80 games rated!

This time, I want to highlight some really unique games that I have played so far. These games go the extra mile to be a little bit different, bringing something new to the LD environment. Watch and learn!

• Super Escape – by Saspiron



This game can best be described as a “Turn based platformer”. You control a character with your mouse, as he walks and jumps through very fast traps. Thing is: if you don’t move your mouse, the traps won’t move either! Great concept, some nasty bugs.

• Red Legion – by DeathBySnail



Normally I don’t like “story” games, but this one is great. Not only it has an interesting, funny story, but it also managed to include a typing based fighting mechanics that is actually relevant to the storytelling.

• Burglary – by Tobias Wehrum



Burglary is a sneaking-and-lighting game with two interesting twists: You control the light level, and a very interesting unlocking minigame. The difficulty of the unlocking game is based on the current light level, so you have to balance how much you see the world, how easy the lock-unlock is, and how easy it is for your enemies to notice you.

• Ante-christmas – by nSun



This game does a great job at replicating those old liquid display “game and watch” series. Not only on the graphics, but also on the play style, and the overall feel. If you are older than 20, prepare to be awash by the nostalgia.

• Space Greed – by lotusgame



A multiplayer game with two games in one: The game is a top down shoot them up, but you also get to build your own base, which will be the game stage for other players. The idea is quite fun, but balance isn’t quite there yet: It is pretty hard to get money to build up your own base – so it gets old rather fast.

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Hope you liked the reviews. I will take an extended break for the new Years, and I will be back to rate more games after the 5th! I hope I can break the 100 barrier!

In the meanwhile, please read my previous review posts:

• Review List 1: Good use of the Theme
• Review List 2: Awesome Graphics
• Review List 3: Fun games

And if you could also rate my own game, that would be great:

Uplighter was my entry for the Light & Darkness theme. It was a puzzle game centered on lighting up levels to certain percent by, among other things, placing lights, breaking down walls, and removing light sinks.

It’s was my first entry to feature 3D, although all gameplay and lighting is really in 2D, and it was also my first entry to not use Allegro. Instead it used GLFW, which is more lightweight, and I really didn’t need all the extra stuff from Allegro.

Uplighter is probably my best and most innovative LD entry so far—it placed first in ‘innovation’, second in ‘fun’, and also won the ‘Best In Show’ award.

You can get the compo version of Uplighter. It’s for Windows, but there’s a shell script (kindly provided by alar_k after the compo) that will fix stuff so it will compile for linux. You’ll need GLFW, GLFT, FMod and FreeType2.

Small notice: After the compo, it was reported to run very slowly on 3.0+ GHz machines. I’m still not sure what that was all about, but it has been reported that this can be fixed by compiling it in VS. If this is still much of a problem, I might get around to fix it myself.