Currently in beta, Fire With Fire mixes up the tower defense formula by adding in offense. Whether in online multiplayer matches or in the not-yet-available single player campaign, players must defend their own base with towers while also destroying their opponent’s. The former is achieved through customizable defenses and the latter via sending creeps at your enemies.

The ability to attack is limited by a one-minute cooldown timer which gives players a brief respite to focus on their own defenses. Placing towers can redirect the path that incoming creeps take, with the goal being to lengthen that path as much as possible. Individual towers can be upgraded using points earned through continuing to build more towers, and stronger tower types can eventually be unlocked in each group. There’s a fairly standard tradeoff when it comes to the tower specializations like offense firepower, range, and single-target vs. splash damage. However, there are some other interesting side effects thrown in like the ability to make the enemies pop up in the air.

The offensive system is just as entertaining as protecting your own base. Players choose the types of creeps they want to send from a handful of varieties and also the order in which they’ll come in. This adds an extra layer of strategy in that some creeps are damage soakers, some are weak but speedy, and others are offensive beasts. Running them in a particular order can be much more effective once you get a feel for the enemy’s defenses. Repeatedly sending creeps of a specific variety will also evolve them into a more ferocious version. Once combat actually starts, the game moves into a passive mode where the player is either watching their own base get attacked or seeing the outcome of their own offensive onslaught. The break is brief, though, and players will need to be ready to quickly resume focus on attacking and defending.

An area where the game shines – quite literally – is in the graphical style. The environments, towers, and creeps are all drawn in a cartoonish manner (think Castle Crashers with extra texturing), and there’s a definite ‘wow factor’ in the particle effects seen on the battlefield. Flaming explosions, singeing electricity, and other effects look downright beautiful. It’s really impressive, and it will be interesting to see whether all of that activity bogs down future mobile versions of the game.

Perhaps one of the best features of Fire With Fire is that it offers multiplatform and cross-platform play. You’ll be able to take on your PC-loving friends from the comfort of your couch or recliner. While PC and Mac will be the early recipients of this title, plans also include releases on OUYA, Android, and iOS. Although the current version is focused on multiplayer – and thankfully so – a single player campaign is also in development that will include leveling up by completing specific goals.

Fire With Fire is currently in closed beta, but appears to be progressing quite well. Skull Skill Studios has placed the game on Steam Greenlight, and their Kickstarter campaign is just about to end. Kickstarter backers will receive access to the closed beta, so check it out asap.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

The game will have a strong focus on story, focusing on compelling plot, a rich world, and mature overtones for the band of misfit characters that the player will follow. Piecing together information from around the world will allow the players to track down powerful treasures guarded by behemoths as part of the game’s ‘Legend System’.

The developers intend to build a multi-layered combat system, allowing strategic players to use various mechanics that play off of each other to let them take down seemingly impossible odds. Characters also have non-linear progression, allowing players to build them to their preferred style, and bonus battle goals offer optional challenges for additional rewards, such as resources, rare items, and additional side-story.

Punchbag have yet to launch their campaign, but anyone interested can keep up through their website and via Twitter @PunchbagEnt.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Greetings and welcome back fellow strategists and gunners. Hope you have kept your wits sharp and your trigger-finger ready to go, because we are going back into Interplanetary for some more planet-bombardment action. The folks at Team Jolly Roger Games have made many improvements to the game since we last looked at it, including graphical fixes, network improvements, more weapons of mass destruction, a tech tree and research mechanic, a working spying mechanic, and other improvements and goodies. I have been purposefully keeping myself in the dark about the game’s development, so that way each iteration can become more of a surprise for my next skirmish. Boy I must say, they really have made some great strides since my initial preview, which you can read here if you haven’t already.

The first topic I wish to talk about is possibly the biggest and most influential of them all, the spying mechanic. Previously you could view your opponent’s planet and see where all cities and developments have been placed, allowing precision-based weapons to take a huge advantage and dominate the weapon selections. With the recent changes, you no longer have all that info readily available. In order to view possible enemy weak points, you must construct buildings which will allow you to view planet infrastructure. Depending on your planet’s level of intelligence – the number of spy buildings you have – the possible targets available range from a couple low-value locales up to the entire planet. To keep away prying eyes, you can counter by building “cloaking” or counter-intelligence buildings in order to hide your planet’s infrastructure. This feature alone adds much more strategic gameplay and flow to the system, as players are no longer just racing to get the biggest and best guns. Priority is now split between getting your planet ready for conflict and keeping your cities and important structures hidden, creating both an arms and intelligence race.

Along with intelligence comes the research aspect of the game. You now need to research technology in order to access the bigger and more advanced weaponry. No longer are you able to build missiles and laser weapons right from the get go. Now you must allocate time in order for research to be done. This is done via a simple tech tree, where various tech and bonuses can be researched and applied to your advantage. Techs include giving permanent boosts such as more power production or spying levels as well as the ability to manufacture one of the two new weapons of massive destruction.

Now we are getting to the juicy parts of the new additions, the new weaponry. A new laser and artillery weapon have been added in the form of the ‘Solar Laser’ and the ‘Asteroid Diversion’ respectively. Once I noticed these weapons in the tech tree, I just HAD to acquire them and give them a shot (pun intended).

FIRE THE LASER!

The Solar Laser is a satellite parked in the sun’s orbit which focuses the sun’s power into a giant solar death ray, obliterating anything you set its deadly sights on with pinpoint precision. I couldn’t help but feel like an evil genius, pinky to mouth, when I set loose the focused wrath of the sun onto my enemy.

As cool as the Solar Laser is, I felt that the Asteroid Diversion was more “in tune” with the sci-fi nature of the game. As the name implies, the Asteroid Diversion weapon takes an asteroid from the local asteroid belt and diverts it to a course of your bidding, into say perhaps a nearby planet that you dislike. Nothing beats the sight of an asteroid hurtling out of space at full speed and slamming right into your enemy’s precious home planet. Numerous blockbusters and B-movies have been made on that premise, and now it is in your hands to unleash upon your foes. So set an asteroid loose on that pesky planet and whip out some popcorn for the show (3D glasses not included).

Recreate a B-movie disaster film on your enemy’s home planet

While all these additions are great, I have merely touched upon a few of the major updates to the game. Many other improvements have been made to the game such as improved multiplayer networking and graphical fixes, all showing that Team Jolly Roger have been putting a lot of effort and love into this project. I was blown away by my first look into the game many versions ago, and the current build they have on offer is no exception to that statement. I look forward to the next iteration of the game. If the additions they have made so far are any indication of the future trajectory of the game, we are in for an Earth-shattering (pun intended) release once the full game is out.
You can check out Interplanetary on Steam Early Access for those interested in some tactical fun. Let’s get those guns primed and lasers flying!

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

First glances would paint Zoon as a more action-oriented take on the Faster Than Light formula. Using the tools provided, you’re tasked with building your own ship and piloting it throughout deep space, shooting aliens and avoiding various instances of space debris as you go. At least, that’s what the plan is for the final version; right now the demo version only consists of ship building and space flight with not a single enemy or asteroid in sight, but that might have something to do with my complete inability to build a ship that doesn’t rotate faster than the speed of light.

I’ll confess I’m no rocket scientist, but I spent a large portion of my time in Zoon trying desperately to install various thrusters and engines throughout my strange U-shaped ship in an effort to counter balance the constant death spiral I’d somehow found myself locked into. Unfortunately my efforts were in vain, and after 20 minutes of uncontrollably rotating through the black abyss a feeling of nausea called an end to my suffering.  And yet, despite now acknowledging that I’ll never be an astronaut, those frantic twenty minutes revealed a great deal about how things can go terribly wrong, and how entertaining it is to watch as everything collapses around you.

This demo build seemed to focus specifically on the ship building aspects, which allowed me to create several odd designs before finally settling on the ill fated U-boat I mentioned earlier. After the walls and floor tiles are connected up, it’s simply a matter of adorning the interior with a variety of machines and devices that allow you to control a number of functions like piloting the ship, long/short range communications, and even armour racks that let you remove your trusty space suit when you want a bit more freedom to roam around your ship.

Discovering that last item was a mistake though, as I soon learnt I had forgotten to plug a hole on one side of my ships wall. Venturing too close to the gaping hole promptly saw me sucked out into deep space, and without my spacesuit on I was quickly snuffed out of existence. After regaining my life in space and rebuilding the U-boat to its former glory I soon made the same mistake of hastily ignoring the gaps in my vessel, only this time I was still wearing my suit. As you’d expect, I was sucked out into deep space again, but it was to the sight of the U-boat casually flailing across the stars in its spiral of shame, leaving me behind to waddle around while contemplating if perhaps my ship had gotten sick of my antics and intentionally ejected me because of it.

When it comes down to it, Zoon is still very much work in progress. Some of the items available to place inside your ship provide absolutely nothing, and right now there is little to do other than rotate furiously through space. With that said, there are some interesting plans listed for the game’s direction. Player-made missions will provide the bread and butter of objectives for would-be space dwellers, mods will be fully supported for extra customisation, and there’s also a multiplayer mode for those who want to sail across the stars with their friends. For now, though, the game does an excellent job of creating an existential crisis amongst those willing to ponder the aimless journey across the stars, if you’re into that sort of thing that is.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

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.

There’s lava at the bottom of this pit, but it can’t hurt me because it’s not on screen.

If I were a sarcastic person, I would say there is a dearth of indie 2D platformers like The Fourth Wall and Four Sided Fantasy with unique and often-clever gimmicks. The Fourth Wall‘s gimmick is that pressing CTRL locks the screen in place and allows the hero to walk off one side of the screen to emerge on the other side, fall through the bottom of the screen and reappear at the top, or jump through the top of the screen and pop out of bottom. The game is filled with puzzles that are solved by using this gimmick, and I encourage you to download The Fourth Wall for free because because playing it for yourself will give you a much better idea of whether you like it than reading about how much I enjoyed it. Four Sided Fantasy‘s developer, Ludo Land, will build on The Fourth Wall by adding multiplayer, more ways to use screen wrap, and a new art style.

Four Sided Fantasy is scheduled to be released on PC for $10 next year. You can vote for it on its Steam Greenlight page.

© 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.

Forward to the Sky stars a little girl who runs around in a castle-like environment in the sky and kills reanimated skeletons that I like to imagine were once little boys. I had some gripes about the controls; whenever you attack, you attack in the direction the camera is facing, not in the direction the character is facing. It’s also a bit awkward to manoeuver using WASD and the mouse as in a typical first-person shooter, but that’s mostly just the result of using a keyboard and mouse to play a game designed for a game pad.

I had to smack a couple of those red switches to get the platforms in place.

In addition to smacking undead things about with a giant sword, Forward to the Sky has puzzles and platforming, and the two interact quite well. There was a part that involved hitting the right switches to move platforms around so I could get to a new location, although I hope the puzzles get more complex than figuring out which two of the three switches I need to hit. Whenever I hit a switch, I can clearly see what it does because it happens right in front of me. It’s amazing how many games frustrate me by making me flip a switch or press a button and then wander around through the level trying to find the secret door it opened.

The platforming has all the polish of a game in alpha, but when it works, it works like a simplified version of the greatest PS2 platformers. There are no double jump or mid-air attack to stay in the air longer, but it is also devoid of annoying magnetic assistance features and invisible walls. Speaking of walls, all of them seem to be weak against gigantic swords. If I wanted to see what was on the other side of a wall, I smacked said wall a few times and jumped over the pile of rubble left in its place. It was a refreshing change after all the games populated by buildings and furniture that seem unaffected by rockets and grenades.

Forward to the Sky has a bright, cheery, cartoonish art style and soundtrack, but it’s not the kind that makes me sick and long for a darker, grittier game. It gives the impression that you are a young adventurer at the beginning of an epic tale in which the sky is the limit. With its platforming, combat, and bright music and visuals, Forward to the Sky reminds me of a 3D version of Maplestory without the bugs, hackers, fetch quests, and pretty much everything else that made Maplestory suck. I’d like to see different environments because grey stone seems like it would get old fast, so hopefully Magichnology adds some grass, bricks, trees, and more natural-looking stone to change it up. Despite that, the game looks promising.

Forward to the Sky is scheduled for release late this year for Windows, Mac, and everyone’s favourite penguin-endorsed OS. If you’re interested, please check out its Indiegogo page and consider contributing.

© 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.

Continuing with their rampage against wooden doors everywhere, Indie studio Killhouse Games have just updated their Early Access title Door Kickers with a host of extra content.

Players can now utilize the Squad Doctrine Tree, which will allow you to spend promotion points on improving your squad each time you level up. By doing so, the folks at Killhouse Games say that this will help to remove any unnecessary micromanagement as you won’t need to progress each squad member individually, keeping things squarely focused on the team effort.

Modding has also been given a facelift with the inclusion of the Steam Workshop. This will allow any player-created content to be pooled into one localized place, allowing easy management of any custom levels or game features you wish to use. Those looking to create content can also check out this handy ‘how-to’ guide on how to create your content.

For a full list of features, check out the list below:

Features:

• Bigger maps (zoom/scroll enabled for all maps)
• New scenario type: Protect the VIP
• Three new enemy types (Operator Orville, Juggernaut Emil, Assassins)
• Three new maps
• Improved enemy/SWAT AI
• Export replays to video
• Modding support + in-game mods menu
• Steam Workshop support
• Can resume a game anytime during a replay
• Added enemy ghosts for last visible location

Other:

• Added maxFPS and vertical-sync in options.xml
• Improved FPS / loading time
• Game size reduced significantly (due to compressed textures)
• Can now hide the HUD while playing; not yet in replay mode
• Multiple graphics improvements
• Rebalanced armor types
• Rebalanced 9mm and .40 caliber vs .45 caliber pistols
• New sounds
• Game now loads .dds files in addition to .tga and .png
• New door types added – elevator and bus doors

Fixes:

• Can no longer be heard through walls when picking locks
• Fixed a couple of replay-desync bugs
• Fixed some ambient sounds that were too loud

Modding/Structure changes:

• Changed location of single mission and RMG repositories
• The distance at which shots are heard is now specific to each weapon
• The noise distances for stealthily opening a door vs kicking it down are now configured separately.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.