Mount Your Friends is a game in which you control several half-naked bodybuilders by taking control of their arms and legs individually. When a limb comes into contact with another surface the limb will latch on, affording you an anchor point with which to pivot the rest of your body around. Those familiar with games like QWOP or Surgeon Simulator will easily recognize the mechanics at play here, in which the entertainment stems from the sheer difficulty involved with controlling several appendages at the same time, and the aftermath that usually follows when you inevitably fail to do so.

After the first few matches, manoeuvres will start to become more aggressive as you learn how to manipulate your clingy muscle folk in a way that would make Spiderman blush. Since everything you do is affected by gravity and momentum, it’s possible to swing across large distances using the perfect combination of timing and thrust. Of course, these advanced and hugely rewarding tactics come at the cost of being somewhat risky. One false move or misaligned vault across the chasm of man-thighs could cause you to take a tumble down the beef fortress, sealing your fate in the process. All of this combines to make a dynamic of risk vs. reward play, and the resulting successes or failures are what make each match entertaining.

There are a slew of modes included within the game to keep potential ‘mounters’ busy, but the main draw and indeed the focus of the title itself is the concept of mounting your own friends. Available for both local and online multiplayer, the standard mode will see you battling against your opponents as you clamber on top of one another. Each player takes turns adding to an ever expanding tower of oiled men until it gets to a point where the man-statue is so large that you or your opponent cannot scale it within the 60 second time slot granted per turn.

Other modes are on hand to offer alternative objectives, like sprints across great distances and duels with head-mounted swords, and whilst they are entertaining to try out it’s disappointing to see that most are locked to either single player sessions or local multiplayer. It’s worth noting that whilst the single player modes are entertaining to try out, they soon offer little motivation to play again after the first few sessions. The game is at its best when played against other players, and the sense of collective shambling and limb jiggling just doesn’t manage to translate over to any of the solo game modes.

Mount Your Friends is nothing short of a master class in small scale multiplayer mayhem. It takes full advantage of the sexually suggestive nature created from its own image and name, and it runs with it as a consistently entertaining gag throughout the game. While this humour may not appeal to everyone, the game itself has a solid foundation built upon the intentionally obscure control scheme that creates as many victories as it does failures. However, the game is better experienced when playing in the company of friends, either online or locally. The sense of competitiveness that spurs on each match is sorely lacking within the single player modes and you’re not likely to be playing for long if you don’t find any friends to mount.

Overall Rating: ★★★★☆ 

What does this score mean?

This game was reviewed using a copy provided by the developer for that purpose.

This review was based on the experiences with the PC version of the game.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

You wait cautiously, as a bright green ship prepares to deliver its payload and cash in its haul of hard earned gemstones. The trap is set, ready for you to spring forward scattering a laser-light show of plasma beams across the abyss of space, straight into the hull of the unsuspecting emerald craft. As the ill-fated victim crumbles from your savage ambush, the spoils of war begin to drift amongst the stars, ready for the taking. Don’t be too hasty to count your space coins though, as seconds later a marauding band of space pirates deliver some swift karmic justice, making short work of your own crimson shuttle in a hail of gunfire. Space is no picnic, and Cashtronauts aims to prove that only the wiliest of space capitalists will emerge victorious.

The basic concept of Cashtronauts has you competing (or co-operating) against other players as you attempt to accrue the most money from the opportunities floating around in space. Mine asteroids, raid space pirates, or rob your friends of their hard earned cash, all in the confines of a 2D slice of deep space.  The game’s designer Simon Prefontaine describes it best as a ”Top down, twin stick, space-combat/trading party game with multiplayer”.

It’s an undoubtedly big list of interlocking features, enough to make me more than sceptical of what Prefontaine is hoping to achieve. Luckily, along with his Kickstarter campaign Simon has released an early demo version of the game to the public, with many of the basic features already in place for would-be naysayers like me to try out.

The first thing you notice is that the controls are tight, impressively so for such an early demo, and I’m instantly reminded of the slick sliding 2D movement found in twin stick shooters like Geometry Wars. The fact that it’s in space adds to the motion as well, with thrust and momentum playing a big factor in how you pilot your craft.  The zero-gravity adds the feeling of flexibility that gives a great sense of feedback when you’re flying around.

Cashtronauts structures its gameplay around one of two game modes. Skirmish, which is currently the only available mode in the demo, is a local multiplayer versus mode in which up to 4 players vie for the highest score by the end of a timed round. The second mode is called Venture, and could be considered the game’s campaign. In Venture mode you have to get as far across the galaxy as possible, stopping in each system to gather up enough cash to afford the toll on the warp gates scattered across space.

Cashtronauts is shaping up to be a strange beast. I only spent a few minutes with the game and it was easy to pinpoint Prefontaine’s inspirations. The controls are already fine-tuned and as responsive as you could ask for, and the focus on local multiplayer in every aspect of the game could easily see this project become a great entry to your couch co-op line-up.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

I’ve seen some things, man, things you wouldn’t believe. Things that would make you run home crying to your mama. Fortunately, Red Hook Studios’ Darkest Dungeon isn’t one of those things.

Shot in the same vein as most dungeon crawlers, Darkest Dungeon is portrayed as a satisfying blend of strategy and micromanagement, sporting the ever-popular “I’m going to kick your ass” difficulty level made famous by games like Dark Souls.

So what’s the hook? Well your party members are portrayed as real people who feel real consequences, not just wooden mannequins wearing armour and weapons. What they experience down in the depths will cause both positive and negative mental shifts in their psyche, which will have an adverse effect on how they react in certain situations. Fear, mistrust, stress and anxiety can all become very real conditions for your roster of heroes, and managing this psychological battlefield in tandem with the actual fighting sounds like a clever evolution of the genre.

The psychologically disturbed Avengers assemble!

A great example of this evolution is when your Man-at-Arms becomes an alcoholic. Sure, everyone likes a pleasant drunk, especially if he becomes stronger in his drunken rage. However, his inebriation is a double-edged sword, as he becomes unpredictable and can sometimes endanger the party with his drunken whims. Do you choose to leave him behind when you set off on your next trip? Or do you simply hope this time won’t end in bloodshed for your team? It’s these decisions that are shaping up to be the bread and butter for Darkest Dungeon.

It’s important to note that while we know the premise and general idea of the gameplay, it’s still unclear as to how the player will interact with the game world, or what kind of art style we can expect to see from the finished product. My best guess at the moment is leaning towards a Legend of Grimrock-style labyrinth crawling perspective, where ghouls spring forward and are dealt with from a viewport/battle screen.

The game is still in a very early stage of development, with plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign in the future to help support development. This means the game will likely be launching sometime next year, with confirmed releases for PC, Mac and Linux already announced. For more information on the games progress, head on over to the official site.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.