While Hopeless: Space Shooting shares the same great gameplay, it doesn’t feel like enough new content has been added to consider this entry much more than an entertaining re-skin. Bonus points for an amazing game trailer that will probably give you a photosensitive seizure.

What’s New:

Multi-Touch shooting allows you to blast space monsters as fast as your little yellow marshmallows can squeeze the trigger.

The game comes with two modes: The traditional Arcade Mode which challenges you to rack up as many points as possible, and the fast paced Survival Mode, which challenges you to hold out as long as you can against increasingly difficult waves of space monsters.

A new, mask wearing monster variant has also been added, requiring two shots to kill, and giving you even less time to save your squishy comrades.

Super sweet space lasers!

What’s The Same:

The adorably terrified blobs are back for more punishment, and to prove that in space, no one can hear you get eaten by ravenous monsters.

What Doesn’t Work:

The eerie “oh crap, what was that” atmospheric sounds have been replaced by an upbeat soundtrack that takes away from the “hopeless” vibe that worked so well in the original game.

Hopeless: Space Shooting is available on iOS and Android now.

For those of you who loved the original entry, Hopeless: The Dark Cave, you’ll enjoy more trigger happy blasting with Hopeless: Space Shooting, but don’t expect much in the way of groundbreaking gameplay changes.

For those of you who missed out on the original: A- it’s FREE in the App Store/on Google Play, so stop sitting there and download it. B- This new entry is an entertaining entry in its own right, and one that you can easily jump into without having played the original.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

The developers have been kind enough to share their alpha gameplay footage, saying, “We’re making an effort to be more open about development – about the progress we make, the lessons we learn, and the incredible fun we have building this game.”

Check out the footage below, or visit the game site at www.emberconflict.com.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

The simple, one-touch controls dictate where your blobs shoot, but it’s up to you to determine friend from foe. The stripped down mechanics help set Hopeless apart from other games as the barrier-free user experience drops you into a new game with a single tap, and the method for survival is immediately apparent.

The dark, atmospheric sounds drive home the eerie, “Oh crap, what was that?” feeling within the game’s static, desperate setting. With every cricket chirp, gust of wind, and squeaky metal door, I found my fingers twitching to shoot a monster that hadn’t yet appeared.

As the pace and number of the monsters increased, I found myself with less time to identify friend from foe and opting to shoot first and not tell anyone that I shot Bob later. Every time I blew one of my jiggly little friend’s heads off, I let out a dejected and audible, “Awww!”

The game runs smoothly on iOS, but I did encounter a few frame rate issues as more characters crowded the screen, which resulted in some of my blobs getting picked off as soon as a monster appeared on my screen, or my shots not registering. These instances were few and far between, but I actually felt like they added to the game’s desperate atmosphere and my feeling of being overwhelmed.

Hopeless: The Dark Cave is a fun, quirky, and very well executed game. The dark, yet approachable setting, and pick-up-and-play mentality make this a great addition to any mobile game library. Plus, it’s FREE on iOS and Android right now, so you really don’t have a good excuse not to play it.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

You’ll control up to six units in strategic combat that looks intense, even in the game’s clean, vibrant, and endearing art style, as you progress through a story that’s driven by action and performance, not dialogue choices.

Kyn is scheduled for release on Windows, Mac, and Linux in Summer 2014. Until then, head over to the game’s website, or check out the announcement trailer below.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

This was part of my experience with Quest of Dungeons, a 16-bit, turn-based RPG which tasks players with navigating through multiple levels of a ruined mansion to find a magical lantern that has been used by a powerful sorcerer to steal the light from the world. The artistic styling is everything you’d expect from a roguelike game, the controls are smooth, and I didn’t encounter any bugs or glitches (which is hard to say about a lot of indie games). However, the repetitiveness of both combat and level progression dragged down an otherwise entertaining experience as I kept waiting for another element to emerge and provide a new challenge.

Players can choose between four characters: The Warrior, The Wizard, The Shaman, and The Assassin. The Warrior relies solely on melee combat to defeat enemies, while The Assassin is able to take out enemies from afar with his bow. Both characters are able to implement a variety of special abilities to do area damage, increase stats, and deal extra damage for a time, but these abilities are rarely more effective than their standard attacks. The Wizard and the Shaman both rely on magic and spells to defeat their enemies, but they do so in different ways. The Wizard’s abilities focus on direct damage, while The Shaman uses black magic to weaken and disorient his foes before moving in to finish them off. The enemies all rely on melee attacks and aren’t much of a challenge on the two lower difficulties. On the hardest difficulty, you’ll need to rely on both skill and luck to survive as the enemies take more hits to kill and large groups will surround you if you’re not smart.

As I progressed through the procedurally generated levels, some enemies would taunt me and my character would occasionally remark on his surroundings, but there wasn’t much of a storyline or plot to follow. I know first-hand the difficulty in programming a linear story in an otherwise non-linear environment, but the lack of a cohesive story outside of the singular main objective didn’t provide much incentive to explore the entirety of a level. The occasional quest and boss would pop up, but the quests simply tasked me with finding and killing a “special” enemy, and the boss battles lacked the formality required to be considered a true “Boss Battle”. If it wasn’t for my loot-happy, “completionist” OCD, I would have descended through the mansion with reckless abandon, defeated the sorcerer, and grabbed that lantern in an hour or two.

If you’re looking for game that’s fun, easy to jump into, and offers plenty of incentive to replay the adventure using each character, Quest of Dungeons is perfect for you. Quest of Dungeons provides a great, retro-style gaming experience that will bring back fond memories of past eras, but some repetitiveness in its combat and lack of story prevent it from living up to it’s full potential.

Quest of Dungeons has been Greenlit by the Steam community and is tentatively scheduled for a February 2014 release on PC, Mac, and iOS. To see the game in action, check out the website or watch the trailer below.

Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

What does this score mean?

This game was reviewed using a pre-release build provided by the developer for that purpose.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Multiple armies will be available for players to command in either 1v1 or 2v2 matches. Each army will feature units that fit within the classic roles of Infantry, Ranged, Cavalry, and Support. Substantial Games is trying to make every unit in the game as unique as possible, like the Berserker who constantly regenerates health, or the “Puglings” who spawn a new Pug every time they kill an enemy unit, to help ensure that no two battles play out the same.

Matches are won by eliminating the opposing army, or by controlling Points of Capture (POCs). While complete annihilation is the most likely way you’ll win or lose a match, be on the lookout for crafty players who seek to control all of the POCs on a map, which will result in an immediate victory.

The Ember Conflict has a lot of potential to offer an engaging and innovative mobile gaming experience, and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on a playable demo in the future.  A release date hasn’t been announced yet, but the developers are aiming for Fall 2014. Until then, you can check out some screen shots, enjoy the amazing concept art, and sign up for updates on the game’s website, www.emberconflict.com

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Super Obstacle Boy is a retro-style platformer for iPhone & iPad from indie developer, Matthias Falk. You’ll play as (spoiler alert: Super Obstacle Boy) as you run and jump, and then run and jump some more through 125+ levels of pixely, 8-bit glory to save your girlfriend who’s been kidnapped by the evil Dr. Negative. If it sounds like Super Meat Boy, that’s because it does (they’re not related, but they did meet at a party once). SOB will feature Game Center integration, achievements, and online leaderboards so you can compete with friends, family, and random people who totally hacked the game, because we all know there’s no way they scored 999,999,999. I mean, come on. My score is only 11,349. Don’t they have anything better to do?

A release date hasn’t been announced yet, but Falk is hoping to have the game available in the App Store later this month. For now, enjoy the trailer below, complete with chiptune soundtrack!

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.