Crawl - Turning The Classic Dungeon Crawler On It's Head

Oh man. I might have just found my most anticipated indie game of this year. Crawl takes the classic Gauntlet/Golden Axe genre games and truly offers a unique, seriously fun sounding twist. One player takes on the role of the noble, dungeon roaming warrior while the other players assume the role of restless spirits who take control of traps and summon into creatures to prevent his progression- All on one screen. If the player falls, the antagonist spirit who delivers the fatal blow takes his place. One man makes it out alive.

Part roguelike, part ARPG with a large helping of arcadey gameplay, this game has all the elements in place to potentially be a huge local multiplayer hit akin to Towerfall or Samurai Gunn. With a slick retro pixelated look and a crunchy, chippy soundtrack this game is looking seriously freaking awesome. The title is currently up for Greenlight on Steam, so head on over and vote if you'd like to see it hit the store soon.

Worth Checking Out: Damned

Damned isn't your typical "explore the house, avoid the monster" style of horror game, instead four players work cooperatively as they avoid their demise brought upon them by a fifth player who takes the control of a monster. At first, it seems to be nothing more than as spooky deathmatch, but the overall depth comes from the monster's two forms.

With one form, the monster is able to turn into a ghost where they aren't able to interact with the players (or even see them), instead the monster must haunt them by causing "ghostly events" and making noises. The other form gives players control of a physical being, allowing them to interact with the world and actually do harm to the players.

The real fun from this game seems to be setting up a sequence of events in order to scare other players, something I could imagine becoming extremely gratifying (especially hearing their screams over the microphone). Develped by Brazilian team 9heads Games, Damned is another indie title worth keeping an eye out, I can see it making a splash for online gaming. Check out the game's Greenlight page if you'd like to help get it on Steam.

Roguelike Platformer TowerClimb Deserves A Greenlight

Lately it seems that procedurally generation roguelikes have become the go-to style of game for many indie developers. There isn't necessarily a problem with this, but it does tend to feel rather over-saturated at times. Even with the current flood of roguelikes, indie game TowerClimb looks like a blast.

Using mechanics similar to the of Spelunky, TowerClimb looks like the type of game I'd find myself sinking hundreds of hours into. With an amazing sounding sondtrack, beautiful pixel art, and more abilities to shake a stick it this is definitely a title the deserves a little bit more attention.

Steam Greenlight And Megabyte Punch

As part of the Steam Greenlight initiative, a newly launched initiative by Valve to give the community a voice in regards to which titles to publish. In the past, the company relied on a small internal 'Greenlight' team to make the tough decisions, but due to experiences with the team getting tied up on decisions in the past they chose to roll the feature out to yet another party.

Similar in spirit to the way that games like Team Fortress and Dota 2 allow people to vote on UGC (User generated content and items), the system allows users to vote and interact with the developers of titles. Greenlight has yet to accept any titles just yet, but I look forward to the floodgates being opened relatively soon. We'll be adding a new column to feature our Steam Greenlight indie pick of the week from now on, with this week's winner coming in the form of Megabyte Punch, a colorful brawler/platformer with chunky, colorful graphics and gameplay in the style of Super Smash Brothers. If you've got a Steam account, head on over and give the gift of vote!