Publisher: dtp entertainment / Developer: Ronimo Games / Platform: PSN, XBLA

2D platformer/shooter?  Class-based multiplayer?  Comic book-style graphics?  I’m in.

I have what may be a crippling weakness for 2D platformers (and western RPGs, and anything with SNES-era music/graphics, but that’s another story…), and Awesomenauts looked like a promising investment since its relatively small announcement a few months ago.  Despite some threats of bankruptcy from its publisher, Awesomenauts still released on XBLA as promised, but was it worth all the trouble?

In case you haven’t heard anything about Awesomenauts (which is likely, considering the extreme lack of presence the game has anywhere outside of it’s own corner of XBLA), the game plays kind of like the characterized class-based team system of Team Fortress 2, with teams chopped to three players apeice, and squashed onto a 2D plane.  Each of Awesomenauts’ characters operate completely differently from one another.  While it is slightly irritating that there can only be one of each character on a team, and once you’ve chosen a character you can’t go back and change until the match is over, the fact that there are only three players to a team keeps things tight, and really makes you rely on one another in order to succeed.

While Awesomenauts can be compared to a number of other multiplayer, class-based shooters, the ideas that it borrows all come together to create quite a unique experience.  Finishing matches helps you level up overall, but when you start a match your character starts out with the same beginning stats and abilities as everyone else.  As you fight and jump around you’ll collect resources which you use to purchase upgrades for your character, ranging from new attacks to more health.  Your overall level, which is tracked outside of games, is used to unlock additional characters and upgrades that last until the match is over.  These upgrades are then stocked inside the vending machine you use ingame.  These additional upgrades can be switched out before a match starts, sort of like perks in Call of Duty, except you have to stock up resources to buy them.

Awesomenauts takes a lot of general ideas from other games, but many of the fine details are of its own creation.  Each of the characters you can choose to play as plays a different role in the team, but they are balanced enough so that a three-person team still feels complete no matter who is playing which character, as long as everyone is working together.  While playing Awesomenauts I was surprised how fine-tuned the entire experience seemed to be, and unlocking new perks and characters to play with was constantly rewarding.  Awesomenauts is an overall fun experience, and the fact that the game is multiplayer only is offset by the fact that playing offline with bots still grants you experience points, and finding two three-person teams isn’t incredibly hard.

Publisher: Amanita Design / Developer: Amanita Design / Platform: PC

If I were to describe Botanicula — the sort-of spiritual sequel to indie point-and-click puzzle/adventure Machinarium — I’d say it has the strange other-worldly charm of Oddworld, happy nonsense-words music similar to Sigur Ros, and fun but not mind-bendingly difficult puzzles that remind me of playing Pajama Sam as a kid.  Is it actually as good as any of those things?  Yes.  Should you read this review anyway?  I’d like it if you did.

Botanicula follows the story of five little plant creatures on a quest to save their ecosystem from a group of plant-sucking evil spider-ey things.  All five characters usually stick together, so controlling all of them is just the same as controlling a single character in any other point-and-click game.  Occasionally, you’ll be faced with a puzzle that only a specific character has the ability to solve.  You’re never penalized for choosing the wrong character, so these segments usually just end up forcing you to select each character until you find the right one.

Compared to Machinaruim‘s many logic puzzles, Botanicula is filled with mostly easy-but-fun item-based puzzles, much like more classic adventure games.  For instance, you’ll need to find a seed to trade for an egg, but in order to get that seed you need to go through the anthill… stuff like that.  It’s refreshing, since while the game does have a nice difficulty curve as you play, it never really reaches the point where you feel like you’ll never figure it out.

The art style in Botanicula can only be described as “wonderfully cute.”  All of the sound effects are either made by people, or what sounds like random household objects.  This really goes well with the game’s sort of scrapbook-esque look, with all the characters, objects and scenery made by warped pictures of real-world things.  It really comes together well and looks strangely natural in contrast to Machinarium‘s industrial, sketchbook sort of aesthetic.

Botanicula isn’t incredibly long, nor is it very difficult, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun.  What starts off as a cute adventure among five friends quickly turns into an epic journey, and you begin to feel just as lost and confused as the characters, exploring new territory that they’ve never dreamed existed outside their homes.

Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios / Developer: Polytron Corporation / Platform: Xbox 360

Fez was one of those games I fell in love with after the first trailer, years ago.  I’m a huge sucker for pixelly graphics and grand adventures, so I may be slightly biased here.  Regardless, after about four years of development hell and a bit of a controversy surrounding the game’s lead designer, Fez is finally here.

I don’t want to reveal too much, as much of what made Fez great for me was discovering everything by myself, but Fez is one of the first games to really blow my mind in a long time.  What starts as a smart, cute 2D puzzle/platformer quickly becomes something more grand and memorable than I thought possible.

The main draw of Fez, aside from the retro-esque graphics, is its usage of perspective in puzzles.  You see, the world of Fez is 2D.  Except when it’s 3D.  Then it’s still 2D, but… different.  What I mean is, much like most 2D platformers, everything exists on a flat plane.  However in Fez you can rotate the world around, while keeping everything 2D.  It’s hard to explain unless you’ve played something like Super Paper Mario.  It’s something you’d need to see firsthand to understand.  Anyway, many of Fez’s puzzles revolve (ha) around this mechanic at first, but things quickly become more complicated.  Not exactly difficult complicated, but more this is not something I expected from a videogame complicated.  In a good way.  Follow what I’m saying?

One of the best parts of playing Fez is exploring all the different pathways it throws at you all at once.  There is no real final destination (well… there is, but you don’t figure that out until way later), so all you really need to do is just explore around and find all the little collectables and secrets strewn throughout.  It’s so much fun turning around and going through a door you missed earlier, only to find an entirely new branch of pathways to sink another hour or so into.  Each individual room is well-designed and so much fun to traverse, it’s like a little Christmas every time you find something new.

I love Fez.  I love the graphics, I love the incredible sense of exploration, and I love the incredible amount of surprises it has buried within its many corners.  Fez was a game I was personally excited about for a long time, and the sheer height that it soared above my expectations blew me away.  My only real issue with the game is that once it’s all over, and you’ve found every collectable and every secret, and saw every corner of the map… it’s all over.

Publisher: Autumn Games, Konami / Developer: Reverge Labs, LLC / Platform: PSN, XBLA

As a fan of fighting games, the last few fighting game releases have not been too kind, in my opinion.  Street Fighter X Tekken was a fun idea but ultimately resulted in a flashy, unbalanced mess.  Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 – er, sorry – Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 had a great roster of characters but wasn’t really tight enough to be considered a solid fighter to me.  Soulcalibur 5 has solid fighting, but the incredible lack of single-player content and the sudden disappearance of about half of the series’ well-known characters was a bit disappointing.

Of all the recent fighters, BlazBlue and Mortal Kombat seemed – in my opinion – to be the only games that held up well in terms of gameplay while simultaneously offering enough content and things to do to really feel like a fighting game that was both as fun to learn as it was to play.  Skullgirls, the most recent fighting game to come out, looks to pay as much homage to great fighting games as it does try its best to become one itself.

The first thing that made me excited about Skullgirls was the fantastic hand-drawn animations, much like BlazBlue or Guilty Gear, two of my personal favorites.  The game looks fantastic in screenshots but it looks fantastic everything move onscreen.  Skullgirls may look great, but it plays even better.  I’m genuinely surprised at how well the fighting mechanics work, and the assist/team mechanic might actually be better than in the Marvel Vs. Capcom games.  When selecting your character, you can choose to have a team of one, two or three fighters.  Having a team of two or three obviously allows you the flexibility of calling in your teammates for assists or switching out in order to regain some lost health.  However, playing on a single-character team gives you a huge damage bonus in order to keep things balanced.  I’m honestly surprised how well this works, and how it allows for completely different fighting styles to come together in a balanced environment.

Skullgirls single-player content isn’t vast, but it consists of some pretty strong fighting game elements that I’ve come to miss in the recent games.  There is a surprisingly in-depth “Training Room” mode that teaches you the basics of the game (and fighting games in general, which is quite helpful), a Story Mode (with actual storylines unique to each character!), and a more classic Arcade Mode.  Playing these offline modes will actually unlock new colors for the characters, some of which are way cooler than simple color swaps.  Double, for instance – a blobby sort of The Thing-esque monster – gets an alternate color that turns her green and semi-transparent, almost like lime Jell-o.  It isn’t a huge amount of extra content, but it’s fun to scroll through the locked colors list and go “Ooh, I want that.”  It gives you something to work for.

Skullgirls cast of eight characters may seem a little small, and eventually seeing the same few characters pop up both off-line and on- may get slightly tiresome but the wonderful animations, solid mechanics and sheer amount of references to video games and pop culture in general makes it as fun to watch as it is to play.  Skullgirls is the first entry in what I’m hoping becomes a strong, long-running series that will be played at huge fighting game tournaments worldwide.

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about rumors that the next Xbox and PlayStation will both have some sort of system in place that keeps them from playing used games. Unsurprisingly, gamers have reacted mostly negatively to the idea of having the new-or-used choice removed from them. But I’d like to play devil’s advocate for a moment, and ask: could gamers potentially benefit from consoles that don’t play used games?

How Will It Work?

That’s the question on everyone’s minds. Nothing has been confirmed yet, but I think we can get a good general idea by looking at console games that already did it in this generation, such as DC Universe Online.

Before it went free-to-play, DC Universe Online was released for PC and PS3 as a disc-based game. PC gamers might be used to concept of MMOs that require a subscription on top of buying the disc, but it came as a shock to console gamers that they’d have to pay $60 for the game itself and one month of play, followed by $15 for each additional month.

But that wasn’t all. If they decided they didn’t like the game enough to continue playing after the first month, they couldn’t recoup their loss by selling it. Similar to online passes, the game came with a unique PSN key that could only be used once. However, PSN keys weren’t sold in the PS Store, so a used copy would be essentially worthless.

I think it’s pretty safe to assume next gen games would work in a similar way, though whether they’ll still require manually entering codes or if consoles will now be able to read a code straight from the disc is another question.

But why would gamers ever stand for this, let alone embrace it?

The Digital Download Factor

Imagine a world where—much like PC games on Steam—games are available to download right from your console on the same day they’re available in stores, and for a lower price, with no more need to disc swap. At that point, the physical copy exists mainly for people who don’t have an internet connection, don’t have enough free space, or are collectors and planned to keep the game anyways.

But you don’t have to imagine it, because Sony’s PS Vita is already doing just that. Some will argue that the price of extra download space to store the games doesn’t quite make up for the discount, but stay with me here. Sony and Microsoft both seem eager to embrace the Steam model, where gamers are regularly purchasing full retail releases as digital downloads, driven by frequent discounts. Microsoft has dabbled with the idea of full retail downloads for years with their Games On Demand program, and Sony recently offered Mass Effect 3 as a download on the same day it was released to stores.

But will they ever be as ambitious as Steam in experimenting with the economics of videogames? Both Microsoft and Sony have clearly come to see the benefit of digital discounts, as they continue to explore ideas with their weekly sales, but both are also clearly far more conservative in their approach.

How You Could Benefit

The reason publishers like the idea of eliminating the used games market is because they perceive it to be cutting into their profit margin. To an extent this is true: if a customer buys a used copy of a new release for $55 so they can save $5, they likely would have paid the full $60 if used games didn’t exist, giving the publisher an extra sale.

But what I think most publishers aren’t taking into account is just how many people who buy a game at launch do so only because they know they can often recoup about half of the cost by being able to sell it. If the ability to resell games disappears, the sales numbers at launch of new games are going to drop significantly. I think it may come as a shock to publishers just how few people are willing to spend $60 on a game without the ability to get any of it back, especially in this economy.

And that’s where you might benefit. Because eventually the pool of early adopters is going to shrink so much, that in order for the average game to move enough units to not be declare a flop, the average launch price is going to have to be readjusted.

There’s no denying that there will be some growing pains at first. Some publishers will be too stubborn to accept the evidence given by Gabe Newell that games may be too expensive. But eventually they’ll either have to embrace the new gaming world they’ve created, or end up closing their doors after too many high priced low selling games. Only those who price competitively will survive.

That is, assuming Microsoft and Sony actually go through with it.

After reading an article on Rock Paper Shotgun, I became compelled to give Davioware’s superhard platformer TowerClimb a try.  What I found was a surprisingly engrossing, atmospheric game crammed into a little 16-bit indie game.  TowerClimb stresses that taking things slowly and not rushing is the only way to survive, and boy does it drive that point home.

TowerClimb is sort of like a roguelike mixed with various platforming elements, sort of like the other roguelike platformer Spelunky, but with a darker twist.  One of the things that immediately surprised me was how it manages to deliver so much atmosphere while still looking and sounding like something I’d play on the Super Nintendo.  In this way, TowerClimb actually reminds me a lot of Out of This World (or Another World, depending on where you’re from).  It doesn’t play anything like OoTW but the dark atmosphere, creepy music and constant threat of death bear many similarities.

In TowerClimb you will die.  A lot.  If you die, you stay dead and start over from scratch, like most other roguelikes.  What makes this fun, however, is how each time your experience is completely randomized.  One level may have you immediately running from a rising lava flow, while another may have the floor littered with spores that lift off like balloons, providing you an easy ride up.  There is a lot the game doesn’t tell you, but for the most part that makes it that much more engrossing and fun.  The controls seem just a pinch too complex for such a simple idea (inventory management is there but there’s almost never a need to actually utilize it), but nervously poking something to see if it will kill you or not is way more fun than it may seem, and even now I still gasp and lean forward before leaping off a rock face, hoping dearly to catch a grip on the next wall.

TowerClimb still has never ceased to amaze me, and really drives home the fact that you are playing as a small, weak individual, but taking things slowly and surveying your surroundings can get you out of a pinch, and it makes bursting through the door to the next level feel that much sweeter.

TowerClimb is currently in beta and can be purchased (with free updates!) for $5 here.

Apple Jack 2, the sequel to the incredible Xbox Live Indie Game Apple Jack, will be coming out sometime “early 2012.”  Creator Tim Sycamore of My Owl Software was able to take some time away from development of Apple Jack 2 to answer some questions.

CRITICAL HIT!: How did you think up the design for the characters and world of Apple Jack?

TIM SYCAMORE: It was pretty random. I’ve got a thing for characters with enormous heads and an apple seemed about the right shape. As for the world, I’d much rather spend my time running around the countryside than the town since the scenery is nicer, so I tried to make each world a place I’d like to visit. I’m also pretty limited in my artistic talents, so I couldn’t get too ambitious.

CH!: Apple Jack has some really interesting and unique enemies. How did you think up enemies like the astronaut and the washing machine?

TS: Their form is based on their function, so when I needed an enemy that trundles along platforms until it reaches the edge and falls off, the first thing that sprang to mind was an out of control washing machine. For the astronaut I needed needed something to hop slowly around the screen. The laser shooting owls made sense because I needed something that could swivel its head left or right to show when it was about to shoot. Of course there isn’t any theme to all this, so it adds a kind of surreal randomness to the game.

CH!: I personally loved the soundtrack.  What made you go for an instrumental folk soundtrack, and how did you find Josh Woodward?  Can we expect more in the sequel?

TS: Aside from liking that sort of music, I thought an acoustic soundtrack suited the rural setting of the game. I wanted it so seem like there was someone sitting in the room with you, gently strumming on their guitar, and while I couldn’t really manage that, I was lucky to stumble across Josh Woodward’s website, where he offers all his songs for free in both vocal and instrumental versions. He really was a godsend!

For the second game, I was lucky enough to come into contact with Oxford band This Eden, who have made an excellent soundtrack for the game, again using acoustic instruments like guitars, banjos and ukuleles.

CH!: The difficulty in Apple Jack varies greatly from level to level.  Was this a conscious effort or did it just sort of happen?

TS:Yeah, it just kind of happened. I designed the levels in order, from first to last, and what ever Idea I had in my head became the next level. Because of this, balancing the difficulty was pretty tricky and although the game does get broadly harder from start to finish, there are some nasty difficulty spikes.

I’ve used a similar method to create the levels in the new game, but this time the user can select the difficulty they want to play at, with easier difficulties allowing the player to rewind their mistakes. Hopefully that should smooth things out a bit.

CH!: Based on how Apple Jack plays, I can assume Super Mario Bros 2 was a large inspiration.  Did anything else serve as inspiration?

TS: In terms of game mechanics, Mario 2 was as you say the biggest influence. In terms of tone and humour, I tried to make the game very British, in the style of old Spectrum games like Manic Miner and Monty Mole. Apart from Fable there aren’t really any games being made with british sensibilities nowadays, which is a bit of a shame.

CH!: Do you think co-op play might work well in an Apple Jack game?

TS: I reckon it would work very well, yes. You could build some good puzzles around having to pass an enemy between two players, and in areas with a lot of combat things could get pretty hectic. If I make a third game I’ll have to see if I can do something like that.

CH!: Do you have any more projects planned after Apple Jack 2?

TS: I’ve got ideas for loads of different games – Shooters, RPG’s and more platformers, but I’m not sure what I’ll do next. The two Apple Jack game have taken a year+ each to make, which is a huge amount of time, so I’d like to do something which I can realistically finish in a few months. I really like making games though so I won’t be stopping any time soon!

The answers I got back from Tim honestly surprised me, in a good way.  Many of the design decisions for Apple Jack were made simply because they made sense, rather than attempting to apply some sort of deeper artistic meaning.  To me, this made Apple Jack seem more like a lovable idea.  All the nonsensical characters, colorful landscapes and calming background tracks were put in because they fit, and they made sense as gameplay elements.  Tim is obviously a gamer, and he made a game that a gamer would want to play.

Apple Jack is currently available on the Xbox Live Indie Games channel, and Apple Jack 2 should be coming sometime soon.  My Owl Software’s development blog is located at http://myowlsoftware.blogspot.com/

Publisher: My Owl Software / Developer: My Owl Software / Platform: XBLIG

It has been out for quite some time now, and it has taken me about two years to get around to finishing it, but I have finally completed the Xbox Live Indie Game darling Apple Jack.  Now, what the hell is Apple Jack, and why did I come back to it after two years?

Apple Jack is a 2D puzzle-platformer from My Owl Software that is probably the most successful blend of absurdism, washing machine throwing and folk music humanity has ever produced.  Apple Jack reaches Earthworm Jim-esque levels of insane randomness (and difficulty, at times), but does so in such a subtle, inviting way.  It all somehow makes sense together, and eventually when a friend asks why you’re throwing a bubble wrapped in barbed wire at a laser-firing owl, you’ll suddenly remember that yes, this is a strange thing.

The gameplay in Apple Jack is simple, and the premise even simpler.  The main character (who has an apple for a head) is missing his pet dog, and decides to go out looking for him.  Each level must be completed by destroying every enemy found within the level.  This is done by standing on an enemy’s head and picking them up, SMB2-style, and chucking them at another enemy.  Apple Jack constantly plays with this concept through incredibly clever level design and tricks like giving enemies color-coded shields that can only be broken by the same color.

Apple Jack‘s biggest frustration to me is the fact that its difficulty is about as random as its art style.  Throughout its 100-someodd levels, the difficulty of Apple Jack may skyrocket suddenly in the first world, only to become incredibly easy for the next couple stages.  This isn’t exactly a bad thing, as even its toughest levels are still clever and interesting, just don’t expect any kind of steady difficulty ramp.

One of the things that helped smooth over the more swear-inducing levels is the fantastic instrumental-folk soundtrack by Josh Woodward.  It’s only a handful of tracks that randomly (or does it just loop a list?  I haven’t even noticed) play throughout the game, but they’re honestly so good and go so well with the warm, colorful art style that sometimes the only reason I would keep attempting a difficult level was to hear more.

There really isn’t any other way I can say it: Apple Jack is a wonderful game.  The difficulty can be a little much at times, but I enjoyed just about all of its 100-something levels.  I cannot recommend Apple Jack enough.  And from what I hear, there’s a sequel coming out.  I already want it.

Publisher: Zen Studios / Developer: Zen Studios / Platform: PSN, XBLA

If our last Pinball FX2 review didn’t spell it out already: I love pinball.  And while we haven’t reviewed many RPGs, I can assure you I am a very large fan of the RPG genre.  My feelings when I heard of Pinball FX2′s newest table, Epic Quest, can only be described as overjoyed.

Much like Wizorb, Epic Quest is another attempt to add RPG elements to a game genre that many believe should be nowhere near an RPG.  Also like Wizorb, I found the marriage of pinball and RPG to be pretty successful.  Pinball FX2 already has a wide assortment of fun pinball tables, so branching out to an unorthodox idea like this seems like it might be the start of some really unique tables.

So, the question on everyone’s mind is probably how exactly Epic Quest manages to put RPG elements inside a pinball game.  First off, Epic Quest does nothing new and exciting for the RPG genre.  It doesn’t need to really.  Even the most generic, overused parts of an RPG found inside a pinball game are cool enough for me.  So, much like every other generic RPG in the genre, you start off as a hapless adventurer armed with little more than a wooden sword and his wits, fighting all manner of giant rats, wolves and bandits.  As you win fights (by shooting the ball up into the easily-accessible “SWORD” or “SHIELD” ramp) You’ll gain experience and, at times, go to a shop that allows you to upgrade your weapons or armor.  I have yet to figure out what exactly triggers a trip to the upgrade shop, but learning and casting magic is always done through a secret ramp towards the back-left portion of the table.  You can gain points and travel to new locations while outside of battle, but the majority of your score will be attained through battling various monsters.

One of the interesting things I found about Epic Quest was the fact that you seem to be working against your experience bar, rather than with it.  Leveling up means new, harder monster encounters, and if you are poorly-equipped there still is a chance of victory, but it’s a little tough hacking away at a demon tree only to have half of your health knocked out after one hit.  While taking your eye off of the ball in a pinball game is rarely a good idea, Epic Quest does a (mostly) good job of putting all of the information where you need it.  The enemy’s health and your own health bar are placed by the left and right flippers, respectively, and a large experience bar runs along the bottom of the table.  Any equipment you attain shows up piece-by-piece on the animated character model that walks around the left side of the table.  The video screen is still in a sort of awkward position, and from time to time you’ll miss a message that pops up for too short a time while you’re trying to keep the ball from sinking.  But some of the more important information, such as the countdown to your current enemy’s next attack, is shown pretty clearly with little else popping up onscreen in the midst of battle.

Even if you aren’t a fan of RPGs, Epic Quest is still a fun pinball table.  Battling enemies feels natural, rather than some sort of shoehorned “RPG-lite” experience, and winning a battle – especially one that almost resulted in a loss – both feels great and has a large score payout, especially in later levels.  The table itself flows nicely, and while it does have the standard first-time hurdle of not knowing what the hell anything does, it is pretty easy to learn all the basics, rather than constant “Oh God what is happening”, similar to the Paranormal table.

Epic Quest is a fun table.  I believe the RPG elements were handled quite well.  It still feels like a pinball table, but there is enough RPG in it to feel like something new, without completely alienating people who don’t quite see the appeal in Dungeons & Dragons or Skyrim.