Sector Strike (Ouya/Android/iOS)

Decent Ouya shoot 'em up releases have been a little thin on the ground lately, so I was pretty surprised when I turned mine on the other day and discovered Sector Strike sitting in the sandbox. With the official blurb boasting that the game 'combines the mechanics of old school shooters and the aesthetics of modern 3D games' it had to be worth checking out. And now, several hours later, I'm rather glad I did.

A little Google research on the developers (Clapfoot Inc.) offered more information on this hitherto unknown release - namely that the game was originally released for Android and iOS devices back in 2012. My heart sank a little; as a follower of the shmup scene, surely I would have heard of the game if it was any good?

Droidscape: Basilica (iOS)

Droidscape: Basilica is one of the most interesting games I've come across in a very long time, breaking ground with some truly unique ideas and gameplay twists. The folks at Kyttaro Games have dubbed Droidscape: Basilica as a 'sci-fi, stop motion animated action puzzler' and I couldn't have described it better myself.

Let's start with sci-fi. Droidscape takes place in a pretty dark-sounding universe in the year 4057(!), a time when humanity has been plunged into a second Dark Age. Apparently, one of the last remaining 'Chronomancers', who must be responsible for saving said humanity in some capacity, has been taken hostage on the Basilica space station. Of course, as is usually the case in these situations, only a lowly little droid named Bishop 7 can save him.

This adorable little bipedal android is controlled by none other than you, the player. He, in addition to all the characters in the game, was hand-created in clay and brought to life with stop-motion. I have a deeply rooted love of stop-motion animation, fueled by childhood evenings huddled around the measly tube TV watching Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger with my father. Thus, the graphic presentation of Droidscape charmed me immediately. Characters and enemy androids really pop on the screen with colour, personality, and life. All of this is accentuated by ace, satisfying sound effects and an atmospheric soundtrack - when played with headphones as the game recommends, you won't be disappointed.

Shambles (PC)

Planet Earth is at saturation point with zombies. It would take forever to list the legions of zombie related franchises laying waste to all the world's media even as we speak. Zombie related novels are going straight to the slush piles of most major publishing houses, apparently, and big budget Z-movies are being critically panned. People are getting sick of the world's sickest people.

A game that can cut through the fog of media overexposure and fly in the face of the desensitisation to the hordes of walking dead shouldn't be allowed to pass by without this reporter popping his head up from behind the parapets of zed-besieged RGCD Towers and taking an extended look at it, and Shambles certainly warrants a good shufti.

RGCD News Update

It's been a while since I posted one of these general RGCD news updates, and to be honest so much has been going on here that it is hard to know where to start! There are new C64 game projects to be announced, recent developments and updates on the Android based Ouya micro-console, an RGCD Steam Greenlight channel - the list just goes on and on. We've also brought on board a few new writers lately who've been keeping the game reviews rolling over whilst I've been frantically trying to keep up to date with other projects, so you've them to thank for the fact there isn't virtual tumbleweed rolling by on the front page of this website.

Ok, so join me in grabbing a coffee/tea/beer and let's have a catch-up...

Verminian Trap (PC/Mac/Linux/Ouya)

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

Locomalito and Gryzor87 are on fire right now. It seems like only yesterday that Gaurodan came swooping down onto PC and Ouya screens and now they've released a four-player follow-up-of-sorts to They Came From Verminest. Inspired by the likes of Wizard of Wor and Battle City, Verminian Trap has the player (and up to three friends) stranded in an alien bug nest with zero chance of escape - the only option open to you is to take out as many of the little critters as you can before you ultimately end up as their lunch.

Crypt of the Necrodancer (PC/Mac) (Preview)

As a StepMania veteran, I like to think that rhythm games are my thing. Mind you, I'm no Guitar Hero or Rock Band star but I can at least move my fingers to a beat. I also enjoy my roguelikes; Dwarf Fortress, Realm of the Mad God, POWDER - all of which are games so difficult that you are left with a real sense of accomplishment by simply making it through the first or second floor alive. Brace Yourself Games's Crypt of the Necrodancer however, is a whole other ball game. It's a roguelike in foundation... that is, until you try to move. At that point, the game pats you on the head, says "Nice try", and displays a little [MISSED!] on the screen. Oh yes, ladies and gentlemen; believe it or not, Crypt of the Necrodancer is a roguelike rhythm game.

100 Rogues (Ouya/iOS)

Time for a bold announcement. Towerfall may well be the top multiplayer game on the Ouya, but Wesley Paugh's 100 Rogues is hands-down the best single-player game available for the console - at least in this humble reviewer's opinion. More Rogue-lite than Roguelike, with its SNES-era production values and console gameplay, not-to-be-taken-seriously bestiary, boss battles and tongue-in-cheek humour, I'd probably go as far as to say its my favourite classic-style rogue game released to date.

It's not often I can claim that my second playthrough of a game resulted in me dying in the pits of hell, mercilessly butchered by a clown and a pack of gummi-rats shortly after defeating the pope. In 100 Rogues that very fate was realised. Another epic encounter saw my luckless crusader almost vanquished by a rocket-launcher wielding robot, barely surviving close combat, yet ultimately winning the battle by throwing an arrow at the fiend whilst bravely fleeing the scene. Neat, huh? But it has to be said that nothing beats the time I slayed Satan by biting him in the groin whilst in the guise of a giant dinosaur. Oh yes, this game is full of these moments.

PESTER (PC/XBLIG/Ouya)

My mother always told me, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." If I followed her advice, This review would end after the next paragraph or two.

To many aspiring game developers, creating a shoot 'em up (shmup hereafter) may seem like the obvious choice for a first project. On the surface it's one of the simplest concepts, only needing a few collision detection routines to tell if your bullet has connected with an enemy or an enemy bullet has collided with you, and some simple scoring logic. Add to that some brightly-coloured graphics, some shooty-bangy sound effects and a repeating background track. Bang. Job done. Add a price tag and you have one shitty-shmup ready for retail release on XBLIG or the portal of your choice.

What many developers don't realise, is that under the surface of a good shmup, there needs to be much more than just shooty-bangy sounds and enemies to kill. There needs to be some method in the madness, be it in the form of intelligent scoring systems, interesting mechanics, or even just intricate bullet patterns that players need to learn and master to navigate through unscathed. In addition to this, a cleverly considered colour palette to easily differentiate bullets and destructibles from the backgrounds they fly over helps - as does working collision detection and tight controls.

Sadly, Pester falls firmly, squarely, and awkwardly into this shitty-shmup category, breaking both of its ankles upon impact.

Gommy Medieval Defender (MSX)

"Let's rock!" The sampled voice at the beginning of early nineties Amiga coverdisk game Ork Attack plays in my head every time I fire up Gommy Medieval Defender. I used to play Ork Attack to an eye-bleeding extent and to see a game very similar to it appear on the MSX is exciting indeed!

There's something primevally satisfying about belting enemies on the head with a rock as they try to scale the walls of your castle. Like a hard-coded impulse in the mind to really get jollies from defending a huge pile of masonry. Maybe that's why we're such territorial dicks at times. Retroworks' Gommy Medieval Defender, which recently came fourth in this year's MSXDev coding contest, has a direct line to this ancient butthead sector of the human brain and is a clobbering good laugh.

The Agent: Glory to Moscow (PC/Mac)

Developed in nine hours for Creative Assembly's "The 80s" game jam, Bristol-based Force of Habit and Clockwork Cuckoo's The Agent: Glory to Moscow is modelled after a fictitious lost Russian arcade game of the 1980's, with influences including cold war propaganda, Soviet aerobics videos and esoteric Russian technology.

Gunslugs (Android/iOS/OUYA)

Gunslugs is a run 'n' gun title that is decidedly retro in its approach and the concept will be instantly familiar to anyone who has played, well, pretty much any action arcade game from the 1980s and early 1990s. Advance your gun-toting hero onwards to the right, blasting anything and everything that stands in your way. Rinse and repeat.

Our friends at Wide Pixel Games recently paid similar homage to the 80s arcade era with their Ouya release, Heavy Recoil. However, where Heavy Recoil focused on delivering a genuinely authentic vintage arcade experience, Orange Pixel have instead opted to infuse Gunslugs with a modern twist; random level generation. After all, this is 'retro' gaming as viewed in 2013, not 1986.

Headblaster (PC)

We live in a golden age of electronic entertainment, everywhere we turn there are hundreds of fully interactive, deep, challenging experiences full of three dimensional characters with heavy hearted back-stories pursuing their goals within vast, realistic and realized worlds.

In contrast, Headblaster by Loud Noises raises a middle finger salute and screams out "fuck it - let's take some drugs!" before exploding onto your screen in a short-lived yet riotous cacophony of fun.

rymdkapsel (Sony Vita/iOS/Android)

Martin 'grapefrukt' Jonasson has been making flash games for a decade, and his latest creation, rymdkapsel, is a little gem. The minimalist space-station construction real-time-strategy tower-defence game has been out on Sony's Vita for some time (the console on which I've been playing it) and was just released for Android and iOS, for which it's likely an even better fit due to its touch-heavy interface.

So what's it all about? No plot or back-story to mess around with here. The player is stationed on a floating island of sorts, with a few minions available to do their bidding. Using touch controls, one must place 'rooms' to expand their stronghold. The trick is that these rooms are much like Tetrominos in that they are randomly selected, you get what you get, and they must be rotated and manipulated to achieve the finest configuration.

Savant: Ascent (PC)

Holy shit. It isn't often a game makes me say that. Out loud. However, Savant: Ascent by D-Pad Studio, did exactly that.

Inspired by the album covers and artwork created for - and music created by - EDM/dubstep/glitch hop artist extraordinaire Savant, this game is truly unique. It storms onto your screen with the presence of the horned child of a lusty Skrillex after a sweaty three-way romp in a motel with Castlevania: SoTN and a bullet-hell shooter.

G-Force (PC)

Back in the early days of RGCD, before Death Ray Manta, before SYNSO, and even before War Twat, we previewed a work-in-progress game by a chap called Oddbob (aka Rob Fearon). That game was G-Force, essentially a remake of a ZX Spectrum game of the same name by Boris Baginski, a niche and "untypical" shmup that was described by Crash magazine in 1984 as a "hard game to describe as it fits in with no known categories and resembles no other game we have seen".

Well, that just goes to show how useless Crash's review staff were, because in a nutshell G-Force is Atari's coin-op classic Tempest realised in 2D. And to that note, if the original ZX Spectrum G-Force is no more than Tempest in 2D, then Rob's remake is arguably the eye-popping Atari Jaguar exclusive Tempest 2000 in 2D, complete with an extra serving of psychedelic Jeff Minter-sauce.