Indie Game Report, Part 1

So I spent the larger portion of last week down at the lake, laptop in tow, having loaded it with a couple dozen games. I did this mainly because while spending a couple hours out on the lake or going up the river is fun, you need something to kill the other 12 hours you will be conscious because there is absolutely nothing else to do in that town. I picked up a few indie titles before the trip, because I got the idea in my head that I would play through them and then do a write-up about each of them. I ended up starting a new character in Oblivion and playing for three days. Okay, I thought, when I get home I'll get down to business.
When I got home I moved my character over to my desktop and installed a bunch of mods and played Oblivion for the next two days.
With only Saturday and Sunday remaining on what began as my nine-day vacation, I went into an indie game binge.



Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason

I'm starting off with a bit of a cheat, because Cryostasis isn't really an indie game, but doesn't seem to have garnered much buzz for a fairly recent release and I figured it deserved a mention.
Cryostasis is a sort of horror-themed adventure/FPS hybrid set in 1981 aboard a massive icebreaker that shipwrecked near the North Pole roughly twenty years earlier. You awake already on-board, and soon you're making your way through the ship, battling its undead crew and trying to piece together what happened. The game's main hook is that along the way you encounter certain corpses of the crew that you can inhabit, reliving their final moments and correcting their fatal mistakes, which will manipulate the environment in the present.
I am enjoying the game so far, but it does have some major flaws, technically and thematically. It is a visually stunning game that does some great work with lighting and shadows and other effects, the problem is that it is almost completely unplayable, by almost all accounts and not just my own, at those higher detail settings. The wandering around, exploring bits are okay, but whenever combat occurs it's like two boxers trying to duke it out inside a vat of molasses. So I was pretty much required to scale everything down to medium to get something resembling a stable framerate, but I can live with that.


It's a curiosity, it is too linear and the story unravels too slowly to be considered a good adventure game and the combat is a little too sluggish and clunky to be considered a good action game, but somehow it works. The time travel elements (They call it "Mental Echo," and so far there has been absolutely no explanation why the main character has this ability) do provide an effective hook, but even they can be bogged down by not being allowed to save during those scenes, forcing you to restart them over and over until you get it right.
On the plus side, the game does have a very effective atmosphere; the dark, silent rooms of the ship give a great sense of isolation, the bluish hues and ice-covered walls are a reminder of your overarching, oppressive foe: the cold. Your health meter is also your warmth level, you are constantly seeking new heat sources to keep yourself from freezing to death. Also, ice zombies.


Much like STALKER, some glaring, unfortunate flaws plague this title, but if you can get past those you'll find an original, enjoyable horror title. Though you still may want to wait until the price goes down.

Cryostsis: Sleep of Reason is currently available in stores and on Steam for $29.99. You can also download the official demo from FileShack or FileFront.


Trine

A small group of guys in Finland took the core concept of The Lost Vikings and mashed it up with the physics-based puzzles LittleBigPlanet, wrapped it in a fantasy setting and called it Trine.
Trine is a side-scrolling platformer from Frozenbyte, the folks behind the Shadowgrounds series of top-down shooters, about a thief, a wizard and a knight who lay their hands on title object, a magical artifact that binds souls together. Breaking free from the object and regaining their physical forms again means traveling through more than a dozen levels spread out across your fairly standard fantasy land.
What this means for you in gameplay terms is that you can switch between these three characters at any time, and you will need to in order to navigate the various challenges from the environment and an army of the undead. The thief, as you'd expect, is quick and nimble, carrying a bow and rope arrows. The wizard has telekinetic powers and can conjure small structures. The knight is good at destroying things.
The platforming is solid, the puzzles are, so far, challenging without being frustrating and the combat feels sort of tacked-on but doesn't really hurt the game. I've got no real complaints about how it plays.
The visuals may not be eye-popping, but after playing so many games with drab and muted color palettes it's pretty refreshing to jump into something that isn't afraid to be bright and vibrant. It would drive the "hardcore" Diablo players crazy.
Trine isn't a game that's going to light the world on fire, but it's a solid, fun amalgam of concepts that's worth your attention.



Trine is available now on Steam for $29.99, where you can also grab the demo.


Ben There, Dan That

Ben There, Dan That is an old-school freeware point-and-click adventure that is shameless about copying the style of LucasArts heyday adventure games verbatim.
Flatmates and adventuring duo Ben and Dan are fresh off their latest escapade in South America and return home to their native London with one desire: Catching a repeat of Magnum, PI. With the television aerial missing the pair craft a makeshift replacement, only to have it act as a conduit to zap them on to an alien spacecraft. So it's that old story again.
On the craft there are doors leading to alternate dimensions, such as a dimension populated by the undead and the dimension where England has become America's 51st state, making your way through each area to find the key to unlock the next door.
It's a familiar affair, if you've ever played an adventure game you'll know your way around this one, take it nice and easy, no monsters or quick-time events to deal with.
The writing, which is a lot of chatter between the two characters, is solid and funny for the most part, my only complaint being there's a little too much fourth wall, "hey, we're in an adventure" game humor that just falls flat. I'm not all the way through it but the puzzle solutions are pretty much right out in the open, which I guess is better than having to go out of your way and dig up a walkthrough.
But for some old school goodness that don't cost nuthin', you can do a whole lot worse than this. Go check it out.

Ben There, Dan That can be downloaded directly from the developer's website.

-K.