also remember that we have quite a bit of existing Adventure Game Studio coverage on the website – feel free to take a look. Questions? Comments? Have a go below!

Eternally Us

One bad hand and it’s all over. -Fiona

Broken rules aside, context is everything with Ben “Ben304″ Chandler and Steven “Calin Leafshade” Poulton’s entry to the compo, Eternally Us. Context-free, the game is, like Steve Ince (So Blonde) calls it, a “beautiful” adventure. For a MAGS entry, then, the game is not only breathtakingly complete but also a fulfilling gaming experience.

The game is also yet another extension to Chandler’s formidable repertoire – a constant stream of short, self-contained adventures – that broadly discusses the same primary motifs, vehicles and themes, in many ways tying his output down into a more coherent whole. Conversely, Poulton is best-known for his well-esteemed (though also controversial) The McCarthy Chronicles.

Ostensibly an entry point into the relationship of two soulmates – Amber and Fiona – spending a beautiful afternoon out in the park, the game begins in subdued and relaxing tones. It also very, very quickly degenerates into a discussion of emotional distress.

In fact, whether it’s the loss of memory or knowledge, teleportation or even planar shift, Chandler has now juxtaposed the real world to a netherworld/spiritual world/otherworld in nearly all of his recent games, including Shifter’s Box, Heed, Hope and Featherweight. The same can be said of Eternally Us. While the game does technically utilize one and the same “room” as far as the concept is defined within the actual AGS engine, it nevertheless proceeds through a series of symbolic locations tied together by the thematic confines of the Kübler-Ross grief cycle. The author himself promised to explain these aspects in the form of a forthcoming post-mortem, so I won’t linger on this further.

The game seems equally informed by the standard dramatic structure of a five-stage play, from exposition to resolution. After all, adventure games have traditionally mimicked the spectators’ viewpoint in their presentation, and Eternally Us actually proceeds to acknowledge this fact.

Poulton’s dialogue utilizes a wildly poetic register, prosaic in a way that borders on the verbose. Let me quote the character of “Hurt”:

Why, when faced with the truth, do you close your heart and bear false witness to those who only wish to cleanse you of your pain? / You are bound by nothing more than your own clenched fists. By your fury at the realities that plague every one of us.

While the above clearly illustrates Poulton’s effortless lexicon and understanding of genre, these dramatic and overstated sections ultimately make out about 90% of the game and do hamper character-level relatability terribly; where overwritten dialogue in The McCarthy Chronicles is still directly used in the fleshing-out of characters, the stylings here are wasted on secondary and even tertiary characters that leave little mark on the protagonist or the player.

In comparison to Poulton’s previous work, Eternally Us also lacks the concise minimalism of Hope, as well as omits some of the more intricate details and touches of The McCarthy Chronicles, like the titular hero’s untouched revolver; his wish to be able to play the piano and so forth.

Poulton himself characterises his overall enterprise in the following way:

I only wish to create something which makes people feel truly alive and challenges their perceptions. I want to generate the power of Aesop with the elegance of Shakespeare. It’s fair to say that I want to make something special.. I want to make something which is truly Of Heaven.

The aims outlined above are, in no uncertain terms, lofty. For a writer to grow, of course, the utilization of schemas and narrative structures is surely recommendable. That being said, the structural choices here render the primary characters secondary while the narrative, though at the forefront, remains oblique and suffers from being squeezed into its formal constraints.

By now, you must have realized there exists quite the rift between the tone of my commentary so far and the actual merits of the production. There is obviously no doubt whatsoever that Eternally Us both looks and plays most excellently, with production values, polish and sheen of incredible calibre for a MAGS project.

The game also sports a wondrous cast of voice actors, with Miranda Gauvin’s performance especially of note, and Poulton’s musical score is similarly neat. Chandler’s background art is equally painterly and atmospheric as usual: Some of the latter-half scenery especially, with animated full-screen falling snow and leaves, begs to be seen in motion; speaking of motion, there is a-plenty of that, too. Only the artist’s obsession with lamps and lamp-posts is beginning to stand out like a bit of an eyesore.

Again, as outlined at the very beginning of the article, only a ludographic contextualization reveals these gripes, which do not arise much in relation to the compo at hand.

In terms of gameplay, Eternally Us is not so light on puzzles as its puzzles are light. I would draw attention to how the game forms no exception to Chandler’s recurring use of kinetic, movement-based puzzles that push the game more into the realm of the interactive novel. In my admittedly superficial and incomplete reportage of Heed I wrote that “[t]here is a definite emphasis on positioning, movement and object states”.

This is not a criticism. However, while the kinetic approach was still extremely novel in Shifter’s Box, and fresh enough in Heed, the issue of repetition is beginning to rear its head: As repeated action forms the solution to most of the puzzles here, more variation would be required for the game to create more of an illusion of a problem-solving game. As is, the term point and click could simply not be any more appropriate.

I would also like to further clarify how I find the game’s failures in the writing department to be ultimately far less about register and more about its actual use. While the game begins in the present day, and looks to be a discussion of banality, it abruptly delves into a more fantastic sphere. Sadly, these two modes, the banal and the symbolic, are ultimately irreconcilable in the game’s fiction: The main character, Amber, takes her predicaments always at face value, never questioning or negotiating her own role. Is there no lingering doubt, at all?

This, in turn, is rather dangerous to the game’s use of location- and character-based symbolism. Consider Shifter’s Box, where planar travel is beautifully motivated by the game’s in-game fiction, or even Poulton’s own The McCarthy Chronicles, which works to avert the obvious trappings of the genres of noir and hardboiled. Perhaps games like Downfall, in their discussions of the human psyche, succeed in part thanks to not relying so closely on structure and form?

Whenever Poulton lets his romantic stylings drop and subsequently allows the characters to shine through, whether cognizantly or accidentally, the game finds just enough time to deliver a fantastic payoff. In this way, the very best portions of the game in my mind are, by far, its beginning and its end.

Chandler, “Ben304,” one of (if not) the most prolific games writers currently working with AGS, can maintain an inhuman pace: Poulton and Chandler’s earlier collaboration, Hope, was completed over a 48-hour span. These men are clearly familiar with the presence of temporal constraint. What I would most like to see at this juncture, however, is for the authors to take a jab at producing a full-length; in short bursts, their games tend to dwell on the same topics each time around. Perhaps their forthcoming project in Winter’s Shadow – the second game to be released under the Infinite Grace moniker – shall be exactly that?

All things said, I hope the various references to all these wide-ranging earlier projects as well as the length of this write-up speak for (and, heaven forbid, not against!) Infinite Grace’s excellent contributions to the freeware adventure scene. Again, do not hesitate to cast your vote – there’s still enough time to check all the entries out. Please also remember to check back soon for the final portion of our reportage!

But why feature MAGS on this particular website, exactly? While we have obviously discussed a plethora of adventures both free and commercial before, doesn’t this begin to dig too deep into hobbyism?

First, whilst the basic idea of the compo may be deviously simple, it comes packaged with a twist every month: Each subsequent contest, as it stands, follows the creative guidelines defined by the previous winner! Such a constantly changing, personalized rule set makes for distinct competitions that always exhibit a different cross-section of genre, style and gameplay. Indeed, many participants seek to broaden their horizons also by battling the perceived limitations and constraints of the adventure-making engine itself.

April’s rule set was defined by Dualnames, who settled on the “One Room One Month” (OROM) format:

I know it may sound silly. But keep it simple, keep it plain. We’ve seen best of AGS games in the OROWs, and I’ve always wondered, if you had to have one room, what could you make more in a month. Keep it two people team MAX! Calin and Ben304 aren’t allowed to team up!

Second, for the very first time in five years, the compo saw no entries at all in March; in fact, this was the first-ever MAGS to not have an entry ever since the activity officially got its start in the June of 2001. April – the month that I have chosen to dissect here – was luckily vastly more successful, and as such raised my interest in addition to its prolific participants. What better moment to discuss the competition than to find it revitalized!

Third, the MAGS website places great emphasis on all voters playing through each and every entry before casting their vote. Therefore, after the jump, I have alphabetically taken a look at all of April’s titles, even if the inherent clashes of style, scope, direction and quality do complicate this task considerably.

Fourth, if Destructoid can report on Ludum Dare (which Nabeel has done on this website in the past), then we can definitely talk about MAGS. Off we go with part one – parts two and three of the article will be posted on the website over the following days.

Each segment has a hyperlink to a download for the entry in question; the general voting page for all entries can be found here. Voting continues until the 17th of May, so you still have some time to familiarize yourself with the entries.

AGS Footballer Tech Demo

Tzach Shabtay’s AGS Footballer Tech Demo seeks to replicate both the look and feel of the classic Sensible Soccer, and does so really quite admirably (though admittedly not quite so infuriatingly as Sensible Software’s TAC-2 destroying Amiga classic – whether this is a bonus or a minus is up to you!).

What we have here is a football game demo built to cope with – rather than take advantage of – the obvious constraints of the AGS engine. Therefore, the first thing of note here is not so much the actual quality of a functional AI and physics, but the fact that these exist in the first place! Chris Jones’ engine was obviously not designed with either in mind, and the developer’s effort in crafting these in is laudable.

Gameplay is built upon a two-button shoot/pass set-up. I’ve always vastly preferred the rather sensible one-button method of tapping for a pass and pressing to shoot, though, so having two buttons in AGS Footballer does go against the grain of the play style I was otherwise expectant of, especially since Shabtay merits the Sensible World of Soccer as his inspiration

“…for the controls, although I haven’t played it in years, so I did it from memory… In fact, in the first beta there was only one button like the original swos, but I couldn’t pull it off, so added the second button…”

The strict month-long time-limit of the competition therefore obviously played a major hand in the decision. Overall, passing functions better than shooting, which sometimes refuses to work how and when I would have preferred it to.

The physics are relatively neat; there’s quite a bit of vertical depth to the kicks – you can supposedly affect the kick height with the arrow keys – and even curveballs are accounted for. Every now and then, the AI (goaltenders especially) does goes perfectly ball-istic with its shots, though, and also get what I can only describe as spastic attacks.

Actually maintaining control of the ball remains somewhat elusive, further contributing to moments of chaos on the field. The problem is somewhat exacerbated by a rubbery automatic focus shift. It need be emphasised, however, that many of these issues are the by-product of the existence of the switch mechanic itself, and were similarly – if to a lesser degree – present in Sensible Soccer.

Using manual player switch redeems most of the aforementioned issues sans some accidental passes, which are caused by the same key being used both for switching and passing. According to a Making Of article on Sensible Soccer, the Sensible team sought to account for these player-selection related issues by keying the character not just based on where the ball was, but also “from the direction you’re pressing on the joystick which player you’re drawing on.”

By far the best aspect to Shabtay’s ballin’ entry to the compo is doubtless its high, high degree of polish. The game is not only extremely feature-full for a tech demo, with a good rudimentary set of graphics, controls and gameplay, but also equally polished in terms of in-game menus, available settings and documentation, which are all equally solid work and presented clearly.

Lastly, what better way to pay homage to the supportive AGS forums than to populate the teams with long-time discussants? In AGS Footballer, you’ll find yourself playing with or against Vince Twelve and Dave Gilbert, among many, many others. The teams are even set up as a contest between the Wintermute Engine and AGS!

Alphabeta – A Room of Words

Alphabeta – A Room of Words, Ivan Mogilko’s grammar-themed entry, is ostensibly a story about an evil wizard, Grammarfail, who kidnaps the crown prince of the Kingdom of Fairytales in order to, uh, pervert his literary abilities. The fair sorceress Alphabeta, our protagonist, is then booked to straighten out the whole shebang.

The game begins with a delightful and cute, play-like prologue (not unlike those of McGee’s Grimm) that cleverly taps into the otherwise questionable narrative potential of a… a spelling game? As such, the concept needs no further selling; only, as this introduction comes to an end, with Alphabeta teleporting into Grammarfail’s castle to combat the evil typographer, no “room of words” exists, and the castle is entirely pitch-black.

The author, prompted by the aforementioned zero-entrant April catastrophe, swore to take part in this month’s competition no matter what, and describes the game as a “vastly unfinished piece” and “a game without gameplay”; in other words, there’s no way to rock this thang. Too bad.

Next!

Dead Hand: Chapter 7 The Bridge

Limpingfish’s Dead Hand: Chapter 7 The Bridge is effectively a five-minute long first-person bait & switch that has been developed with the aid of the AGS Panorama3D module – admittedly to a pretty neat effect: Instead of having to work with a still screen, you can change your viewpoint, hover around the scenery for clues and even move in a slightly more spaced-out version of the classic step-by-step Dungeon Master style.

Yup, Dead Hand might only have five minutes worth of gameplay, but those five are, uh, well spent! There is a definite sense of an aesthetic and an art direction at work here, and combined with the use of an uncommon first-person viewpoint, the suspense of this murder mystery carries over rather well.

Unfortunately, the game did bug out on me on my first playthrough, with my cursor turning into a permanent red X. After restarting – with no way of skipping the introduction, boo hiss – I was finally able to get through that one last minute that I was yet to see.

The downside to the aforementioned module is that it does pixelate (voxelate? How does this thing work?) graphics considerably during camera pans, only to render the scenery properly as you pause. Curiously, this is utilized to great effect in this particular MAGS entry: The idea of having to stop to look when focusing on elements works excellently within the constraints of a detective story, but is probably bound to cause problems for other types of fiction.

Dead Hand is short and sweet, and there are decidedly no regrets for trying the entry out. In the meantime, it’s probably better to take a step back and let Limpingfish develop some more content for the game! (You could check out some of his earlier works in the same style, for instance.)

Dead Pixels

Folks, I can’t deny that Nathan Hamley’s Dead Pixels (title in reference to the pixel hunting within, I’m sure) made me reconsider my commitment to this write-up. While this uncertainty luckily came to pass thanks to the subsequent entries, at this stage I could not help but wonder about the legitimacy of the topic. The problem, simply put, is this: How to best deal with an entry that is generic yet formally incoherent, with puzzles arbitrary yet repetitive, and downright hostile towards the player?

How to best negotiate a game that sports a lead character that takes a full twelve seconds (12!) to walk from one edge of a screen to another; a game that has its background sculpted from a photograph, in which a low amount of hoverless and response-free hotspots are either blatantly obvious or altogether indiscernible?

In all fairness, it does bear mention that Hamley himself admits how he “can’t code for cookies” and that his “next project’s programming … won’t be done by me.” Ah well. What can one add? Instead of being an illustration of ability or quality, perhaps the entry served the purpose of getting the author more acquainted with the engine, or the constraints of the competition? If that was the case, then no more need be said.

Therefore, let me be brief, very brief: The frame story here is that the local net café is closed down, and what follows is that you have to rid the world of a solitary zombie. Despite all these garish flaws, outlined above and present in literally every aspect of the entry, it can be played from beginning to end and thus completed. Too bad getting through should be such an exercise in frustration.

Dead Pixels wraps up the first part of our coverage of MAGS April. The complete list of the entries in question can be accessed here on the MAGS website, and the subsequent parts of this article – to be published soon – will contain a longer discussion of Eternally Us as well as delve into the final trio of entries, Hard Space, Snakes of Avalon and Space Pool Alpha.