No Money, No Problem: Nested

Title: Nested
Developer: Orteil
Platforms: Browser
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Nested isn't a game. It's hard to even call it a text adventure. At first glance, Nested seems to pale in comparison to developer Orteil's other notable creation, Cookie Clicker. But with each click, diving into another sub folder, digging ever deeper, you realize that the game's simple description - "A Simulation of Everything" - couldn't be more accurate. Nested is exploration distilled to its purest, most minimalist form in a simple text format. An infinite amount of things to discover, from the grandness of multiverses and space to the abstract plane of thoughts and memories.

Nested is randomly generated, so one could browse through its endless worlds forever. It's quite literally an endlessly fascinsting experience. Descend through ever-more-detailed folders, from space, to planet, to continent. Forgotten lands, ecosystems bustling with life, civilizations from the primitive to the futuristic and the outright bizarre. Dig further still, into the memories of a village chieftain or the thoughts of individual nanomachines. Venture deeper, into the chemical make-up of individuals and landscapes and objects and you'll find even more subatomic universes to explore, an endless nesting doll of life.

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The Watchlist: Splasher

Title: Splasher

Developer: SplashTeam

Platforms: PC

Releasing late 2015/early 2016

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Splasher is a 2D Platformer in which you are tasked with unleashing the power of paints to rescue your brothers. These little fellows, called the splashers, are prisoners in a giant paint manufacture : INKORP.  While water is your primary weapon to defeat weak enemies and activate mechanisms, paint is where your true powers come from. Thank to the differing colors and their properties, you will stick to walls and roofs, bounce high in the air, trick your opponents and do many more to reach Inkorp’s top levels !

You've probably seen Splasher's central mechanic in other games before, perhaps the DigiPen game Tag: Power of Paint or more recently Portal 2. This colorful platformer takes that spray mechanic and mixes it with the fast-paced precision gameplay of Super Meat Boy. Equipped with his nozzle-pack, the titular Splasher uses an array of various colored paints to traverse gaps and evade the myriad hazards within the INKORP facility. Paint proves to be a versatile tool, allowing you to defy gravity and scramble along any surface or bounce to great heights and off walls. This isn't a game of careful planning and puzzles; in fact, aiming and movement are all done with the left stick (trust me, use a controller). Splasher is all about speed and movement, spraying on the go, mid-air or running across the ceiling.

Your paint arsenal is more than just a means of traversal; when faced with enemies, either while running or when locked in quick arena battles, each spray type reveals alternate offensive uses: your default water damaging foes, sticky red trapping enemies temporarily, and bouncy yellow knocking them back. Combining these abilities along with environment hazards like lasers and saw blades allows you to deal with the demo's foes and furthermore, hints at the kind of unique challenges that Splasher could deliver with more paint types, enemies, and hazards. 

Splasher is still early in development, with a release planned for late this year or early 2016. But even at this early stage, the game impresses with its colorful style, fluid animations, and challenging gameplay. You can download the three-level demo from the game's site and follow Splasher's progress on Twitter and Facebook.

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PC Review #113: Besiege

Title: Besiege

Developer: Spiderling Games

Platforms: PC

Price: $6.99

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Destruction is fun. Anyone who played Red Faction: Guerrilla surely remembers the joy of driving trucks through buildings or collapsing towers with a few swings of your sledgehammer. Besiege takes the vehicle construction you love from games like Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and injects it with a dose of physics, blood, and medieval destruction, as you build powerful siege engines to level castles and lay waste to armies.

From the moment you start Besiege, the polish put in the game is evident. The two-man team behind Spiderling Games have been working on Besiege since late 2013 and it shows in every aspect of the game, from the slick menu designs to the building UI that makes constructing vehicles effortless. It's the little details that stand out: wood beams snap in half when broken, blood stains your blades and the ground, your structure collapses and falls apart realistically when aflame, buildings crumble under the might of your cannon fire or swinging maces.

The current version of Besiege offers fifteen levels, with more to come in future updates. While your objectives are not that complex (ranging from destroying a specific building, destroying a certain amount of enemies, to transporting resources), building something that can steer effectively, withstand damage, and attack without breaking apart from recoil or movement can be tough. Half the fun in this game is experimenting and learning from your failures and tweaking your designs. Blocks at your disposal include everything from armor plating, pistons, Kerbal Space Program-style detachers, wings, and propellers to an arsenal of maces, cannons, and devastating saw blades. This toolset allows you to create all kinds of unstoppable killing machines. A mace-armed behemoth. A rolling windmill of death. A spring-loaded scorpion tail ending in a flamethrower. The variety of silly and creative builds you can create in Besiege is vast.

Besiege is currently only at the 0.01 alpha stage, but honestly, the game doesn't feel like an alpha. It's an easy-to-play, polished experience, both in terms of visuals and gameplay and in performance. It's fun and enjoyable, and you can spend hours messing around and building new and more ludicrous ways to complete your objectives. Besiege was Greenlit recently, and the devs plan to have the game on Steam Early Access "very soon". You can purchase the game through Humble, and learn more about Besiege and its development on the developer's site.

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An update on IGE and some interesting indies to start off 2015

So it's been a while, huh? Don't worry, this blog hasn't been forgotten. Late December till now has just been a busy trying time, first with finishing up school and my senior project, then the weeks of Christmas and New Years, than job hunting, and a death in the family. Suffice to say, I didn't really have the time to play as much as I wanted or sit down and work on article drafts.

But that's not to say I haven't been keeping up with indie releases. Things have settled down now, so I plan to start posting articles again by this weekend. I've been hooked on the IOS Match-3 RPG Hero Emblems and I picked up Zachtronics' latest release Infinifactory, so expect impressions of those, as well as some thoughts of the Rain World alpha.

Anyway, here are some recent releases and Kickstarters that are worth checking out:

Besiege

Hero Emblems

Children of Morta

STRAFE

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