YourGamer.Net

So yeah, after my llengthy absence thanks to failed interweb, I’m back to stay…or at least I’d better be. Since I can’t play any games online these days, I’ve been looking through my single player library, and found some really fun indie titles that I forgot about completely. I’m gonna be showing some of them off over the next few days. Some of these may be old, but I can guarantee that you’ve never heard of at least one of these. I dug deep.

…deeeeep…

Anyways, the first game on my list is Chalk. This game drew a lot of attention when it first came out mid-2007 (I think…), but I’ve seen many people who’ve never heard of it. This is unacceptable, because Chalk has one of the most original and well-implemented gameplay concepts I’ve ever seen.

The basic progenitor of Chalk is the simple 2d space shooter. You have a character that travels around the screen, fighting swarms of progressively harder enemies with long boss battles at the end of each of the 6 stages. This is where the normalcy of Chalk ends. Instead of shooting bullets or missles at your enemy…you draw at them. That’s right, this entire game takes place on a chalkboard, and your only weapon is chalk. This could get boring fast, simply clicking and dragging lines across enemies, but the true genius of the combat system is the use of the same weapon (i.e. the drawn line) in different context. Enemy attacking with purple? Draw a line from the projectile to the enemy to transfer the damage to them. Attacking with white? Draw a shield and deflect the bullets back at them. I won’t ruin the other delicacies of the system, but let me just say that it’s truly engaging and a hell of a lot of fun. Puzzling and challenging bosses top off the awesome.
Sadly, the game’s short, easily beatable in about 30 minutes, but it *is* freeware, and I promise that you will replay over and over to try to beat your previous scores. I highly recommend it. I also recommend that you check out the author’s website, where there are some other fun games up, and more coming.

In other news, fans of Cavestory (another must-play, on the off chance anyone hasn’t heard of it) or Castlevania should absolutely check out this preview of The Underside. It looks promising, and the concept of having gravity reversed so you play both on floor and ceiling, while not new, is an interesting one to base a game on. I hope that the devs keep working on it so we get a finished product.