We're trying out a new format for our weekly list of new games on Steam you might have missed, with a separate entry for each week's collection. You can check out previous games we've highlighted here . As always, these are five of the smaller games that might have otherwise esca
We're trying out a new format for our weekly list of new games on Steam you might have missed, with a separate entry for each week's collection. You can check out previous games we've highlighted here. As always, these are five of the smaller games that might have otherwise escaped your attention in the glut of titles that come out on Steam every day.
You may know Zachtronics as creator of puzzle games like Opus Magnum, Spacechem, and Infinifactory. He's also the brain behind hacking games TIS-100 and Shenzhen I/O, and EXAPUNKS is in that vein, thematically speaking. You're a hacker forced to make viruses and bust open the security of everything from banks to highway signs because it's the only way to get the medication you need. EXAPUNKS is set in 1997, so you learn how to hack by reading a zine called Trash World News between levels, which is a great concept. EXAPUNKS is in Early Access, but as with prior Zachtronics games it's feature-complete and will receive polish and balance tweaks over the next few months.
It seems like there's an entire generation of game designers who grew up on the surreal JRPG Earthbound. Yume Nikki, Undertale, and now Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass all bear the weight of its influence. In this you're a boy who is sent out into the wide world by your mother on a quest for honey so she can make a cake, but along the way you'll use your power of imagination to transform into a variety of creatures with their own abilities and also get into turn-based battles with some real unusual monsters. It's quirky as all get-out, and pretty sizeable too.
A 2D action-platformer made by two teenagers from India (you can read their story here). Alter Army has a rocking guitar soundtrack, and one of its heroes wields a guitar as a weapon. You'll be smacking up evil trees and exploring a dying civilization, all in service of collecting crystals that summon a new batch of enemies each time you grab one.
A little game with the cutesiest visuals, LIBRARY is about throwing books at people. But in a nice way? You run through a colorful library making friends and then chucking books at them while everyone smiles as if it's all as delightful as tea and crumpets. It's got the jauntiest soundtrack, which is what makes it all seem like innocent fun. LIBRARY also contains Happy Snake's previous game, Morning Post, which was the same kind of thing only with envelopes instead of books.
Once a popular little demo you could get from Gamejolt, Circle Empires is now a full-fledged standalone game. It's an RTS where the map is made of circular areas representing mountaintops, all connected in a grid. You plunk down some workers in one circle, gather resources, make some fantasy troops and then march them over to one of the next mountains to take over. Circle Empires takes the RTS formula and makes it snackable.
These games were released in the week prior to August 12, 2018. Some online stores give us a small cut if you buy something through one of our links. Read ouraffiliate policyfor more info.
It's great when a game comes from somewhere just far enough outside your cultural sphere to be tinged with strangeness as well as familiarity. Alter Army is a 2D action-platformer that looks a lot like plenty of other indie games in the same vein (its creators cite Risk of Rain,
It's great when a game comes from somewhere just far enough outside your cultural sphere to be tinged with strangeness as well as familiarity. Alter Army is a 2D action-platformer that looks a lot like plenty of other indie games in the same vein (its creators cite Risk of Rain, Hollow Knight, and Nuclear Throne as inspirations), where you pick from one of four characters and then jump through levels bashing enemies. It's a game about deciding when to use your big charged-up attacks and when to enable the mode that lets you cause more damage and also regenerate, which is the only way to get back health.
But one of those four characters is a big lump of meatyboy named Hmm. Another has a guitar for a weapon, and the soundtrack blasts sick riffs whenever he's powered up. Place names are evocative in a way that suggests quirks of translation, like "The Last King's Broken Statue". Outside a temple, I bump into a huge guy peeing blood. It's strange.
Alter Army is the first creation of Vague Pixels, an indie studio that is actually just two teenageers from Jaipur in India named Mridul Pancholi and Mridul Bansal. They've been working on their game since 2016, when they were about 14 years old. Bansal tells me it wasn't easy for the two of them to make a game in their spare time while also attending high school. "We used to have a hectic schedule," he says, "like we used to come home from school at two in the afternoon and then we just used to start working on the game till somewhat like three the next morning and then we used to sleep for like three or four hours and then back to school again and sometimes sleep in school during the classes."
Their teachers weren't impressed, and their parents weren't super supportive either. "Our parents don't understand this kind of game development thing so they used to like tell us that this is all a waste and we should focus on our studies. Our teachers also used to mock us in the class that if we can't even do our homework properly how can we make a game?"
And yet, they have. Their game was released on Steam last week, though that doesn't mean they're finished yet. "We are still committed to Alter Army and will be making regular updates," says Bansal. "We are also planning to add Steam achievements as soon as possible."
As for why Alter Army features a guy peeing blood on the wall of a ruined temple, Bansal gives me a very straightforward answer: "That guy has hematuria so that's why."
Fixes: -Temple gaurd sound effects are balanced. -Made the tutorial a little bit easy -When running at full speed, player can change directions without losing his speed -movement can work with d-pad now -Dash attack is much more smoother and works near walls too now -Minor Pause
Fixes: -Temple gaurd sound effects are balanced. -Made the tutorial a little bit easy -When running at full speed, player can change directions without losing his speed -movement can work with d-pad now -Dash attack is much more smoother and works near walls too now -Minor Pause menu bugs -Music also had some improvements -and a lot of minor improvements
Join our discord and let us know if you got any bugs or have some feedback or want to share anything with us! https://discordapp.com/invite/zDSGTnR
Hey guys! How are you all?! Here are some updates- -We are still committed to Alter Army and we will be until we delivered the game we would've fell in love with if we saw this 2 years ago when we started working on it. We have been constantly fixing glitches, polishing the rough
Hey guys! How are you all?! Here are some updates-
-We are still committed to Alter Army and we will be until we delivered the game we would've fell in love with if we saw this 2 years ago when we started working on it. We have been constantly fixing glitches, polishing the rough areas of the game. So expect to see some major improvements!
-We will also be releasing the OST of Alter Army in some time hopefully with along some good news!! :D
-Join our discord and let us know if you got any bugs or have some feedback or want to share anything with us! https://discordapp.com/invite/zDSGTnR
Alter Army is releasing on 6th August 11:00 am PDT It is finally releasing after two and a half years of hardwork, coupled with stressful school time, parents expectations and a lot of ups and downs!!
Alter Army is releasing on 6th August 11:00 am PDT
It is finally releasing after two and a half years of hardwork, coupled with stressful school time, parents expectations and a lot of ups and downs!!
In November of last year we posted about Alter Army , a zippy-looking platform-brawler with a neat art style being made by two teenagers. Since then a couple of things have changed. One is that its creators, Mridul Pancholi and Mridul Bansal of Indian studio Vague Pixels, have tu
In November of last year we posted about Alter Army, a zippy-looking platform-brawler with a neat art style being made by two teenagers. Since then a couple of things have changed. One is that its creators, Mridul Pancholi and Mridul Bansal of Indian studio Vague Pixels, have turned 16. The other is that their game is finally ready for launch.
A new trailer to celebrate the occasion shows its heroes suiting up, then punching, zapping, and guitaring enemies throughout a "dying civilization". Alter Army looks very rock and roll.
When you consider that the very first videogame company in India was only established in 1997 (Dhruva Interactive, which would eventually work on games in the Forza and Need For Speed series), it's surprising the country has anything resembling a games industry. To be just kickin
When you consider that the very first videogame company in India was only established in 1997 (Dhruva Interactive, which would eventually work on games in the Forza and Need For Speed series), it's surprising the country has anything resembling a games industry. To be just kicking things off in 1997 puts India around 25 years behind countries like the US and the UK.
This only serves to make the country's small but growing industry—and particularly its vibrant indie scene—more impressive. I've gone to the Nasscom Game Developer Conference, India's biggest games industry event, for the past three years, and it feels like the developers there are making up for lost time.
Each year the quality of the games I play increases more dramatically than you'd think possible. And one of this year's major developments seemed to be that, after a few years of nearly every Indian developer making games for mobile, interesting projects are now cropping up on PC.
A notable example of one that's actually launched is Asura, a hack-n-slasher set in a world inspired by Indian mythology, developed by the studio Ogre Head, which won the Nasscom Game of the Year award.
The vast majority of India's most intriguing PC games are still in development. After going hands-on with a number of them at Nasscom Game Developer Conference 2017, here are the Indian-developed PC games you should be excited about.
Mukti
Mukti is "a mystery exploration game" according to its creators, collaborating Mumbai-based indie developers Wandermind Labs and underDOGS Studio. What this means is that its puzzles aren't obscure enough to be a full-fledged point-and-click adventure game, but provide more to mull over than the average walking simulator.
It's part of what seems to be a growing trend of indie games from India that are actually set in the country, which is cool to see. It begins with player character Arya returning to India to visit her grandfather Vikram Roy, a famed expeditionist and historian, at the Mumbai museum he owns.
When she arrives, her grandfather is notably absent and there's a breaking news story that he and his crew are guilty of murdering an entire tribe on an excavation in West Bengal, making off with the artifacts they were protecting.
There's something evocative about museums after hours, and Mukti captures that as Arya searches the sprawling building—from shadowy back rooms to imposing exhibits, each focusing on a different aspect of Indian history—for answers.
The game's developers are unashamedly inspired by Gone Home, and early impressions suggest that Mukti could capture something of that eerie, unsettling experience of uncovering long-hidden secrets through exploration. Mukti won this year's Upcoming Game award.
Raji: An Ancient Epic
Considering that Raji: An Ancient Epic has been in development by a team of just eight people over a period of 10 months, it has absolutely no right to look or play as brilliantly as it does. By far the best-looking and most polished game at the conference, it's an action game that channels God of War but with a distinctly Indian flavor.
The premise is that Raji, a young girl, is imbued with elemental powers and chosen by the gods to defend humanity from an onslaught of demonic creatures. Everything, from the environments to the demons themselves, are inspired by Ancient India, and painstakingly hand-painted.
Raji doesn't reinvent the wheel—the standard enemy encounter goes something like: roll to dodge incoming attacks, attack with combos when the opportunity arises, hit button prompt to activate finishing move when sufficiently weakened—but Raji's combat has weight and impact that indies often struggle to capture. Plus, you can throw spears around, which is surely one of the most satisfying ways to take out an enemy in a game.
Having already taken on a massive challenge in creating an action game with a small team and limited resources, the developers are aiming to create a single-player experience that clocks in at around four hours long. That sounds like the sweet spot for this kind of game, and my early experiences with it have more than convinced me that the developers could cram an exciting and varied campaign into this time—though right now that hope rests on there being a positive outcome to its Kickstarter campaign.
Alter Army
Alter Army is a game that's garnered some attention simply by virtue of the fact that its development duo are 15 and 16 years old respectively. The unerring focus of the pair, who presented the game to me with the same excitement and vigour in both 2016 and 2017, is genuinely inspiring.
But what we shouldn't lose sight of is that the game itself has plenty to recommend it. A 2D beat-em-up starring four playable characters (through I only got the chance to play as one), Alter Army deliberately puts you in manic situations, hems you in with enemies of varying strengths and attack styles, then gives you the fluidity of control to emerge unscathed.
Alter Army's coolest feature is its risk-versus-reward Aggression System, which rewards gung-ho attacks with faster healing, more damage, and faster movement at the increased risk of getting scythed down.
It's also hard as nails. When I played it on the expo floor I was told that I was the only person all day to get past the first level. On one hand I could well believe that, as the level was certainly no walkover, but on the other it's extremely rare for me to be the best gamer in any given room. It's possible that I was condescended to by a 15-year-old is what I'm saying.
Possessions
After repeatedly dying in Alter Army, Possessions was just the tonic. A gentle puzzle game with a relaxing—albeit, in this early version, ever so slightly repetitive—soundtrack, each level presents a diorama-esque view of a room in which at least one element is out of place.
Maybe it's a shirt floating in mid-air rather than being hung on the rail, a framed photo on a random patch of wall rather than its rightful place among an arrangement of others. By dragging the mouse to shift the perspective, players can find the angle that restores order.
This little mechanic would be satisfying enough, but there's added intrigue in the fact that certain choices you make (occasionally, more than one item can fit into a single space) end up having consequences in the composition of future scenes, contributing to a kind of wordless narrative. How that manifests itself will be fascinating to see when Possessions is out next year.
The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands
Boil them down and nearly all videogames are about systems that at first offer the player a very narrow selection of interactions, and continually broaden that offering as they progress. The text-based game A Dark Room exposed this, its first (and only) option being to light a fire before a number of other options begin to appear in increments.
The Bonfire: Forsaken Lands takes A Dark Room as its principal inspiration, but brings a minimalist art style rather than relying purely on text. Set in a snowy encampment, with a five-minute day/night cycle neatly suggesting the passage of time, the aim is to spend the days gearing up in preparation for the nightly attacks from various beasts.
Like A Dark Room and other games in its mold, things start off incredibly simple. But before you know it, you're assigning workers to various roles, crafting and equipping them with task-appropriate tools, and even sending them off to discover new lands.
Death of a Detective
Considering how early in development Death of a Detective is, I shouldn't even be mentioning it here. After all, it requires a great deal of faith to label something "exciting" just from some artwork and a teaser, before anything playable has emerged.
However, the concept alone makes it worthy of a mention. It's a point-and-click adventure game with shades of Phoenix Wright, featuring a story told in the classic noir tradition and set in 1940s British India.
Little else is known about the game right now other than that it definitely won't be launching in 2017, so this one really could go either way. But for now, I'm going to stick my neck out and say that this Indian noir looks cool as hell.
