God Factory: Wingmen is an online space shooter being developed by Nine Dots Studio and recently came out of a closed beta, so hopefully will be due for release relatively soon. In the meantime why not check out their website and the gameplay in the video below.

When you first start the game you are given a choice of two species out of four and essentially two ships out of four. Human, Guantri, Arblos, and Chorion are the choices available. Human ships serve well as hit and run ships for focusing enemy carrier parts, Guantri serve well as jacks of all trades and have unique beam weapons, Arblos have the slowest ships with the most brute strength when it comes to damage, and Chorion have tanky, medium speed ships that I like to use for defense. Chorion ships are also probably the best class 1 ships.

In the only game mode currently available, two teams of 1-4 players face off and attempt to kill each other’s carriers. The carriers are much larger than the player controlled ships and have many different parts to them that can be destroyed. Destroying different parts causes different responses. For example, destroying the hull of a carrier grants 20% more damage vs all other parts of the carrier. All players start off in the dock of their carriers which you can return to in order to replenish ammo and have your ships regenerate their shields. You get to pick two ships for each match, so typically you want to switch between the two throughout the game in order to never be using a ship with too little health.

Quote from Guillaume Boucher-Vidal (President of Nine Dots and Game designer for GoD): “Our game offers the best space dogfighting every, yet no one has heard of it.” 

While I don’t know that the above statement is 100% accurate, the dogfighting in the game is a lot of fun as a result of how customizable the ships are as well as the smooth controls and the various weapon types and abilities. And not too many people have actually heard about the game. As long you have 4+ players for a 2v2 or better then you will most likely have a lot of fun with the game as you try and take out different parts of the enemy carrier and engage in dogfights for both offensive and defensive purposes. 1v1’s on the other hand are not too much fun because they most often just involve attempting to slowly “rush” down each others carrier, while ignoring each other due to how hard it is to kill an enemy player in a 1v1. The more players, the more fun.

Playing the game is a ton of fun, but so is creating ships. With 4 classes to pick from and 12 different parts needed to assemble a playable ship, with many different choices for each part available, you are able to create truly unique ships. Each part you pick for your ship, whether it is the cockpit or the main weapon, changes the look of your ship too. You can also personalize the appearance of your ship by changing the paint job (changing the paint is always free).

The game felt a lot like a free to play game to me and the reason for that is because of the way progression works in the game. You have to buy all parts for your ships with credits which you earn through playing games (you get more for winning). Another barrier is the 6-rank system where every part is in a rank. You need to be rank 6 to use or buy a rank 6 part; everyone starts at rank 1 and ranks up slowly from playing. I could have easily seen this game being free to play with another currency for buying parts which would be purchasable.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

The Guild of Dungeoneering is a playable dungeon creation game that is currently in alpha. Being developed by Colm Larkin, with original art provided by Fred Mangan, the game is an interesting take on the dungeon exploring genre. There have been games like Dungeonland where you play the dungeon maestro trying to kill the heroes or play as the hero, but this game is something else. The Guild of Dungeoneering has players controlling the dungeon creation, enemy placement, and trying to help the poor adventurer get through their own dungeons.

You have no control over the adventurer in this game; instead you must guide him to victory by placing down rooms one by one, and choosing when to place monsters and treasure. If you place too strong of a monster down before the adventurer is strong enough to deal with it, he can end up dying, resulting in you losing. Treasure, enemies, and rooms are all cards in the game that you can use for the cost of hope (in the case of treasure) and fear (in the case of enemies). You gain hope by killing enemies and thereby fear every turn. Expanding the size of your dungeon, however, costs nothing. Every turn you draw three cards and are forced to play or discard three cards.

The art style of the game is simplistic; black and white, except for the occasional blue and red thrown in to add to the cards and characters. While I do appreciate simplicity and I don’t think the game looks bad, I do think it needs more color and maybe a few more detailed drawings. But the art style isn’t my biggest gripe with the game in its current state, though it does add to its biggest problem.

Currently, the worst thing about the game is that there doesn’t seem to be much incentive to play. There is only one endless level of you continuously placing cards that all basically do the same thing. All the land tiles provide more space for the adventurer to walk, enemies are basically a way to lose the game or get hope, and treasure just ups the basic stats of the adventurer. Scenery doesn’t change and there is no apparent goal to be had. Because I wanted to give the game a fair chance, I played for a long while. Right up until the devil came off the side of the screen and into the level, by which time I only had one life, so I ended up simply dying to him.

The Guild of Dungeoneering is in an early state and has a unique concept going for it, though it does have its problems. If it can separate the gameplay into multiple levels with different themed cards for each level and new end bosses, I think it could end up being a great game. Moreso if it did something else that gave the player better motivation to play. Vote for it at Greenlight now because I am excited to see what the developers do with the game.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

The alteration of gravity and smooth movement make dodging and pulling off all sorts of awesome kills possible. A variety of different selectable characters and level variance ensure that the game doesn’t get repetitive too fast. Overall, these features along with the different weapons make for exciting combat that allows for both tense and intensely frantic moments. While there are other games in the same vein as Paperbound, none of them to my knowledge allow the freedom that Paperbound’s movement system and manipulation of gravity allow, both of which add much to combat.

Besides gameplay, Paperbound also has good sound design going for it. For most games I feel the need to put my own music on in the background, unless there is a good story with professional voice acting. Paperbound’s music fits well with the game and there is enough of it to where I never think about turning down the sound. It has an epic score of ominous music which helps to bring suspense into play.

While the game is currently local multiplayer only, the developers are looking into having someone add network support to make it online as well. If they do manage to give it online multiplayer, I think it will become that much better of a game. But if not, in its current form it is already a fun “couch” game that is going to receive further polish. Paperbound is set for release this Fall and will most likely have a starting price between 10-15 USD. Note that the game is currently on Steam Greenlight and could use your vote.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

1. Run! - The first game created and the most basic of the games. All you have to do in Run! is avoid all the creatures with the arrow keys.

2. Pixel War – You  have to survive as long as possible in this one and maybe get the occasional power up. (Which simply makes you shoot more bullets, with a maximum of three shots at a time.) There are only two enemies: one that you can only avoid, another that you can avoid or shoot.

3. Box Jump – In this game you are a constantly sliding box that dies when it touches anything remotely box like, so you are forced to time your jumps perfectly. I finished the 20 levels it offers after 119 deaths. Box Jump will soon be coming to mobile, which I think will be a nice fit for it, as well as most of the other games on this list.

4. Man vs. Penguins – A one level game where you play as a human in a level where coins and penguins are constantly spawning. Collect the coins, avoid or jump on top of the penguins.

5. Fill The Holes – A fun 15 level puzzle game that requires deductive reasoning to fill all the holes with boxes. It also keeps track of how many clicks you take to beat the game, I took 210 clicks my first playthrough.

6. Princess Quest – A girlie Doodle Jump game for PC. The goal is to climb as high as possible while avoiding obstacles. You don’t control when you jump, but you do give directions to your character.

7. Connected – A Bejeweled style, score-attack game where you connect as many of the same colored circles with each other as possible. You only have 20 moves, so you want each connection to be a large one. It’s fun, but I did think that the colors needed to be more distinct.

8. Save The City – A typing game where every letter shoots a little laser that pushes a bomb away from the city. If the bomb reaches the city you lose. As with most typing games, what you have to type increases in difficulty over time. The main difference between this game and the others is that it has a story, since what you are typing serves as the game’s story.

9. I Hate Rabbits – This one is very simple and very addicting. The goal is to save the rabbits from the red chomping thing, but you only get one jump per rabbit. So you need to make sure with each press of the space button you are saving a rabbit because if you lose one rabbit, you are forced to restart from the beginning.

10. Dark Blue – A fun little four level platformer with some amusing text.

11.Three Hearts -A basic pixel art game where you have to run around finding all of the keys to gain access to all of the hearts throughout the level, while avoiding the ninjas.

12. Crazy Snake – At first glance a basic snake game, which over time changes into something more interesting. The bigger your snake gets the weirder the level gets: it will turn, get smaller, and even change colors.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Developer Triple.B.Titles ran a successful Kickstarter to make the game Ring Runner – Flight of the Sages, which received generally favorable reception. Now they hope to get backing on their newest project, Popup Dungeon. They have already gone through the entire process of getting backed on Kickstarter and creating the game they promised once, so I think just from that, they have an advantage over most developers on Kickstarter.

Even without their prior experience, Popup Dungeon looks like it could be a very good roguelike dungeon crawler that would give the player a plethora of choices throughout the game. They are going to let players create their own spells, weapons, abilities, characters, and even enemies. In addition to the solid looking, strategic turn-based gameplay, this roguelike will offer online co-op, something that isn’t offered in many other games of the same genre.

The replay value of the game could also be very high, due to the random aspect of the creation of the levels, the player customization, and the planned allowance of sharing through the Steam Workshop. For those that notice, in the rewards section there is no choice for getting the game DRM-free. Their plans relating to the option of sharing user-generated content is the reason for this, though they do hope to find a way to offer the game DRM-free in the future.

They have A LOT more information on the project, addressing basically any questions you could have on their Kickstarter page, so I urge you to check it out and if so inclined, to back them. If you like roguelikes, Popup Dungeon seems more than promising.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Its TD aspect shines through as an efficient method of crowd control, defense, and at times even allows for players to be that much more aggressive. The goal for each level is to go from alien base to alien base, disabling and capturing them, so that you may move on to the next, while defending all previous bases. Towers greatly help with this effort, especially in later levels where things become frantic.

In general, there is a ton of strategy involved in the game. You must manage your resources appropriately so that you have the units, structures, and upgrades you need to beat every level. After the first couple of levels you are also forced to spread out your units and decide which alien bases to attack first. Units also have effective counters, weaknesses and strengths. Altogether this leads to interesting strategic gameplay for each level.

Because Infested Planet is an indie game, some part of it had to suffer due to budget. I would definitely say that the graphics did in this case. While the graphics do serve their purpose they are far from nice. I don’t think that the standard argument of “stylized graphics” can be applied here either since the textures themselves aren’t even good quality. But the graphics don’t get in the way of the highly enjoyable gameplay, so they can and should be forgiven.

Story was another blip in this game’s perfection. However, I really don’t think the developers ever meant for it to be anything more than a reason/setting for players to kill a bunch of aliens. The story basically just serves as a way for the game to explain why all the gameplay is developing the way it is (new enemy types coming in, objectives, and new units to make use of).

Overall, Infested planet has surprisingly fun gameplay filled with varying enemy types, plenty of options for killing said enemies, an okay filler story and graphics that serve their purpose. I had a lot of fun with this game and I think you can too if you can get over its mediocre graphics and story. Rocket Bear Games have made the game available for PC and Mac now at the fair price of $14.99.

Overall Rating: ★★★★☆ 

What does this score mean?

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

I played through the entire demo, and I am not over-exaggerating when I say it becomes a very difficult, and at times, very infuriating game. There are many signs with funny comments and suggestions throughout the game that help to balance this out. But I still felt that in certain parts it was unintentionally hard, specifically during the boss fight, which was one of my main problems with the game.

The boss fight seemed to be too hard to be fun, and lacking in humor of any kind. Although I did beat it, I don’t think the joy of beating it warranted its difficulty. Difficulty options easily remedy this, but the game has other problems. I also found that the graphics were outdated, and that the music looped too many times. Other than the lack in the amount of music, I found it to be pleasing to the ears. They’ve also hired the artist Brent Black to do the music for the game since the demo was released, so things are looking promising. In the end, my problems with the game could easily be fixed by the time the game is officially released, and the gameplay itself was already enjoyable.

Overall, the game has lots of potential, and because it was successfully Kickstarted, it will probably end up being a very good game by release. The group of enthusiastic developers and artists from Atlanta, GA hope for the game to come out sometime in 2014.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

The game doesn’t have a specific release date yet, but is meant to come out on PC in 2014. Two brothers created the game by themselves, and even created an engine for it from scratch. When considering this the game’s graphics are absolutely stunning, especially when compared to other independent games. It will be a combat-oriented multiplayer action game with limited single player. Graphics aren’t everything though, and whether or not the game will be any good will rely on one thing: its combat.

Daniel and Tobias claim that the spells which the combat will orbit around are going to be complex and different than what we usually see. Along with complex defense mechanics it sounds as though the combat could turn out amazing, but unlike with most other things, you can only really tell if a games combat is good by experiencing it for yourself. This is even truer when you consider that everyone has their own personal taste.

Overall, the risks of this game lie in its choice to go strictly combat focused multiplayer. It will rely on the mechanics being engaging and interesting enough to maintain a decent sized community for however long its lifespan needs to be. So far it definitely looks like the two brothers are capable of making this a successful game though and pushing through all the difficulties.

They are currently on Steam Greenlight so if you’d like to check the game out for yourself or support it, you can visit their Greenlight page. The brothers also have a website where you can find more information on the game at totm-game.com.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.