There are a lot of games, and it is simply impossible to write in detail about everyone. In gambling, we try to pay attention to the best indie projects, but large releases, of course, give priority. As a result, it is not always possible to play all potentially interesting small games in time – and it happens to them a whole overview. Therefore, we decided to create a new section “Indie of the month”, in which we will talk about small games in free form. First of all, we will try to highlight fresh and good releases, but in the future, perhaps, we will affect more old games that deserve attention, and warn about the new products that have disappointed us.
SEVERED STEEL
Sergey Tsilyurik
In the second half of the zero, many large games about Slow-Mo came out: StrangleHold From John Wu himself, The Matrix: Path of Neo From Vachovski, Wet from Bethesda , 10,000 Bullets from Taito … but after Max Payne 3 Their stream was exhausted, and for some reason, indie projects were in no hurry to occupy a holy place.
But the long expectation of the next bombing action, which is based on the Bullet Time, finally ended with the release SEVERED STEEL. It can be described most of it as " Max Payne plus Hotline Miami In FPS format ". The levels here are small, and the task, as a rule, is limited to the murder of all opponents. We are all the time in motion: while running along the walls, somersaults and sliding, the enemies do not get into us. There is only one store in each cannon; shot – and you can throw the barrel in the next enemy to stun or even kill. He survived? It doesn’t matter – you can knock it at point blank, and grab the weapon from a living enemy and immediately wrap it against him. Health is restored for killing enemies, and Slow can be included at will-for example, to get more time for a targeted shot.
In fact, all this is formed in a continuous drive. We knocked out the door into one soldier, run along the wall past the other, planting in it, make a double jump and put two headshot in the somersault, grab a shotgun from the corpse and devastate it in a running fifth enemy. The shots are felt very smart, the enemies are convincingly yelling, and the environment is destroyed limitlessly, for nothing that it is made from the voxels. Two minutes later, dozens of corpses lie between the rare surviving walls, and we go to the next level.
There is nothing superfluous in the SEVERED STEEL: the visual series is minimalist, music is dynamic electronics, the plot is described by a pair of strokes. The whole game is extremely concise and insanely saturated: it passes in some three hours, but this is three hours of the most high the action of this year (or even many previous ones).
Inscryption
Denis Pavlushkin
Honestly, in the last two or three months I have not had a lot of time for a thoughtful, leisurely study of all indie for my pleasure: Sergey and his text about the damned is to blame for everything Final Fantasy XIV. On the wave of hype, I decided to give the game another chance after a couple of unsuccessful attempts to get involved, and came to my senses only 400 hours later – and even then to look at Inscryption.
The new project of Daniel Mullins, which thundered five years ago YouTube thanks to Pony Island (And after it – The hex), it turned out as experimental as its previous works. It is very difficult to talk about Inscryption without spoilers, but in a nutshell it can be described as a terrible hybrid of a card Roguelike, a horror and a puzzle in the spirit of Escape Room. The main character is locked in a hut in private with a mysterious maniac. The madman will kill the protagonist if he loses two parties in a strange card game, where the deck consists entirely of forest animals, and for their call on the field you need to pay blood and bones. Fortunately, not real, but for some reason the crazy leader insists that the suffering of the drawn animals is real. He monitors the future victim with an unblinking gaze, sitting in pitch darkness on the other side of the table, while an incomprehensible light flickers outside the hut door. And pebbles in the scales on the table are somehow suspiciously similar to human teeth. It feels like I got into a nightmare based on a song that was not released "King and the Jester".
In this case, this is probably the best compliment of all that comes to my mind. Inscryption is amazing with the mood and presentation of the gameplay, especially by the standards of the genre that is not too worried about such nuances. In the interpretation of mullins, every detail, each mechanics is used to create an atmosphere. Cards in the player’s hand sometimes literally commented on his actions, and animals played on the field tremble with fear when the cursor freezes over them: they are afraid that they will be sacrificed. Even the objects with which the condescending presenter rewards his victim fits perfectly into the entourage. Bonus cards are hidden in glass pigs-shopies, large rusty scissors can cut any animal in half in one motion, and pliers … Stones in the bowls of weights are already like teeth. I warned. Do not ask why a bloodied knife is needed.
Although in terms of depth, the mechanic is certainly inferior to the same Slay The Spire, The management of blood and bones is constantly forced to seek compromises and creates many interesting situations. In addition https://superb-casino.co.uk/, it is not difficult to navigate in battles: the mathematics are simple, the decks are small, the properties of the cards are quickly deposited in the mind, so the mechanics do not distract from the narrative. InScryption would safely claim the title of Indi-Igra of the year, if not for one annoying moment: after about five hours it turns into something completely different. Less elegant, less worked out. About the same as it was with Pony Island and The Hex, only there was a similar move, because it was justified by the plot, and here it looks like a strained attempt to deceive the player’s expectations in an absolutely even place. An attempt, not devoid of many good, really creative ideas, but attracted by the ears to an excellent game that could do without any meta, deconstruction of the format and other pretentious things.
However, I still recommend taking a closer look at the Inscryption, if only for the sake of prologue in the hut: it turned out to be extremely spectacular. And there you know: maybe the rest of the game will come in no less. Just in case, keep in mind that the owls are not what it seems.
WebBed
Andrey Duvanov
For me personally, the main surprise of the last month was WebBed – A small platformer in which the player will have to take on the role of a little cute spider. Her lover was abducted by a huge bird, but to return the chosen one alone will not work, so for starters we will have to come up with a plan of salvation and enlist the help of friendly forest inhabitants.
The entire WebBed gameplay is built around the ability of the main character to weave a web, and the authors of the game clearly tried to squeeze out the maximum possibilities from this mechanics. Simple physical puzzles and flights on the web were performed simply, but very pleasant, and the variety of situations and ingenuity of the developers was enough exactly to the final credits, which is why the game ran out in one breath. In a short five to six hours of timing, our spider will have time to visit the coronation of the princess bee, hunt on flies, fly in a balloon and even create a huge robot for a colony of anti-communist rooms.
And for those players who will seem enough, there are several simple side tasks in WebBed, as well as Easter and secrets, for which our heroine can get new look, hats or even her own skateboard. But it would be interesting to study the local forest without rewards: the game world came out small, but extremely entertaining. Although you can’t call him bewitchingly beautiful, the attention of the authors to the details, unexpectedly pleasant characters and the general mood of a good forest adventure encourage him to carefully explore each location.
Let WebBed not claim the title of some exceptional masterpiece, there is everything you need to brighten up a couple of evenings: an unusual setting, dear heroes, various situations and a gameplay tied to physics, which does not have time to get bored. In the end, you can dance with bees here, ride a skateboard with ants, and (for some reason) shoot lasers from the eyes-the best opportunity to get rid of arachnophobia and love spiders in video games, most likely, it will simply not be there.
That's all the indie games that we wanted to tell about this month. We still run the heading, so share your opinion in the comments: you want more this in the future? And at the same time tell me what independent projects of the last time impressed you: perhaps they will fall into the next issue.
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