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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.
If you’ve somehow not been put off by the debacle that has been Assassin’s Creed Unity, or you own the game and actually want to get a little extra content you might be interested to know that a release date for the DLC is available, along with a trailer.
The DLC, entitled Dead Kings, will add Saint-Denis to the map of Paris for Arno to leap, jump and murder in, an open world with diversions and a single-player campaign that will take you underneath the city into a large necropolis. This necropolis was built to house dead royalty so will be filled with long-gone royal dead and all of their secrets, as well as the enemies you can assassinate of course. It’s been made free after originally being part of the Unity Season Pass that got cancelled due to all of Unity’s… problems since its launch. It will launch on January 13th.
Blizzard have revealed the card back design you can receive by reaching Rank 20 or above in the Hearthstone ranked ladder for January 2015.
If you want it make sure you reach Rank 20 in the Ranked Ladder this month, and that does require you to log on at least once this month, even if your rank last month has given you enough stars to boost you to 20 instantly. Can’t claim the bonus stars if you don’t log on. Make sure you get a few higher on the ladder too this month so that you’ve got a boost next month too.
Sledgehammer have introduced a new game mode into Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and it’s one for those players who value their accuracy over a good rate of fire.
Named One Shot, it strips out class customisation and gives players a choice of five classes to use, all of whom are equipped with just one weapon – the MORS, a bolt-action railgun sniper rifle and have just a sliver of health. In other words, One Shot is a sniper deathmatch mode.
Of course each individual class has different perks, scorestreaks and exo abilities to give you some diversity in this mode, and you can choose to hide instead of roam around and pick off your opponents while trying to avoid being sniped yourself. It’s up to you how you play and if this mode is for you or not. Classes vary from the Hard Scope, built to be fast, mobile and has an exo suit ability to cloak; to the Irons that is equipped for slightly more close-range combat.
More details can be found here on the announcement post.
Witcher fans have been looking forward to the next installment in the series, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt for a time now. The hype grows more for every new trailer and piece of information about the game released. So the news of a 3 month release delay couldn’t have gone down well. The reason behoind it though is that commonly-heard one for delays nowadays – they need the time to iron out the bugs.
CD Projekt RED’s CEO Marcin Iwinski said that they were using the time to run optimisation in various areas of the games and stamp out the final bugs. It should result he says, “in a smoother and more engaging experience and, yes, the game looking better across all platforms.” For now the content is locked so no changes are to be made to the actual content and story parts of the game, which are the bits we’re going to be engaging with during the game and are at the core of any good RPG – especially an open-world one such as this. Iwinski says that The Witcher 3 will have “enough gameplay to keep you playing for weeks.”
As always I maintain that this delay is only a good thing. After all when a game releases with major bugs you’re going to hear about it thanks to the gaming media, and this year has recently brought us a nice big scale game with many bugs of which I’ve written a lot of articles on as the story developed and evolved (I’m sure I don’t need to tell you which one). More time spent on making sure a game works might mean more waiting for the gamers and more cost for the developers; but when a game releases late and works excellently as opposed to on time and is in some way broken it benefits the gamer and the developer in the long-term.
