Our live radio broadcasts are currently on hiatus while we work on improvements to Sanitarium.FM's core services. For further information, visit our Discord.
Sometimes it seems like there are just too many games to keep track of out there, especially in the Indie market. This often leads to good games get looked over because there are so many to look though. So I thought why not bring attention to some of these interesting games that may have gone under your radar.
This Edition will feature some interesting puzzle games I have come across in the last year or so.
Haunt the House: Terrortown
Haunt the House is an action puzzle game where you play a ghost that was disturbed by the nightly noise of Terrortown. To get rest you most scare everyone from 4 crowded places: a theatre, a cruise ship, a museum, and a hospital. You do this buy possessing the various objects in each location. At first you are only allowed to do one thing with each object, but as the terror in the building goes up, more scary actions are unlocked for objects making it easier to drive everyone out. For example you can possess a chair, at first you can only move it, but after the terror level increases you can then make a haunting figure appear in it to scare people more.
The point of the game is to find the most unique ways to scare everyone out of a location. Some people seem to be harder to scare then others and some seem more susceptible to certain things than others. Each level also has a couple of unique people that can’t be scared away at first but at the highest level of terror you can literally scare them to death, making them into a ghost you can then play as well if you want.
This game has a very nice art style and the music and sound effects just add to the game’s atmosphere greatly. Many of the scary actions of the items are unique and fun to discover. It is definitely a fun, short game. I do wish it was longer, and it could totally be longer without taking away from the charm of the game, but it is still very much a game worth getting. And recently they came out with an extra level for the holidays, so maybe we will see more added to this game in the future.
In this game you control a little ball of a character Cyto who has lost all his memories. You most help him on his journey to reclaim what he lost. Cyto is a physics puzzle game where you slingshot and stretch him around obstacles to collect his memories, 3 per level. As you collect them it unlocks the story little by little.
Each level starts out with Cyto attached to an orb that has these little grabbers on them. You can then slingshot him to other similar orbs, collecting memories as you go or shoot him toward a portal that is the exit of the level. While some of these grabbers are used for the slingshot move, some of them allow you to stretch him over long distances to grab onto other orbs or memories. Just be careful not to fall or touch red spikes, doing so would mean restarting the level. And as you continue though the game more and more mechanics are added to give more challenge to the game.
This game is a fun and challenging puzzle game with a lovely art style and beautiful music. It would be a nice pick up for any puzzle game lover. Also Cyto is just really cute to interact with ;3.
Ichi is a cute, simple one button puzzle game with a hand-drawn art style and calming music. But don’t be deceived by this. While it is controlled only by clicking one button, the game is challenging.
The point of the game is to move a little ball around a level to collect all the rings without dying. The only things you can control in this game are these red wedges that rotate every time you click. These wedges direct the ball at whatever angle the ball bounces off of. The more clicks you do the lower your score is at the end of the level, so you need to try and complete the puzzle in as little clicks as you can. Besides the movable wedges there also breakable bricks, portals, spikes and other level pieces that can impact the ball. So you need to plan out when and where you want the ball to go bit by bit because if it hits a spike wall then you will have to restart the level.
An interesting thing about this little game is besides the developer made levels, there are also over 40,000 player made levels you can play as well. With the built in level editor you can create your own levels too.
Definitely a nice game for any who want a simple yet challenging puzzle game that they can jump in and out of anytime.
Everybody knows that Dr. Pepper is one of the few carbonated drinks synonymous with online gaming, so a new deal by Keurig may make its upcoming Keurig Cold machine a winner in the make-it-yourself beverage market.
The normally coffee-focused company has reached an exclusive deal that will let you make some of the Dr. Pepper Snapple group’s drinks when the SodaStream rival launches this Autumn; and while no specific brands have yet been mentioned, if the two in the company’s name don’t appear then something is seriously messed up in the world. Add to this Keurig’s deal with Coca-Cola last year, and we’re seriously disappointed that Pepsi signed with SodaStream preventing us from enjoying the perfect trifecta of gamer fuel drinks. Let’s just hope that the create-your-own recipes taste at least recognisably similar to the real things, so we can forget all the generic recipes likely to be released for it as well.
Gone are the days when PC games automatically came released on discs, sold in shops for you to purchase and then take home to play. Digital distribution is slowly dwindling the number of boxed copies games are getting nowadays but there are still some who enjoy having a physical copy of the game to hold in their hands.
Because of that Schafer and co have done a deal with publisher Nordic to get their game Broken Age released on physical disc as well as digitally, and they’ll be up for sale around about the same time as the second act of the game is released this spring. This will make it more likely to stand up to “solar flares and EMP bombs and stuff” according to Schafer himself.
The disc will include both of the acts, the game having been split into those two parts last year after the studio ran into some money troubles despite having had a very successful Kickstarter campaign, exceeding the target by around $3 million. We’ve been told to expect harder puzzle elements in the second act of the game.
One of the problems with modern smart phones is that all their modern capabilities comes at a price: they’re MASSIVE power hogs. Unless you have an external battery pack or a spare battery to swap in at those key moments, you will probably find yourself charging them incredibly often, perhaps even in the middle of a day. If statistics released from Blu Products are to be believed, however, we may just see a model that bucks that trend. Included within a range of new Android-powered smart phones – revealed by the company today at CES – is the Studio Energy, a 5-incher that claims to be capable of four day’s “standard” use, which in realistic terms means even a moderately heavy user might find it enough to get through the weekend without plugging in.
Part of this longevity comes from its whopping 5,000mAh battery pack, which is even capable of charging other devices by plugging them straight into the phone if you’re so inclined. The other contributing factor is the phone’s hardware itself, which sadly fails to impress: the low-end 1.3GHz MediaTek processor may be an efficient, low-power piece of chippery, but it’s also not the fastest or most capable processor out there; and combined with just 1GB of RAM the result may disappoint those looking for performance. Meanwhile, the display is only capable of Enhanced Definition 720p resolution rather than full HD; and with just 8GB of storage, HSPA+ data and 8-megapixel rear / 2-megapixel front cameras, many others are likely to walk away disappointed too. The budget phone specs however do give this model a budget phone price – the Studio Energy is expected to retail at just $179 (roughly £118) unlocked when it ships in late January, which may make it a decent choice for the budget-conscious smartphone purchaser; or as a backup phone for the outdoors man likely to spend long periods away from a mains socket.
In the last few years, Virtual Reality headsets have taken off as a kind of ‘next big thing’ type of hardware. Oculus were the first to come to the gaming community’s attention, with other people like Sony beginning to follow suit after. Now we’ve got an entry into the field from Razer with an open-source version.
Revealed yesterday at CES, it combines open-source software and hardware into an initiative named “OSVR” which stands for “Open-Source Virtual Reality” and there was already a headset to show off and for people to have a go with. The reason that they’re aiming to make the project open-source (revealing every detail of the headset and the software that makes it work) is that they aim to accelerate the speed at which virtual-reality headsets, the software it uses and all related technologies are being developed because they’re tired of the dev kit/prototype limbo it seems to be stuck in at the moment. In other words, if Oculus started the train, Razer are planning to increase the speed its racing along the track towards ‘perfection’.
They hope that by having everything available to the public enterprising creators can develop their own methods of use and make improvements to the model they provide. They’re even going to put together and make available what they call a “Hacker Dev Kit” and hopefully have it out for June.
The headset itself that was shown at the event used a 5.5-inch FHD display screen and used two pairs of lens, one concave and the other convex in an attempt to minimise edge distortion around the frame of your VR viewpoint. Otherwise technologically it isn’t more impressive than any other showing, but as it’s meant to be a platform on which others can build it doesn’t really need to be.
Razer’s taking a chance that their base headset will provide the means for someone to make the next big step in VR technology, and that could be just what is needed to make sure that virtual-reality headsets aren’t just a temporary craze.
