Popup Dungeon - Papercraft Roguelike Awesomeness - on Kickstarter

I'm not really a patient person. When I buy something, I'm not against spending an extra few bucks to get it in the store instead of waiting for a week to get it in the mail (unless, you know, it only costs a few bucks anyway). This is always the problem with Kickstarter projects - with very few exceptions, you'll be waiting months or even over a year before you get your hands on what you supported.

It's with that strong impatience for awesomeness that I have to say: Popup Dungeon looks AMAZING! Now that I'm making some money at a decent job, I was finally able to back my first video game project. Someone else in my friends list had backed it, so I clicked the link from my email and began drooling almost immediately... The art is glorious and the features seemingly never ending! I was already ready to back it when I saw that it's being developed by the folks who did Ring Runner as well, which made me even more psyched.


Now, this isn't just another dungeon crawler RPG, no siree! You get to choose from some awesome playable characters [Note: this also includes special characters like Isaac from The Binding of Isaac and Juan Aguacate from Guacamelee!], import others from other players or even create your own and watch it come to life, folding together in front of your eyes! The game also offers the ability to "play as the wizard", taking control as the dungeon master, create and edit items and all other sorts of nifty things.

Kitty can has cheezburgers... From the corpses of his fallen enemies!

And again, there's the art! It's so gloriously fun and amazing! It reminds me of Herocraft from back in the day, playing the game on an actual board and using tiles for the "pieces", except that these are 3D (ish!) and fantastically animated!

The game is releasing for Windows, Linux and Mac AND IS ALREADY GREENLIT ON STEAM! If stretch goals are reached, Wii U and mobile (Android and iOS) will be made available as well.

Available for: Win/Linux/Mac, Wii U and mobile possible with stretch goals
Lowest Pledge for Game: $15 ($20 for Ring Runner as well!)
Estimated Release: Q2 2015 for "Backer Only Beta" (available to all at above $15 pledge), full game Q2 2016

Catapult for Hire is on Kickstarter!

Catapult for Hire is a game that I'd heard a lot about over the last several months. When I ran across it on Kickstarter, I was really psyched - it means the game is getting closer to release! Tyrone, the developer, lovingly calls it a Nintendo 64 era world, and he's absolutely right - the art and aesthetic are reminiscent of games like Banjo Kazooie or Ocarina of Time in the very best of ways.

Dare to Dig! - Ludum Dare 28 Game Review

Dare to Dig is the type of game my brain typically tries to come up with for challenges, and it's done very well - you only get one pickaxe, and you have to dig through dirt, stones and treasures to hunt down mythical, one-of-a-kind, priceless treasure like the Fountain of Youth. Your "life" is the durability of the pickaxe - each time you go through new dirt, excavate treasure or try to break through rock, you use up some of the pickaxe's durability. Luckily, there are items like duct tape that help you out (duct tape is ALWAYS useful!), but the odds of making it are still slim, so you'll be playing it numerous times (which isn't a bad thing at all!).

Your main play screen. Find yourself some treasure!

As you play, you'll accumulate all sorts of goodies - some just count toward your "valuable stuff" (score) total, while other items allow you to become stronger, be able to break rocks easier, see further, repair between floors or even use a drill instead of a pickaxe temporarily so you can easily get through anything! It's the balance between going for these things (or, rather, being lucky enough to find them) or rushing toward the next floor that makes things interesting.

I played the game just under 15 times myself and managed to find the Fountain of Youth, still leaving a few items unfound in my list of items. My strategy was mainly to get just close enough to the edge that you could make sure you weren't missing anything, then go in a big circle, hoping to find the way to the next floor. Everything is randomized, so there are times that I'd lose on floor 3 or 4, and others that I'd fly through til 8 or 9 and get stuck. The most important thing, though, is that the game is always fun to play, and it's easy to get hooked!

Gotta catch find 'em all! And it even shows you how many of each you've found in total!

The game does require a free download, which you can do from the game's Ludum Dare page.

Voyage to Farland Review AND GIVEAWAY

I'm going to be entirely upfront - roguelikes are one of the types of games that, while I like them, I'm not very good at them. I've heard such good things about some of them, text-based ones particularly, but the controls are so crazy and equipment is a hassle and I die on the first or second floor every time. While Voyage to Farland has a lot in common with those, it's far better, has more going on, but manages to do it all while keeping the required buttons to a minimum, using intuitive menus and making equipment a breeze. Oh, and it's a graphical roguelike, so you don't control an @ symbol fighting letters, shooting *s, etc.

Treasurebear: Humor, Exploration, Platforming, Treasure and Food!

Treasurebear combines two incredibly awesome things: good platforming action and LOTS of treasure! The game focuses on a duo of unlikely "heroes" - [From the Kickstarter page] "The greedy and unpredictable Chester, a charismatic treasure chest forever condemned by the treasure hunter's guild, and his sleepy sidekick Barry, a hungry bear who prefers sauce battles over boss battles." The story is driven as such: "Barry teams up with Chester following the promise of visiting foreign lands in order to locate and sample exquisite and tasty foods. Determined to locate his blackmailer and exonerate himself, Chester utilizes his uncanny talents for finding shiny and potentially valuable items while upholding his promise to Barry."

While the story is humorous and intriguing, it's the gameplay concepts that really sold me on the game. See, because of the way the two team up, you're able to do some really awesome things together! As you can see from the image below, Bear & Boar (the developers) have had no shortage of creative ideas! And this goes far beyond abilities, the depths of the story, crazy levels and treasure hunting all appear to go just as deep.

Concepts for upgrades. Why hasn't anyone come up with the gold coin machine gun before?

Elliot Quest - Kid Icarus Meets Platformer Action RPG

When I first saw Elliot's Quest I was a bit worried by how the developer mentioned a few times that it was inspired by Zelda II. I always thought there were a few cool parts to the game, but I really didn't like it - it was too difficult and I just never really got into it. The completionist side of me wanted to level everything up, and the way the battles happened, it would take foreeeeeever to do it! There was something about Elliot's Quest, though, that I was really interested in, and I'm really glad I gave the demo a try. Note: it's a web demo so there's no install or download, although I did have to refresh the page a couple times to get it running properly.

Dyscourse - An Island Survival Game Where Choices MATTER!

Dyscourse looks to be an awesome combination of survival, adventure, humor, action and story. You're Rita, one of numerous survivors of a plane crash who suddenly ends up having to make lots of tough decisions and survive with the jerks who were kicking your seat and squishing you in the plane. As the developer states, it's up to you whether you want to work with the other survivors to try to make it together or leave them to their own devices and try to make it on your own. Unlike other games, however, this isn't an either/or choice where you'll basically only play one of two different games either with or without computer AI.

Apexicon - Scrabble-meets-RPG!

The best way to describe Apexicon is a clash between Scrabble and RPG, or for gamers who are familiar with the titles, Bookworm Adventures meets Puzzle Quest. The concept is simple: you're given letter tiles, and the bigger the word you can spell with them the more damage you'll do to your enemy. Spelling words beginning with a green tile will end up healing you instead of hurting your enemy, and other skills can change tiles to where they do more damage or (theoretically) all kinds of things!

Retroworld on Kickstarter - An Awesome Childhood Relived!

Retroworld has one heck of a concept going for it - you're a game-lovin' kid who goes through four different generations of games, collecting, selling and trading them while solving their mysteries, maintaining high scores, chatting with NPCs and all kinds of other things! The in-game games really appear to reflect their age's style and game play, and the developer promises dozens of them when it's all completed!

Full Bore: The First Dig Review AND GIVEAWAY - Puzzles are Challenging Again!

For those of you who have been gamers for a long time, you'll remember the "good ol' days" of gaming. I know I sure do! What always surprises me when I play them again, though, is that "good ol' games" are usually REALLY hard! I can't count the action games I wanted to smash my controller over (Contra, Ghosts N Goblins), the random battles in RPGs to take on a new area or buy equipment (Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy) and the puzzle games that were basically impossible to complete (Myst!). Heck, even Zelda was way harder back then, especially Zelda II: The Adventures of Link!!! Full bore truly is old-school for more than the fun, retro-styled graphics and animation, it's a really hard game!

Race the Sun Review AND GIVEAWAY - An Infinite Speed Experience

Race the Sun is the absolutely perfect title for this game for two reasons - the incredible sense of speed the game gives you as you fly between obstacles and the sun that brilliantly not only powers your ship but also casts growing shadows as the sun sets lower and lower. If you stay in darkness too long, whether it's from a tunnel, the long shadows or once the sun sets, you'll run out of power. The sun is literally one of your greatest foes in this game, and if you want to succeed, you need to do everything you can to race against it!

Movement is only right and left, but you can JUMP at Level 4.

Lilly Looking Through Review - A Magical Adventure

Look how cute she is!!! The goggles are even way too big for her face!

I recently had the honor of playing the full version of Lilly Looking Through. In case you hadn't seen it, I'd played and reviewed the demo already, and I'm happy to report that the full game continues the demo gloriously!

For those not familiar, Lilly Looking Through is a delightful Myst-style point-and-click adventure game for PC/Linux/Mac. Lilly, an insanely adorable little girl, begins by mimicking a frog, and when a scarf goes blowing by her she decides to chase after it. Along the way, she discovers some magical goggles that let her see (and even go into) the past to mess around, allowing her to get across now-broken areas or mess with things that entirely change the present.

Lilly Looking Through Demo Review AND FULL GAME GIVEAWAY!

Lilly Looking Through is pure innocence and whimsy in game form, where every click, every short video of action is purely delightful.

It takes only seconds to see the heart of this cute adventure. Lilly is standing there staring at a frog. When you click on it, she does a little hop. The frog turns away and she does a couple frog-hops toward him. Soon after the frog hops away, perhaps just as she would have followed in suit, a red scarf blows by. Unless it were a Scarf of Awesomeness +4 in any other game, this would mean absolutely nothing, but for Lilly it's enough to go on an adventure!

Magicite - A Multiplayer RPG (Roguelike) Platformer on Kickstarter

Note: Although the game is on Kickstarter, it's just shy of the 400% mark as I write this! Since the Kickstarter was officially successful, you can get the perk goodness through Paypal as well.


Magicite (raise your hand if you've heard that term before!) is a Multiplayer RPG Platformer, and you'd may as well through Roguelike in there as well. The concept sounds rather simple - you create a character, fight baddies through procedurally generated instances and if you survive, you can move on to a randomized town to do all the awesome stuff that RPG towns are famous for before doing it all over again. Oh yeah, and you can put your hand back down now... Sorry, I forgot about that.