LittleBear says: Wake up and spill the coffee.

31.05.07

May Notables

Posted in everything, games, must have, shmups at 9:02 pm by the2bears

May turned out to be a pretty good month. Oddbob released Beast Invaders 3, and though he thought it was rushed and unfinished I thought it absolutely great. It’s got the most deceptively relaxed pace of a shooter in a long time. The much faster Arcanacra is a work in progress but is already very promising. The “not exactly” a shmup Chalk is a very fun and innovative game while Space Cabbage showed off as an homage to the 8bit days. Finally, Mountain of Faith continues Shanghai Alice‘s Touhou Project and is about as close to art as shooters can get.

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Mountain of Faith

Posted in everything, games, opensource, shmups at 3:43 pm by the2bears

A demo of Zun‘s Mountain of Faith has been available for awhile, and is still up here. There’s also a .dll file there, that should also be downloaded and saved in the game’s directory.

Fans of the series will not be disappointed. The basic mechanics remain the same, ‘Z‘ to shoot and ‘X‘ to bomb (or play a spellcard). Left shift is the standard slow and focus button, which you will need to use often. Your hitbox is highlighted while moving slowly, and you’ll be concentrating on it quite a bit as the bullet hell threatens to overwhelm.

Collect the various types of medals for powering up your options and for spells. You can pull them in by getting close in slow mode, or by risking a trip to the top of the screen otherwise. There are some incredible new bullet patterns that will hypnotize you. This is truly a beautiful game, to look at, to listen to, and to play.

Mountain of Faith

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30.05.07

Three Hundred Mechanics

Posted in everything, games at 3:33 pm by the2bears

Thanks to Jared for pointing me towards Three Hundred Mechanics. What’s behind the interesting name? Sean Howard describes his site:

Simply put, a challenge to myself. Every day for three hundred days, I will post a gameplay mechanic that has (hopefully) never been seen in a commercial video game. Three hundred mechanics. No more. No less.

A particularily cool set of ideas involves negative space.

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29.05.07

More Arsecast

Posted in everything, funny, games at 5:01 pm by the2bears

More Arsecast, in its new format. I actually like the Read Along with Graham approach. The items are still full of humour, as Graham roasts much of the indie game scene.

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Space Cabbage

Posted in everything, games, shmups at 12:21 pm by the2bears

Get yourself over to Retro Remakes, where in the current mini-competition, The Look Around You Mini Challenge, you’ll find Minion‘s Space Cabbage. It’s fun, challenging, and surprisingly hard… at least for me. I can’t get past level 4 yet There are 9 levels I think, each with different vegetables and their unique flight and shooting patterns. It’s another perfect example of a quick break, a few minutes of good, old-time fun.