Can you believe it? Saturday’s passed again already. Another weekend, another batch of fantastic images of what the world of independent game developers have been up to. Another day of some writer attempting to express, in an original way, that you should totally check out some of this cool stuff. Really. Go have a gander at that great big wall of neat photos that is Screenshot Saturday!
Samudai by GeekSloth Games
Think Super Smash Bros. as enacted by samurai felines. Samudai is a game of player-on-player combat and agility that isn’t shy about reaching for cute cat dollars. Rather than hacking at a health gauge, brawlers vie to send the other mewing characters sailing off-stage through superior maneuvering or other decidedly less amicable means. Successes advance the match through stages, culminating in the trailing player assuming the role of a “boss” and, by the looks of it, gaining control of a significantly more powerful kitty.
Super Roman Conquest by SeaCliff Interactive
Ancient Rome provides the stage for this side scrolling strategy game from a couple of LucasArts veterans. Their intention is to blend a sense of nostalgia with modern real-time strategy and FTL-like meta-game progression. That is, generating resources through conquests, planning your side-scrolling battles and deciding fates through a campaign overmap. It’s a little bit Total War: Rome, but with two dimensional characters and some killer animations.
Aegis Defenders by GUTS Department
This one, quite interestingly, began life as a graphic novel. A vast conflict has somehow resulted in humanity’s memory of its past, including its knowledge of the impressive technology they’d wrought, being stripped from them. Now, such devices are wielded or perceived as magic. A man and his granddaughter endeavor to find a weapon, Aegis, that they regard as the mythical object that will save their village from the encroaching Empire. Their search, however, will require a careful mix of exploration and location defense. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Nausicaa, albeit a rendition they’ve pixelated and made their own.
The Journey of Eko by Pixel Cows
This lush scene is from an exploration-action-adventure-platforming title under development by a single pair of garage-bound friends. Players explore a procedurally generated map from a top-down perspective before, upon stumbling into a procedurally generated dungeon, swapping to the side-scrolley perspective you see here. The game progresses as you find items, like shields or bows, each with a different attached play style and benefit. Their website doesn’t seem to have been updated since the project’s reinvigoration, so don’t be surprised if this screenshot doesn’t match what you’ll find in the link.
Viking Squad by Slick Entertainment
A side-scrolling beat-’em-up a la Double Dragon, but with a deliberate effort to simplify the player’s depth selection. Rather than leave you to fiddle and wonder if you’re correctly lined up with an enemy, Viking Squad slots you into easily understood and utilized lanes of action. Choose your viking, each with a unique personality and set of moves, and set to plundering. Along the way you’ll gather weapons, encounter new gods, and alter your encounters by worshiping these different deities. And wouldn’t you know it, this world is procedurally generated too. Useful tech, that.
