Super Puzzle Platformer Deluxe (PC)

[This review was originally written by J. Monkman for indiegames.com, and has been reposted here with the editors permission].

Almost two years from when Andrew Morrish uploaded his original prototype build, Super Puzzle Platformer Deluxe (SPPD) has finally arrived and is available to buy on Steam - and it has most certainly been worth the wait. As promised in the Plus version released by Adult Swim Games earlier this year, SPPD takes the acclaimed 'Mr. Driller in reverse' game formula to the next level with six themed worlds in which to battle those evil pastel-coloured blocks, seven additional unlockable characters, challenges, achievements and - most essentially - a local two-player vs mode.

Chasm (Preview) (PC/Mac/Linux)

 

Chasm, like many Kickstarter darlings, has been getting a lot of press lately - and deservedly so. I mean, it's a "2D Fantasy ARPG Platformer featuring procedurally generated Metroid-like dungeons and authentic pixel art." Shut up and take my money! In all seriousness, though, a solid concept does not always yield a solid game, but it (fortunately) seems that the team at Discord Games have something special brewing.

I sometimes get annoyed with the plethora of Kickstarter buskers with a dream but no dollar, clamoring amongst the crowd to get a few bucks from me when they don't have anything to show, or aren't even developers/artists/coders/etc! The team behind Chasm, however, have gone over and above in giving gamers good reason to toss them some clams - a full-featured, surprisingly robust alpha demo is publicly available to try out.

It is thus hardly surprising that the game, as of now, is already funded. But how does it play?

Hammerwatch (Preview) (PC/Mac/Linux)

Anyone familiar with games like Gauntlet or even Rogue will be instantly familiar with Hammerwatch, a game by Jochum Skoglund and Niklas Myrberg currently available in beta form. Containing only the first act and a rough version of a planned Survival mode), play takes place entirely in a dungeon, with a selection of character classes, up to four (in the final version) players, waves of enemies and loot, keys and potions to collect.

Huenison Update (PC/Amiga)

Remember the rather positive Huenison preview we published a couple of months back? Well, it seems that our friend Simone Bevilacqua of Retream was rather enamoured by the write-up, and after our successful relationship in handling the cartridge of his C64 eat 'em up Quod Init Exit he offered RGCD the opportunity to publish the game in both digital and physical formats! Needless to say, we are super proud to be involved in the release of such a unique game.

Work has been continuing on Huenison, including a few extra game modes and brick types, but mainly Simone has been polishing and tweaking things for the final release. More importantly for the hardcore Amiga crowd, as with his previous release BOH, Huenison will be available for both PC and Amiga OS 4. More information will follow soon, but for a taste of what is to come, check out the teaser trailer below.

Zero Cross (PC/Mac)

[This review was originally written by J. Monkman for indiegames.com, and has been reposted here with the editors permission].

Christopher "udderdude" Emirzian, developer of the hardcore indie shmup XOP, has delivered yet another perfect slice of STG action in the form of Zero Cross, an arena-based arcade game that combines bullet-hell with intelligent gameplay mechanics, a variety of different mission goals and some impressive boss designs.

Instead of the usual 'rush about the screen in a circle avoiding abstract enemies and bullets' that you'd expect from a typical arena shooter, Zero Cross has you activating shields to protect friendly structures, creating blackholes, destroying enemy bases, fighting colossal battle ships and closing rifts in the fabric of space-time. Sounds awesome? Well, to keep things brief - yes, it is.

C64 16KB Cartridge Game Development Competition!

The third RGCD C64 Cartridge Development Competition concluded at midnight on the 30th of November with 12 brand new games (and 3 re-releases) for the C64!

INFINOS (PC)

INFINOS is definitely a rare gem. Played R-Type or virtually any classic 16-bit era shooter? Then you've played INFINOS, but that wouldn't really be doing this indie title any justice. Given the very sparse nature of its website, courtesy of developer Picorinne Soft, it would be very easy to overlook this one - but don't.

The second INFINOS is fired up, it conjures up fond mental images of my 11 year old self sitting cross-legged in front of a small tube TV in a modest bedroom, banging on the controller to the tune of Super R-Type (perhaps the first true shooter I ever played. I was also fond of Darius Twin).

Guns 'N' Ghosts Cartridge Available! (C64)

High fives all round! It has been a long time coming (the tape, disk and download versions have been available since the 14th of April from our partners at Psytronik), but I'm super proud to announce that Georg "Endurion" Rottensteiner and Trevor "Smila" Storey's 72-level demon-smashing Commodore 64 arcade game Guns 'N' Ghosts is finally available to buy on cartridge from our shop!

Guns 'N' Ghosts is an intense action game with a variety of play modes that offers a particularly rich two-player cooperative adventure, so grab your shotgun, ready your psychic powers and help paranormal investigators Trev and Georg eradicate a monstrous mélange of spooks & spectres!

Featuring box art by Smila, the 64KB PCB is housed in a ghostly transparent cartridge shell illuminated by an internal LED, and the game comes complete with a printed manual and seven vinyl stickers.

The cartridge version is available in two packaging types, a standard card carton and a more expensive 'deluxe version' that comes in a plastic case (a Universal Game Case with a specially cut foam insert to hold the cartridge as shown below). The standard version is priced at £22, whereas the deluxe version costs £27. Shipping is £4 for UK/Europe and £5 for the rest of the world. A digital version of the game will also be sent out to all customers following receipt of payment.

Please note that Pystronik Software are also selling the game on premium/budget disk, tape and as a download for £9.99, £4.99, £3.99 and £1.99 respectively (plus shipping) via their Binary Zone Retro Store.

The even better news for cartridge fans is that whilst fixing the hardware incompatibility issue responsible for the delay, Georg managed to squeeze in one of his earlier games as an exclusive Easter egg - just check out the photos below! We will be announcing the 'secret' to loading the second game in the near future, but for those of you wanting to try and find it yourself the only hint you are going to get is that it requires one single input at a specific time. Happy hunting!

Guns 'N' Ghosts (C64) (2013)

System Requirements

* A Commodore 64/128/GS (PAL/NTSC).
* A joystick/joypad (two for two-player).
* A VDU preferably connected to a loud sound-system.


Downloads

The retail version of Guns 'N' Ghosts is currently not available for free download. You can buy the game on cartridge from RGCD here, or as a download, tape and disk from Psytronik Software here.


Introduction

The C64 game development super-team Georg "Endurion" Rottensteiner and Trevor "Smila" Storey have returned with their first new collaborative game since their record-breaking successful hit Soulless!

Another Psytronik and RGCD collaboration, Guns 'N' Ghosts delivers a long-awaited, original single or two-player arcade style experience to your C64 in all formats (cartridge, disk, tape and download). Grab your shotgun, ready your psychic powers and help paranormal investigators Trev and Georg battle through 72 screens infested with zombies, skeletons and bats and various other spooks & spectres!

Reports of supernatural sightings have been coming in from all over the country and Trev and Georg are on the case! Georg is very handy with a shotgun, useful for getting rid of any unwanted zombies, reanimated skeletons or freakish lab experiments gone wrong, and Trev is gifted with incredible mind powers. These give him a special link with the spirit-plane - and the ability to send demons back to whatever hell-hole they crawled out of.

Guns 'N' Ghosts is an intense action game with a variety of play modes that offers a particularly rich two-player cooperative adventure, so get a friend round, plug in an extra joystick and kick some undead ass!

RetroGameCrunch (Part One) (PC/Mac)

RetroGameCrunch was a Kickstarter project born out of the Ludum Dare Game Jam held in August of last year. What's a RetroGameCrunch you say? What's a Kickstarter? What's a game jam and is it anything like a pearl jam?

Well to take them in reverse order, Pearl Jam are a popular beat combo who were particularly successful in the early to mid 1990s and were named after the jam made by one of the band member's grandmothers. A game jam is a relatively new concept where a group of developers get together and make a game in a strict amount of time. Think of it like a group of musicians jamming until they produce a song, but with video games instead of music. Except video game music, obviously.

Kickstarter, meanwhile, utilises another relatively new concept called crowd-sourcing and allows artists and developers of all sorts of gadgets and gizmos the opportunity to pitch for funding from the general public directly without needing to resort to a middle man - except for Kickstarter of course. The site has grown massively since it was launched and has now expanded from its original technology-based origins to reach out to all sorts of creative artists.

Video game development is one such medium suited to online crowd-sourcing and retro video gaming in particular has done well due to its target demographic of thirtysomething+, male gamers with a disposable income and (obviously) internet access.

Which brings us, at last, to RetroGameCrunch, the product of a game jam that was such fun to the people involved they decided to go to Kickstarter and extend their game jam over six long months, producing a game a month in return for up-front funding from the public. RGCD was one of the many backers and this post will look at the first three of the promised six games, with a future post covering the remaining games.

KRUNCH (PC/Mac/Linux)

It's difficult to not be immediately intrigued by the dark, foreboding atmosphere of KRUNCH, an indie game by LeGrudge and Rugged that puts a new spin on the familiar twitch platformer genre. In fact, this game of stressful close calls and peril-filled levels isn't a platformer; rather, I'd call it a 'floater'. Birthed from a Ludum Dare prototype, KRUNCH has an awful lot to offer gamers who really enjoy punishing themselves.

Mok Force (PC)

[This review was originally written by J. Monkman for indiegames.com, and has been reposted here with the editors permission].

Arguably inspired by the works of Kenta Cho, Deathmofumofu's Mok Force is an endless procedural doujin shmup that has one foot set firmly in the past and the other boldly stepping forth into a neon-coloured abstract future. The game design is strictly old-school with no power-ups, no gimmicks, no shields nor health bars and the only goal is to beat your previous high score. Combined with a deep DnB soundtrack (by Japanese producer Gu-Dara) that perfectly compliments the relentless action and high-speed low poly-count 3D visuals, the end result is an elegant, accessible and enjoyable shooter experience.

Jagware Collection 1.0 Available! (Atari Jaguar CD)

Jagware presents a new Atari Jaguar CD compilation of four puzzle games from four groups; Do The Same from Cerebral Vortex, Diamjag by Orion, Atomic Reloaded from The Removers, and Beebris by Reboot - all four of which support online scoreboards. But that's not all - also included is an exclusive early look at the alpha build of 'Project II', Reboot's ambitious forthcoming horizontal scrolling shmup.

CVSD's Do The Same is a beautifully presented tile-rotation game where your goal is to match a given pattern of blocks in as few moves as possible (and before the time runs out). A highly polished release featuring backgrounds based on hand-crafted clay models and 112 levels to beat, Do The Same was previously available on CD in very limited quantities - now those who missed it in physical form have the chance to grab it again!

Next up is Atomic Reloaded, a logic puzzle game inspired by Thalion's Atomic in which you are tasked with creating molecules from their component atoms by moving them around a maze. Described as 'Atomic as it should have been', Atomic Reloaded features 82 original levels guaranteed to challenge even veterans of the original!

Diamjag is an early release from the prolific Jaguar coder Orion, in which you must guide a ball-like character around 28 single-screen mazes collecting diamonds - the catch being that when your ball starts rolling you wont stop again until you hit a wall!

Reboot, the organisers of this project have contributed Beebris, their updated Jaguar conversion of one of Law's old Atari ST releases based on a 'popular tetronimo game'. With four game modes, each with forty levels of difficulty, Beebris remains one of Reboots more popular additions to the Jaguar homebrew catalogue.

Jagware Collection One is a superb compilation of games, but if you want further incentive to pick up a copy you may wish to consider that all profits made through sales of this Jagware release will be going toward funding future Jaguar hardware development by SCPCD, creator of the JagCF and the Jagtopus 4-cart programmer - the format on which future cartridge games will be distributed.

The physical release comes cellophane wrapped in a clear DVD box with full colour, double-sided printed inlay on a full face printed, glass-mastered CD, direct from the factory (100% professionally produced in the UK). Instructions for each game are included on the inside of the inlay. It requires no additional hardware to run other than the Jaguar CD console itself. As an added bonus, a vinyl Reboot sticker will be included with every order.

Priced at £24 (plus £4 UK/Europe shipping, £5 rest of world) Jagware Collection 1.0 is available to buy from our shop page today!

Mojon Twins 2-Games-In-1 Cartridge Available! (C64)

It's been a long time coming, but we have finally completed our official cartridge compilation of The Mojon Twins Nanako in Classic Japanese Monster Castle and Sir Ababol, and it is available to buy now from our shop!

Although the plan was originally to put them out as separate releases, it seemed a shame to waste the ROM space, so we've managed to squeeze both games and a menu onto a single 64KB cartridge. Changes over the previous versions available on CSDB include two minor NTSC bugs fixed, as well as Nanako now being fully playable via joystick - making it available at last for GS owners. The 64KB PCB is housed in a transparent purple cartridge shell illuminated by an internal LED, and the game comes complete with a printed manual and a vinyl Mojon Twins sticker.

The cartridge version is available in two packaging types, a standard card carton and a more expensive 'deluxe version' that comes in a plastic case (a Universal Game Case with a specially cut foam insert to hold the cartridge as shown below). The standard version is priced at £22, whereas the deluxe version costs £27. Shipping is £4 for UK/Europe and £5 for the rest of the world. A digital version of the game will also be sent out to all customers following receipt of payment.

As a joint RGCD/Mojon Twins/Psytronik production, we've handled the cartridge production whereas Kenz at Psytronik has compiled a three game pack on disk and tape, including UWOL: Quest For Money (a game we previously released on cartridge last year). Psytronik Software are selling the game on premium/budget disk and tape for £9.99/£4.99 and £3.99 respectively (plus shipping) via their Binary Zone Retro Store.

To celebrate the completion of this project, we've put the UWOL cartridge temporarily on sale, with £5 off the cost price. Not only that, but fans of Assembloids might want to check out Dr. Martin Wendt's previous game Not Even Human - which has also been dramatically price slashed! This promotion won't last forever, so grab them now.

But sadly it isn't all good news. Royal Mail have raised their postage costs for the new financial year, so I've had to change some of our shipping methods and push up the prices by £1 across the board. Whereas international post was previously insured for up to £46 by default, this now needs to be purchased as an extra (see the 'Shipping Insurance' category of the store). For UK customers, from now on I'll be sending parcels 'Second Class Signed For' in order to keep the price low but still offer adequate compensation for up to two games per package (additional cover up to £500 is also available). I've been as fair as I can with this.

Sorry to end on a downer... On the positive side there is more news and reviews to follow soon!

Sir Ababol / Nanako In Classic Japanese Monster Castle (C64) (2013)

System Requirements

* A Commodore 64/128/GS (PAL/NTSC).
* A joystick/joypad.
* A VDU preferably connected to a loud sound-system.


Downloads

Download Sir Ababol & Nanako in .crt cartridge format HERE!
Download Sir Ababol & Nanako in .prg program format HERE!

BONUS! Check out the original ZX Spectrum versions HERE!
BONUS! Check out Onslaught's cracked version of Sir Ababol in .d64 disk format HERE!
BONUS! Check out Onslaught's cracked version of Nanako in .d64 disk format HERE!

EMULATOR PACKAGE! Download the game ready-to-run combined with the Windows 32-Bit version of the VICE emulator HERE!


Introduction

Following on from last year's authorised C64 cartridge release of UWOL: Quest For Money, RGCD is back with a compilation of two more Mojon Twins game conversions coded by Woodmaster - the classic run 'n jump collect 'em up 'Sir Ababol' and mind-bending platform-puzzler 'Nanako in Classic Japanese Monster Castle'.