E3 2014 - "Secret Ponchos" Looks Fun As Hell

At last year's E3, one of the funnest titles we played at the PS4 indie booth was Secret Ponchos by newcomer studio Switchblade Monkeys. Aside from the amazing stylized look it had, the game was a fast paced isometric 'duel' game in which anywhere from 2 to multiple people would engage in frantic, but balanced battles with a slew of colorful characters. Each character had his own set of distinct abilities: Phantom Poncho could use his whip to snare a player and facilitate delivering a fatal shotgun blow, Kid Red could use a timed TNT charge to crowd control opponents.

And it was addictive as hell one year ago, so you can imagine that one year of polish has probably done wonders for the game, which honestly seemed ready to go last we saw it. The title will be dropping sometime later this year, and we're looking forward to taking it for a spin.

Secret Ponchos takes place in a dramatic Wild West setting, full of tension, stylization and attitude reflective of a graphic-novel. In a town crawling with bandits, murderers and bounty hunters you are an outlaw with a bounty on your head and everyone is gunning for you. In order to survive you must be the best and to gain notoriety you must defeat your opponents--claiming their achievements as your own.

E3 2014 - "Valiant Hearts" : Crossed Destinies, Broken Love And A Neverending War

Ubisoft revealed a new trailer for Valiant Hearts, the latest project to be built on the same 2D engine that brought us the likes of Rayman Legends and the stunning Child Of Light recently. Telling the tale of four unsung heroes from World War I, their stories are all linked by a trusty companion dog called Walt. This game feels like it will be heavy on the narrative, but I don't mind as the stories being told are based off of real letters gathered from people on the front between 1914-1918.

The art style looks absolutely amazing as well, emulating a stylized bande desinee look mixed with some subtle, atmospheric lighting effects to truly deliver the emotional impact that a narrative set in such a grim setting is set to drop on us. Look forward to playing this artsy puzzle adventure hybrid when it's released later this month (June 25).

Four unsung heroes will try to rise above the tragedies strewn across Europe and band together with their dog, Walt, in search of their loved ones. In Valiant Hearts, the lives of these characters are inextricably drawn together over the course of the story. Friendship, love, sacrifice and tragedy befall each one as they help each other to retain their humanity against the horrors of war

E3 2014 - Xbox One Indie Roundup: Hyperlight Drifter, Cuphead, Ori And The Blind Forest, Hellraid, Inside, Aztez

Microsoft unveiled a full slew of indie titles as part of their revised, gaming centric strategy for E3 this year -And to be honest we're relieved to see them learn from the mistakes of last year's event with the Xbox One reveal, which focused on anything but that aspect. There were zero mentions of the Kinect at the conference, and their press conference was close to 90 minutes of just pure gameplay with little fluff in between.

One of the coolest indie titles to be unveiled was Ori And The Blind Forest, a title that's been in development for close to 4 years now at the German Moon Studios. Featuring beautiful, painterly environments with story driven 2D gameplay, the title gave off a vibe that I've come to expect from the likes of Team Ico (Fingers crossed for The Last Guardian later today!). We've picked a few of our favorite indie titles from their upcoming lineup, which you can check out after the break.

Ori and the Blind Forest is an action-adventure platformer that combines deep exploratory gameplay with emotional storytelling. Join Ori to solve the mysteries of a dying forest while escaping the evil clutches of Kuro, the dark owl.

Hyper Dragon Ball Z - The Most Amazing Fanmade Fighting Game We've Ever Seen

After yesterday's trailer for another faux videogame, Starr Mazer - I couldn't have predicted that I'd wake up to yet another amazing mockup trailer for a game that needs to be made. Hyper Dragon Ball Z is an absolutely stunning looking fighting game concept that hopes to address the issues that the franchise has had historically with their fighting games. And it just got revealed two days ago, on Akira Toriyama's birthday.

Their main inspiration being the golden age of Capcom's fighting game arcade domination in the late 90's with their CPIII titles like Street Fighter III - Third Strike and the birth of Marvel Vs Capcom. For some reason the Dragonball franchise never got a proper 2D adaptation to the bar that Capcom set during that era, and it looks like a group of hardcore fans and artists are finally setting out to fix that.

Using the open source fighting game engine known as Mugen (Quite fun to tinker with), a group of coders and animators have been at work for a few years to reach this point, showcasing some absolutely gorgeous sprite animation and fluid, fast paced combat that feels straight out of the show. One of the main concerns that the folks at Team Z2 are trying to address is capturing the cinematic action while imbuing each character with their own distinct fighting feel, an issue that has plagued recent 3D reincarnations of the series that simply relied on simply inputting button presses repeatedly.

While there might be some legal issues regarding to the licensing of this franchise, I just have to ask: Who the hell wouldn't want this? From the looks of it it's so far along that if I were Akira Toriyama, I'd bless the ever living hell out of this project to go ahead. Team Z2 has now allowed the project to go into the wild, and they've asked the help of everyone to help this project proposal go viral and get the attention of the right people. In an ideal world and a golden age of indie development, this will result in the project getting the funding and attention to go all the way, which is our hope. Go Team Z2!

This is how we envision a perfect Dragonball game. Gone is the sensation of every character being interchangeable and having the same style of fighting. Instead, we have characters with beautiful animations, cinematic moves, skillful combos, interesting movesets, unique traits and the kind of fanservice that'd make any Dragonball fan smirk. We drew from all sources and we committed to our vision, which we share with you. 

The graphics have that 2D charm that, in our opinion, have been lost in the transition to 3D games. The gameplay is intense, pulse-pounding and would look absolutely amazing in fighting game tournaments such as EVO. Counters, Air Combos, Dash Colissions, Super Projectiles, Beam Struggles, a large variety of fun character introductions and winposes... it's all in there. I can see people going insane over the intense battles that are possible.

Prospect - Indie Scifi At It's Finest

Screened at Austin's South By Southwest festival about a month ago, Prospect took a very interesting approach with it's scifi aesthetic, emulating a minimalist, retro scifi feel that we found quite refreshing. When we think about the current visual landscape of scifi, what comes to mind is a style filled with overly detailed, gritty work or ultra slick and clean. Prospect finds a happy middle, following a father and his daughter hoping to strike it rich on a dangerously toxic alien planet.

The short unexpectedly turned into a coming-of-age story of a teenage girl. When the father is attacked by a roving bandit, the daughter must take matters into her own hands. The way the filmmakers staged and shot this scenario was excellent, really elevating the tension in a way that most movie directors absolutely fail to in this day and age. In a very subtle way we are made aware that this is a world in which there is no clear cut good or bad forces, just people struggling to survive in extraordinary circumstances. 

Worth Checking Out - Chroma Squad! The Giant Mecha Management Simulator

Chroma Squad got funded last year thanks to a successful Kickstarter, and we couldn't be happier to see it near release. Dubbed as a part Sentai management sim and part turn based brawler, the title seems set to give players the chance to take their own Power Rangers-esque group to the top. The title draws heavily from Japan's Super Sentai (Japanese for 'Squadron') genre and tropes, and the trailer was even presented in Japanese with subtitles as a tongue in cheek nod to where their inspiration came from.

The title seems to also go a little meta in terms of your role as the producer of a Super Sentai TV show, which makes it all the more fun. Avoid bankrupting your studio while saving the world? Sounds like it'll be a fun game to take for a spin, especially being a large fan of Kairosoft's similarly themed sim titles like Game Dev Story. The title will be available to play at PAX and GDC, with a Steam release planned for sometime later this year.

Tower of Guns - A Lovely Blend Of Roguelike And Shooter

After the fall of 38 Studios (The folks behind the ill fated Copernicus MMO), One man wrecking crew Joe Mirabello set off on his own personal venture to make a game by himself. Over the last eighteen months and utilizing Ureal Engine 3 he took old school twitch first person shooter gameplay and fused it with roguelike sensibilities such as perma-death and random levels and enemy spawns. He calls his creation Tower of Guns.

On top of classic run-and-gun shooting you can level up your weapons or purchase upgrades using currency dropped from fallen enemies. Though the game can be beaten in 45 minutes to an hour, it is not an easy game by any means. There are plenty of unlockables and secrets to be found including many new guns and perks to equip (such as triple jumping).

Tower of Guns is built with replayability in mind and if you enjoy a challenge while frantically shooting at things such as large robots and guns then I can safely say it is more than worth your time. The game can be purchased via Steam or directly through Joe's website.

Worth Checking Out - Sir, You Are Being Hunted

Big Robot’s Sir, You Are Being Hunted presents an interesting take on the survival genre, throwing you into a world where you are constantly looking over your shoulder, fearing every step you take. The game pits you against the environment where your task, a simple one, is to collect fragments of crystals scattered across five islands of an archipelago in which the game takes place. These crystals represent your ticket off of this island.

You're the prey this time around.

Before you begin the game you are given a choice of several different classes ranging from an artist to an officer or a cook, dictating which items you begin with. These classes ultimately offer different difficulty levels, such as the officer starting with a pistol and rifle, who is capable of easily defending himself, whereas an artist starts with a useful map of the island and a not so useful painting. Your only ally in this game is a voice that goes by the name Mr. Walters, who guides you on your journey with narration and helpful hints. That’s pretty much it, from there you’re left to handle the situation any way you’d like. This is where the game excels; it makes you feel as if you’re on your own left to use anything you can find in your surrounding, and boy is it awesome.

Sir's worlds are also procedurally generated, leaving this fresh feeling every time you start a new game. On top of that, before you do in youbegr new game, you have the option to customize your experience changing which biomes you’d wish to explore. There are four to choose from: Rural, Industrial, Mountainous,and Fens and each presents a different world to explore with varying architecture and terrain. In many circumstances, you’ll find yourself developing different tactics that only work well in particular biomes.

Enemies in the game are varied and interesting, some utterly terrifying. The AI is relatively strong; enemies react the way they you’d expect and are quite good at tracking down and slaughtering you. All of them are robotic in some form or another and all function in a way they should. From robot hunting dogs, classic pipe smoking British huntsmen robots who sometimes ride on a hybrid pit bull/horse/hover bike combination, hot air surveillance balloons, and a very large, almost grandfather looking enemy wielding a cane that is absolutely terrifying to deal with. Factor in that ammunition is sparse, you find yourself running for your life screaming most of the time.



While Sir is currently in alpha there is enough enjoyable content, and constant updates to justify joining the early access. Given the procedurally generated nature of the levels, every replay feels fresh and offers conditions that are unique to that playthrough. Sir You Are Being Hunted does a fantastic job of making you feel as if you’ve been thrown in a reverse robotic industrial European society world where humans are constantly being hunted for sport. It truly is the stuff of nightmares, and one hell of a fantastic game. The game's available for early access on Steam for $19.99. 

Broforce - The Over The Top February Update

The most patriotic game of all time just got an update (Which we're a tad late to post), and it's looking absolutely glorious. While the game itself never touted itself as the most sophisticated or innovative title, it definitely delivers on the fun aspect, both thematically and gameplay wise. Frantic Metal Slug meets Contra style gameplay mixed with a tongue in cheek ode to action movie heroes from the 80's, 90's and beyond. The latest update adds Brochete and Bronan to the roster, as well as a bunch of other fun features, which you can watch on the insanely over the top trailer above. The game will be landing sometime this March on Steam early access thanks to a successful Greenlight campaign.

When evil threatens the world, the world calls on Broforce - an under-funded, over-powered paramilitary organization dealing exclusively in excessive force. Brace your loins with up to four players to run 'n' gun as dozens of different bros and eliminate the opposing terrorist forces that threaten our way of life. Unleash scores of unique weapons and set off incredible chain reactions of fire, napalm, and limbs in the name of freedom. This. Is. Broforce.

Worth Checking Out - Samurai Gunn

Samurai Gunn is a fast paced arcade fighting game based around three simple actions: Jump, Shoot, and Slash. It’s simplicity can be deceiving as you start to learn the nuances of traversal, mixing in wall jumping with quick dashes, enabled by precisely timed attacks during the start or end of airtime. There are over a dozen arenas to do battle in, each with their own flavor or gimmick, adding to the replayability of the title as you discover and migrate to new favorites periodically. My favorite in particular is a flat play area that gradually opens up to a floor of spikes as players rack up their kills, turning a harmless arena into a dangerous pit of death.

This game is the epitome of 'screenshots don't do it justice.'

The game is limited to local play and fares best with a couple friends nearby, though it does feature a single player survival mode if you wish to brush up on your skills before taking on real foes once more. Considering that the similarly styled Towerfall has yet to make the jump from the Ouya, let this game tide you over in the meanwhile. The game is available on Steam for $15, and will be making the jump to the Vita and PS4 sometime in 2014.

Matador - Blasting Away Mechs for Great Justice

If you haven't seen the teaser trailer of this kick-ass top-down mech shooter, allow me to bring you up to speed. Matador is an isometric vehicle action game set in a far-off dystopic future. Players assume the role of a revolutionary mech pilot who, following the death of the mysterious "Great Leader", must liberate the capital city of Solo Nobre in one night by hijacking mechs and annihilating counter-insurgents.

The game's already drummed up a fair amount of publicity with its starkly pixelated, nostalgia-inducing art style and promising sound design. With fully destructible environments, variable generated playthroughs that change every time, and a gallery of awesome mechs, tanks and antigrav weapons to choose from, Summer 2014 can't come soon enough.

The 'Stellar Jockeys' are a 4-man team based out of Champaign, IL and Seattle, WA. Matador is their first game, you can find them at their website here, and go vote for the game over at their Steam Greenlight page!

Portraits By Tannojoko

Japanese indie animator Tannojoko returns with Portraits, a series of mysterious vignettes centered around a series of stoic looking protagonists featured in his earlier shorts. The troubled soldier, the serene girl with the eye patch, the experiment, they are all part of what I believe to be a larger story that's been slowly coming together over the years.

Tannojoko captures a fantastic sense of mystery with his shorts, offering us small pieces of what's to potentially come with no dialogue. A post apocalyptic world ties it all together, and there's elements sprinkled throughout that evoke memories of Akira and Evangelion's approach to religious themes. Check out the rest of the series so far after the break, including 2009's Wilderness and 2012's View. On a side note Tanno, could you please Kickstart the feature you've been plannning? I'd like to see your vision come to fruition, thanks.

Strike Vector Heads Into Beta Next Spring

When the first trailer for Strike Vector hit a few months back, we were absolutely amazed at just how much progress a small group of passionate indies were able to make on their concept, which we described as a mix of Macross and Adhesive Games' Hawken. Using the same clever modular building process that the small team on Hawken used to great success to build large, believable worlds and arcadey looking FPS mechanics, Strike Vector will be in beta on Steam early next year. Sign up for a beta key here!

Creeper World III - The Most Insane Tower Defense Game Ever Created?

We've all played tower defense games at some point - but to this day I've never seen one as insane looking as the third installment of Creeper World by Knuckle Cracker games, which takes the concept of tower defense and amps up the depth by about a thousand fold. Centered around a sentient, blob like organism with a simple goal - To overtake everything in it's path. Even in it's concept it's unorthodox, with your goal centering around simply stopping it's relentless, fluid like expansion towards you.

Now unlike other tower defense games, which typically feature a simple placement and upgrading system, Creeper World - Arc Eternal looks absolutely insane in it's depth, complexity and variety. The trailer shows off a game that takes elements of puzzle games, RTS elements and tower defense and recombines them into a fascinating mashup. After playing the free demo, I realized my free time this weekend was in serious jeopardy.

For billions of years empires rose to greatness. Each fell to the Creeper till none remained. Now all hope appears lost. Who will stand against the Creeper? Experience this extreme and massive expansion of the Creeper World franchise. Nothing will ever be the same… Massive maps, custom units scripting, terraforming, Gravatars? Can you handle the challenge?

"Stasis" Stirs From A Long Slumber, Launches Kickstarter With 2014 Release Date

For the past three years, adventure game fans and horror enthusiasts alike have eagerly anticipated news surrounding Stasis, a sci-fi survival horror point-and-click action game with painstakingly crafted environments and an engrossingly terrifying atmosphere. The love child of sole indie developer Chris Bischoff, Stasis has long been a promising new title that suffered from little hope of actually being released. That is, until now.

Bischoff has finally unveiled the game's new revamped website, complete with new media, developer diaries, countdown clock for a Kickstarter funding push, and a tentative release date of mid-2014! After playing Planescape - Torment earlier this year, I'm couldn't be hungrier for some more isometric point-and-click madness. Check out the new website, as well as one of the game's creepy promotional teasers above. You've come this far Bischoff, let's bring it on home.

Vanishing Waves - Reality Shatters

Directed by the upcoming Lithuanian director Kristina Buozyte, this trailer for the now released Vanishing Waves is a pretty amazing glimpse into the surreal scifi thriller. The plot shares some definite similarities to Tarsem Singh's The Cell (A guilty pleasure of mine), involving a protagonist jumping into the mind of a comatose young woman as part of an experiment. Inevitably, things go astray. This type of premise is just ripe for some truly stunning visuals, and it definitely looks like it didn't disappoint in that regard.

The end result is a mix of Tarsem with a dash of inspiration from 70's surreal, new age directors like Alejandro Jodorowsky (The Holy Mountain, Incal, El Topo). Overall reception from people who actually checked out the film was pretty positive, although the movies release was so limited earlier this year that it flew under just about everybody's radar (Ours included, sadly). Thankfully, the DVD version was released just recently on Amazon, although a movie like this might find new life on Netflix like Panos Cosmatos' similarly surreal movie Beyond the Black Rainbow did.

Worth Checking Out - Viscera Cleanup Detail

Ever wonder which unlucky souls get the pleasure of coming in after the events of a scifi horror game to clean up the lengthy trail of gore, blood spatters and discarded weaponry? Look no further as the folks at indie outfit Rune Storm just unveiled their amazing space janitor simulation: Viscera Cleanup Detail.

Created during the course of a ten day development jam, this truly unique simulator tasks you with collecting and incinerating various unrecognizable body parts as well as mopping up copious amounts of blood decorating the walls. I get a strange feeling that we can thank Surgeon Simulator 2013 for inspiring this dark, yet humorous game concept. Head over to Steam Greenlight to give the alpha a spin, as well as getting this project approved for full development.

Routine - Developers Embrace The Oculus Rift

Following a brief teaser last year, the developers behind the scifi survival horror project Routine have finally released a brand new trailer showcasing the incredibly atmospheric world they've created. The developers at Lunar Software have already confirmed that Routine will be 100% Oculus Rift enabled at launch, which will allow a level of immersion previously unheard of in games of this caliber. If you thought games like Amnesia and Penumbra were terrifying, just imagine the type of fear these games will elicit when you can't look away from what's hunting you.

Routine is a first person horror exploration game set on an abandoned Moon base. Your job is to find enough data to uncover the truth behind the strange disappearance of everyone stationed on the Lunar Research Station. 

• A non linear experience lets you explore any part of the fully open Moon base and find out secrets that other players may not!
• Be immersed with Full body awareness, Deadzone aiming, no HUD, no health bars or points system... you must run, hide and survive the best you can against what lurks in the base.
• There are no health packs or multiple lives, in Routine there is a Perma death system that will keep you on the edge!

Worth Checking Out - Soul Saga

I can hardly handle the amount of love put into this project, I feel like the Grinch near the end of his grump spree, except I'm not feeling grumpy, I'm just really endeared by developer Mike Gale. Soul Saga is a return to the JRPG glory days, influenced by classics such as Chrono Trigger, Breath of Fire and Persona.

Using gameplay mechanics inspired by Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy X, Mike Gale has implemented a twist on combat, requiring a level of puzzle solving skills to defeat enemies. It sounds like an interesting mechanic, and if pulled off well could really improve the level of thought process put into each battle. Probably the most exciting thing out of this entire Kickstarter is the awesome soundtrack, it's not an everyday occurrence that an indie title get's a full produced anime theme song, vocaloid and all!

If JRPGs and indie devs toot your fancy, make you way over to the Kickstarter page and think about donating a bit of your monies. The custom figure alone is worth backing it.

Let's Check Out - Scrolls By Mojang

For this week's Let's Check Out feature Chris and I checked out the closed beta for Scrolls, the latest project (Among many) from the creators of Minecraft. Despite an initial learning curve, the tactical game is fun to play with a ton of potential depth focused on honing your deck, collecting and trading cards and a fun, visualized battle system centered around destroying your enemies totems. The game is currently available in an ongoing beta form on the official Scrolls website for about $20.



Following the release of Minecraft, Notch (Markus Persson) and his team of trusty Swedish developers became famous overnight and ushered a golden era for indie devs, cementing them as the key to innovation in an overly stagnant, sequelitis plagued corporate dominated games industry. There had long been rumors about the next Mojang project, one being a scifi title similar in feel to Minecraft currently titled Ox10C, a side scroller called Cobalt and an RPG of some sort.

The RPG turned out to be a tactical TCG (Trading card game), taking elements of Magic the Gathering, Pox Nora and Heroes of Might and Magic. Despite an overly negative reaction when the game debuted from some rather self entitled Minecraft fans demanding why Notch wasn't simply making Minecraft 2, the game has solidified itself as a labor of love by Notch and Jakob Porsser. Inspired to create a game nonexistent in the marketplace, they set out to make a game that combined their love of board games and TCG's: Scrolls.