Every now and then you get something that eschews the normal rules of traditional gameplay. A game that doesn’t really care how you decide to operate within its world, instead opting to present you with a room of doors, and it’s entirely up to you which one you open.

Hohokum represents this perfectly. Its hands-off approach to gameplay means you can take your time to search through each level, probing your surroundings for the tiny details of flair that give the game a sense of innocence and charm. Everything you see is doused in a beautifully vibrant aesthetic, and the world itself is populated by wondrous creatures that look like they’ve been ripped straight from your wildest dreams. Strange towers with eyes, U-shaped bees, and large-headed people playing violins are just some of the sights that can be found within the game’s picturesque dream world. There’s always the feeling that for every elephant creature or hat-making villager you find, you still have more to see, and there’s just no way of knowing what creation will appear next.

Perhaps the weirdest creature of them all is you. Your involvement with the world comes in the form of a giant snake-like creature with one singular beady eye placed at the head of its long, twisting body.  You are, for lack of a better word, a magical flying Cyclops. And as a magical flying Cyclops, you have the freedom to weave through the world, exploring its features and completing tasks along the way. The creature controls as you would imagine, with the thumbstick used to control the direction of the head and the body propelling it forward. Using the Square button slows you down for precision movement; whilst holding X lets you build up momentum to travel much faster across the landscape. Neither function is relevant to any of the game’s tasks, but they go a long way towards helping you experience the world at your own pace. Slowing the speed down can be especially helpful if you’re trying to examine some of the finer details of the world, as the creature is in a constant state of momentum, which can make it hard to get a good look at the environment and its inhabitants.

As for what the goal of the game is, well that’s somewhat debatable. There’s a large emphasis on exploration within Hohokum which is made clear from the lack of guidance it gives you. When the game starts, you’re shown a delightful display of several creatures that fly alongside you as they playfully weave across your screen. Eventually you reach a middle point in the world, and the creatures disperse in all directions leaving you all alone in this unknown dreamscape. From what I can gather, this is the start of some crazy inter-dimensional game of hide and seek, but the game never really gives you any explanation or prompts about what is happening, instead leaving you to your own devices in the hope that you’ll figure it out in the end.

At one point, I entered a world full of hollowed logs that seemed to go on forever. Each log was just like the last, and despite being able to go through them, there didn’t seem to be any real interaction to be had with these scattered pieces of timber. And so I searched, across the edges, and throughout the middle of this forest of logs, at first quizzically and then desperately, struggling for a revelation as to what it was this zone actually wanted me to do, only to go away empty handed and frustrated. And to this day I still have no idea what the goal of this room was, or just what I had missed so blatantly.  Unfortunately this issue persists throughout several of the worlds, and what at first feels like a whimsical canvas to explore soon turns into a hastily wrapped tussle as you desperately scan the horizon for a hint or a clue as to what the game actually wants from you.

These worlds are what Hohokum is made up of, and each one seems to serve as its own separate puzzle. In one instance I entered, I was greeted with a trio of elephant men wearing water tanks. As I sailed past them, they boarded my snake body and began to collect globs of honey that was floating across the skyline. Below them rested a giant mechanical labyrinth of pipes and tanks, and the goal of this world was to gather up enough of this honey to fill the main tank, which in turn gave me access to climb inside the machine and reach a blocked off area. After accomplishing my task, a creature like me – one of the several we saw at the start of the game – emerges, and I’m treated to a mini cutscene of strange creatures doing strange things. This world is seemingly complete, though I’d never know for sure.

The portals are an intertwined series of pathways; each one offering access to another land with each one representing its own distinctive motif. On one occasion I found myself stumbling across a water park filled to the brim with partygoers. There was excitement and life as far as you could fly, and the entire zone was alive with activity. That is, until I travelled below the platforms and festivities. Passing through a seemingly unimportant gap in the rocky underside of the structure caused the world to pulsate, and all of a sudden things took a strange turn. The party was over, and the once active water slides lay in ruins.  The platforms that were so alive moments ago had now been reclaimed by nature, and the overall tone had instantly shifted to something more serene. It’s these moments, of sheer intrigue, that carry Hohokum above the leagues of a simple puzzle game. In the blink of an eye, the simple act of passing between two rocks revealed a new world, and as far as I’ve seen this mechanic is unique to this specific zone. And there’s plenty of other seemingly unobvious triggers scattered across the game that offer these charming little nuggets for you to experience, and it’s fair to say that this is the true heart and soul of the game.

To say that Hohokum is a puzzle game would be doing it a disservice. While it is true that there are goals to achieve, these are not strictly the main aim of the game. Instead, you’re given this colourful playground full of imaginative creatures and interactions, and you’re simply told to go and play. However, when the time comes to progress through the game, some of the puzzles present themselves in the most obscure ways imaginable, often leaving you flying around in circles wondering just what the game is trying to tell you. Those of you who like a clear cut challenge should probably avoid this title, but if exploration and colourful dream-creatures are your thing then I would strongly recommend diving in.

Overall Rating: ★★★★☆ 

What does this score mean?

This review is based on experiences from the PS4 version of the game.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

When’s the last time you bought a rock album, lay down with the lyrics, and were moved? Check Google to see if there’s a record store still operating in your town and pick up Heal, the latest album from Strand of Oaks…because it just may be a masterpiece.

Tim Showalter is the musician behind the project, and has delivered in Heal a frighteningly emotional album, bare-souled and full of tremendous, joyous pain. Strand of Oaks has put out good tunes before, but something is markedly different here.

The album’s central themes of regret, alienation, and lost youth may have been sparked, at least in part, by musician Jason Molina. In the song “JM”, Showalter sings directly to the midwestern rockstar.

I was just an Indiana kid
Getting no one in my bed
But I had your sweet tunes to play

Molina died in 2013 due to extreme alcoholism. Showalter can’t seem to shake that dreadful truth, his homage laden
with dark, dead end memories. Even the guitars seem to be crumbling, and then crashing down, all around him.

The album serves as a memoir, with candid and relatable recounts of rocky relationships. This is negative nostalgia, stark and accessible. Even upbeat songs lack the optimism that could drive this album anywhere close to pop.

Lyrics are complex and unsettled. In “SHUT-IN”, Showalter is stuck in a solitary depression, almost with pride.

I ain’t talkin’ about money
I don’t wanna talk about love
I hate thinking’ I’m not the same as I was
I lose my faith in people
Why even take the time?

Musically, the album spans several rock sub-genres. “SHUT-IN” has moments that evoke Springsteen at his best. “WAIT FOR LOVE”, the album’s closer sounds like a Coldplay of an alternate universe, raw and evocative. Some moments are folksy Americana, and some approach classic heavy metal. A front-and-center synthesizer on “SAME EMOTION” conjures a retro 90′s vibe in the closing solo.

Long considered a folk act, Strand of Oaks may have just delivered the rock album of the year. One hopes that Showalter was able to experience catharsis after bringing it to the public with such urgency. He has here proven himself a capable songwriter and frontman, deserving of the attention of the rock world.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

The science fiction genre has always been a source for creativity to flourish. Dangling just beyond our reach, the idea of bizarre space anomalies and strange new life forms hangs within the realms of the great void of space, and it’s through this mysterious veil that we cast our focus. For every story involving verdant new worlds or highly civilized lifeforms, there will in turn be the tales of the infinite emptiness of space and the malignant creatures that want nothing more than to invade your body.

The Swapper sits firmly on the latter of the two options mentioned above, with its emphasis on maintaining an aura of confusion and unease acting as a backdrop for the puzzling elements that drive the gameplay. You play as a stranded survivor on the Theseus, a once functional spacecraft that has since fallen into disrepair. With the crew unexplainably missing, you’re expected to discover just what has happened whilst looking for a way off the ship.

The game is heavily focused on the mechanics of the ‘Swapper’, a peculiar device gained near the start of the game that allows the user to create clones of themselves at both short and long range distances. What’s more, they are then able to swap their own consciousness between the active clones, so long as they have a clear line of sight to them. You can only have a maximum of five instances of yourself active at any given moment, including your original self, and many of the game’s puzzles derive from this restriction, forcing you to think logically about where you place your clones when trying to complete each obstacle.

To complicate matters, the game slowly introduces several other obstacles to restrict progress even further, by way of coloured lights. The blue lights allow you to fire your swapping beam through them but restrict any chance of spawning a clone inside the field of light. The red beam has the opposite effect where clones can be spawned, but no swapping beam can pass this field. While it may seem odd that a superior piece of technology that’s able to produce matter out of nothing can’t penetrate the altered hue of a beam of light, the mechanics behind this are sound. Each puzzle requires you to approach the situation of what you can and can’t do with a logical mindset, and whilst the way at first may seem unclear, stopping and analysing the options that are available to you will eventually yield the right answer.

One such puzzle greeted me with a room full of vibrant colours. A mixture of blues and reds cast liberally against a large portion of the chamber, with a few seemingly meaningless pockets of unlit space to fill in the rest of the area. A large chasm spanned the gap between me and the shiny token I had to acquire, and any attempts made to clear the gap by jumping were met with a swift and undignified death. After a few minutes of repeated dying and head scratching, the way became clear. In order for me to pass the challenge I had to create several clones inside the empty spaces and carefully manoeuvre them in sync as they traversed the areas I could not reach, triggering the necessary pressure plates scattered around and deactivating the lights that blocked me from swapping over the gap. There’s an odd sense of satisfaction that comes with completing a puzzle room, and it comes as a stark contrast against the otherwise bleak atmosphere of the derelict spacecraft.

Along with the puzzle-driven progression, the game features a large portion of the derelict ship for you to explore. Similar to that of a Metroidvania, the world is spread across a flat 2D canvas, and you’re expected to navigate throughout in your search for the various puzzle rooms. Fortunately, backtracking through previous areas of the ship isn’t very difficult as there are plenty of teleportation devices that allow you to fast travel between key points on the ship, helping you go back to any rooms you may have passed on previously.

By just focusing on the puzzles, you’re likely to miss out of the underlying story that surrounds the game, which is a shame as there’s a narrative hiding under the surface that makes for interesting reading. By exploring the expansive halls of the ship, the tone of the game becomes much darker than it first seems. There’s an eerie presence that lingers throughout, and as you clear more of the game’s puzzles, it becomes clear that the story is as morbid as the gloomy visuals of the game lead you to believe, with topics of ethical practises sitting at the forefront of the narrative.

Since The Swapper started life as a PC title, it was always going to be a challenge to see just how a controller could handle the dual input of movement and aiming. Since your cursor is always relevant to your player’s character, it was perfectly suited to that of a keyboard and mouse. Movements that required quick reactions we’re easily achievable with the freedom afforded to the PC control scheme. On the PS4, the controls are tied to the twin thumbsticks, with the clone creation and swap ability tied to the trigger buttons accordingly. I never had any issues playing with the default settings, but for those who do the game features the option to let you adjust the sensitivity of your aiming reticule, which should help those with issues acclimating to the controller layout.

As far as console ports go, The Swapper is a solid entry to the PS4’s indie catalogue. The game remains true to the PC version, excelling in deliverance of a compelling and atmospheric sci-fi horror story. The puzzles are well paced and engaging yet rarely stray past a high level of difficulty, meaning you’re unlikely to be stuck on the same puzzle for days on end. Top that off with an intuitive set of controls well suited for the console and it’s easy to see why The Swapper got ported to begin with. Those of you who’ve already completed the game might not have much reason to play through again, but for newcomers this is definitely one to pick up.

Overall Rating: ★★★★★ 

What does this score mean?

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

This review is based on experiences from the PS4 version of the game.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

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.

Space isn’t a friendly place, and if my years spent consuming sci-fi media has taught me anything then it’s fair to say the chances of you encountering an evil chest bursting Xenomorph is 99.99% assured. Infinity Runner lacks such a creature, but it makes up for this deficit with its own collection of strange denizens and futuristic quirks, like how you spend the entire game naked.

The game is best described as an endless runner akin to popular mobile titles like Temple Run, only with a storyline that’s broken down into several levels. You assume command of an amnesiac unfortunate enough to be at the epicentre of a calamity on a ship where everything is blowing up. A disembodied voice informs you that there’s no time to talk and that you must run for your life. Just when you think things couldn’t get any worse, shortly after escaping you also find out that you’re a werewolf. Yup.

Gameplay consists of an on-the-rails sprint through the bowels of the ship, with you taking control of our naked protagonist’s positioning. As you progress you’ll have to manoeuvre around the oncoming hazards by dodging or jumping over them, and any contact with a danger zone will cause you to fail and kick you back to your last checkpoint. You’re given a set number of lives to use up on each level, and once they’re all gone you have to start from the very beginning of the mission. The checkpoint system alleviates a lot of the stress that comes from an accidental death, and for the most part there are sufficient lives given to get through a level without having to restart much.

That is until you approach the final level, which has you engage in combat with an unsavoury individual. The game handles combat with a series of quick time events which aren’t too intense and can be completed fairly easily. The last fight, however, consists of a string of these sequences one after another. With such a small time frame to hit each key, there’s a good chance you’ll fail. The big issue with this segment is that once you’ve played through your extra lives, the game takes you back to the very beginning of the level, requiring you to sprint through a number of hazards to get back to the boss fight. It was infuriating, even on a normal difficulty level which rendered the rest of the game at a reasonable difficulty.

As a werewolf, you’re undoubtedly going to want to make use of your inhuman speed and strength, and the game is happy to oblige. There are sections dotted around some of the levels which will transform you into your wolf form, making you run much faster along the rails of the level. Whilst this may seem like a good thing, it soon became clear that speeding up your movement in a game that requires you to spot incoming dangers and react to them isn’t necessarily a positive. Hurtling towards a sharp turn already requires a good amount of focus and fast fingers when running in your human form, so when you’re supercharged things become more difficult. The very option of becoming this powerful beast becomes more of a burden than a gift, and as a result it feels like this power up flies in the face of what it was supposed to be.

What’s more, being a werewolf also changes the way the camera moves as you start to run on all fours. Naturally the camera follows the movement of a bounding were-man and bobs up and down to compliment the movement. It’s a nice touch, but the bounding feels excessive, sometimes to the point where you lose vision of any incoming hazards mid bounce. Again this becomes more of a hindrance to the player rather than a boost, making the werewolf form more of a curse than a blessing.

Infinity Runner does a great job in maintaining its momentum as the game progresses, feeding you new hazards regularly to keep you on your toes when you least expect them. There are enough explosions, neon strip lights, and sleek chrome surfaces present to make the futuristic space ship feel authentic despite never hanging around long enough to look at the finer details. The story of werewolves in space is weird enough to work well in the setting. Despite the heavily flawed werewolf controls, the game remains intense enough to keep you engaged throughout the story. However, people with slower reactions or a low tolerance to failure should tread carefully as there’s enough room for error to cause fits of rage worthy of a werewolf.

Overall Rating: ★★★★☆ 

What does this score mean?

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

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

With the release of their 2009 self-titled album, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart were hailed as a noise-pop nostalgic throwback to the care-free, alt-rock 90s. Their third album, Days of Abandon, marks a turning point for the band, marked by maturing songwriting, a cleaner sound, and a shedding of the youthful whimsy that set them apart in the first place.

The saccharine vocals are still there, and upbeat tracks like “Simple and Sure” are still very much the old Pains. What’s different is the deeper level of craftsmanship here. No longer wearing naïveté as a badge (whether intentionally or not), frontman Kip Berman has evolved the production of his sound to include more dimension and richness. ‘Beautiful You’ may be the best example of this, with a soft choral melody over guitar pop that is at once nuanced and at full bloom, tender yet strong. It’s hard to imagine this effect being possible on their last two albums.

There’s more ambition here, and it pays off. On “Life After Life”, horn arrangements and angular melodies strike an imaginative balance against Berman’s aesthetic of guitar-centric pop. Skillfully executed, tracks like this never fall victim to the bombast of their alt-nostalgia contemporaries…or of their second album.

Berman’s songwriting is more canny here as well. “Coral Gold” is at once drunk on romance and a sober expression of love unrequited. “Coming down to where I’m found / your silent vows / steal the life from me.” Berman seems more than ever a songwriter who is reconciling his heartbreak, not just communicating it with starry eyes.

On the flip side, however, something may have been lost amidst all this evolution. Tracks like “Euridice” and “Art Smock” are so refined, they seem to lack the same raw heart that makes their earlier work so dynamic. While not necessarily sterile, there is a loss of the visceral here. Berman’s heart-pounding intensity is no longer the engine of his work, partially abandoned. Is this new sophistication is worth the loss?

What is gained here is more reflection, more grace, more subtlety. Berman is getting closer to finding himself as a songwriter, so Pains fans may do well to get on board with this finer-tuned version of the band. Less thrilling though it may be, this is also Berman’s most personal record to date, and certainly his most self-assured. Perhaps this will serve as a kind of recalibration, seeing the Pains through to something much more than their buzz band beginnings.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

In an industry where every successful indie title requires a powerful story or a unique art style to achieve media attention equal to that of blockbuster studios, Knightmare Tower is a breath of fresh air. This is a game purely focused on having fun by being incredibly addicting. Knightmare Tower by Juicy Beast brings players back to a time where it was common practice to sneak into the high school library and play on the (likely outdated) computers, and it is absolutely perfect.

It is difficult to describe why Knightmare Tower is so great, but you play as a knight and you get to pummel dragons in the face. The player’s primary goal is to save ten princesses who have been kidnapped and locked in a massive tower. Instead of simply taking the stairs, our hero launches himself from a barrel and gains speed by slaying each monster along the way. Failing to hit a monster results in losing friction, and if you miss too many times, the risk of falling into lava becomes greater.

The simple mechanics are reminiscent of the flash games of yore in a sense that Juicy Beast fixates on the “Less Is More” ideology. It works wonderfully, of course. The music is over the top and the art style is aesthetically similar to that of Behemoth’s Castle Crashers. The developers acknowledge that this is a very silly experience, but the bells and whistles are part of what makes Knightmare Tower so much fun. It all blends together seamlessly, and nothing feels out of place in this gravity-defying adventure.

More importantly, Knightmare Tower is addicting. The player earns gold for each turn, and depending on the performance, a better score means more gold. Gold can purchase any number of items including armor that can take more damage, or boots that increase the player’s overall speed. By the end of the journey, your roughshod knight will look like a valiant warrior. This is not to say that the game is without challenges, however. Knightmare Tower is very easy to pick up but it can be difficult to master. Certain levels of skill and timing are required to beat the game’s later levels, but it is a steady stream of progression that anyone can jump into without feeling overburdened. Not only that, but it is quite rewarding to beat your previous score with each turn.

Knightmare Tower succeeds at everything it attempts. While the journey to the top is not without its fair share of challenges, the smooth gameplay and silly artistic landscape make the climb a much more enjoyable experience. Plus, Knightmare Tower is cheap. It is on Steam for $3.99, and it is available on iOS, Android, and OUYA as well. Juicy Beast gives players a great product at an affordable price, and I can not give it enough of the praise it deserves. The bottom line? Knightmare Tower provides hours of fun and is easily one of the best indie games available right now.

To purchase Knightmare Tower and check out more from Juicy Beast, feel free to check them out here.

Overall Rating: ★★★★★ 

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Our lives are rollercoasters of happiness and tragedy. It’s our own human condition, to be ever swirling in the cycle of good and bad events throughout our time on this earth. Undoubtedly, we’ve all been in a position at some point in our lives where the bad experiences have weighed down on us, and in some cases it can become so bad that self destruction is the only way to cope.  But what if today was the day that you faced these demons head on? To be presented with a situation so drastic that it alters your attitude entirely, alleviating the pain and freeing you from your burdens.

That is what 4PM intends to explain with its cinematic gameplay experience. And I use the word experience deliberately, as this game is more like an interactive short film where you navigate through the various scenarios to uncover the narrative. Since the story is the main event so to speak, I’ll only add that you play as a woman on the path of self destruction, harbouring bad memories and ultimately ignoring the important aspects of her present life. On this fateful day, you’ll be presented with a realisation, and it’s up to you to take the right path towards coming to terms with what has happened in the past.

The experience is presented in first person, and throughout each scene you’ll be able to interact with the various objects dotted around. It doesn’t take long to piece together protagonist Caroline’s unfortunate past, or her current state for that matter, by simply looking at the various artifacts in the first scene. As the game progresses, you’ll navigate a number of other situations from late night raving in clubs – which comes with some of the most hilarious arm flailing animations I’ve seen to date – to sneaking around the office in an effort to avoid your agitated boss. Eventually, events will come to a head and you’ll be asked to make a couple of choices on what to do. When this came about I could see that the choices were obviously meant to be quite meaningful, but the after going through my options it all felt a little too convenient. It was easy to see what options to pick in order to produce the best ‘ending’, and the concluding scene felt somewhat diminished as a result.

As a whole, the game doesn’t stand up well against tests of visual fidelity. The rich colours and presentation of each scene fit with the cinematic ideals of the game itself but there’s a myriad of issues haunting the game’s presentation from start to finish. After five or ten minutes of play you start to notice an odd blurring effect that slightly obscures your vision, making detailed objects like text difficult to read and generally rendering everything as if a child had smudged the colours all over the family walls. It appears in every scene, and it feels like an attempt to make the game more dramatic. Unfortunately it doesn’t work in every situation, as I quickly found out when having to squint really hard to make out the various notes and stickers on the back of a taxi cab driver’s passenger window. It’s an odd issue to have, but since it’s ever present throughout, it may cause some aggravation amongst those wishing to check out all of the finer details in the game.

Then there’s the odd positioning of the player camera, which is often prone to fits of wobbling and awkward angles. You’d be forgiven in thinking that a game that uses camera bobbing to help immerse the player in the experience couldn’t possibly be that difficult to cope with, but you would be wrong. When Caroline was happily throwing her aforementioned crazy arm dance moves around the nightclub, her head was on its own mission, presumably attempting to detach itself to save any embarrassment of association with its host. Whilst Caroline seems to be able to keep her head mostly upright for the remainder of the game, there’s an awful swaying motion that comes with manoeuvring around the environment that could easily be enough to make you nauseous.

I said at the start that I wouldn’t spoil anything, and I will continue to do so. However, it’s worth noting that the game could very easily be broken into two sections. The first fifteen to twenty minutes culminate into an interesting and progressive narrative. We learn minor details about the main character and her past, with every intention to learn more and progress the story to see how events unfold. After that honeymoon period is over, things take a turn for the worse as the second section takes over. The visual issues become much more noticeable when other characters are presented in full, shoving their jarring stick limbs and flat faces into our field of view whilst we sway and stumble around our office desk like we’re perpetually spinning a hula hoop. The story suffers a similar fate, with the game feeding you obvious choices that aren’t hard to predict and eventually devolving into nothing more than a conclusion that doesn’t shock or surprise anybody.

Overall Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

What does this score mean?

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

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Created by Finnish developer Timi Koponen, using the ever-popular Unity engine, RYO is a color-based puzzle game available for iOS and Android that uses simple one-finger swipe mechanics to match red dots with red dots, yellow dots with other yellow dots… and so on. This simple premise is evolved upon by adding different shades of colors; therefore, asking the player to cross colors in order to change them to the correct shade needed. Against a plain black background, it has a simple visual style that is effective and quite calming. There is no music other than simple sound effects, so a nice piece of ambient/shoegaze/post-rock seems to do the trick (full on thrash metal also seems to work – don’t ask why).

Pretty self explanatory

As far as puzzle games go, RYO never straddles too far away from its comfort zone. The slightly more complex layout of colors that exist later in the game are entirely achievable to solve through trial-and-error, and the comforting lull the game presents soon becomes a mad-dash swipe of fingers, as thought and a need for logical problem solving are thrown out the window. It’s a shame, as for about the first fifty of the game’s eighty levels there’s a nice groove of adding layers of difficulty that suit the limitations of the game’s mechanics. But without any sense of risk/reward, and with only a few times where it feels necessary to think about which colors to swipe across, the last third of the game does start to drag.

Also – and it is a minor thing in all honesty – if you swipe across but halfway decide that you’ve made an incorrect move, you can swipe back to the starting point, but the screen will still shake, thinking that you’ve swiped across to an incorrect color. It’s more of an irritation than anything else, but no one likes to be told they’re done something wrong when it isn’t valid!

Swiping through different colors will, unsurprisingly, change colors

The game is very short: around ninety minutes is more than enough time to see it through to the end. But for the asking price of $0.99/£0.69, it’s the smallest of gripes to have about an otherwise enjoyable slice of touch gaming. There is certainly room for improvement; obstacles, extra colors, variables – there is a multitude of things that could be done, but for a first attempt, RYO is a great concept that is worth checking out.

Overall Rating: ★★★★☆ 

What does this score mean?

This game was reviewed on an iOS device using a copy provided by the developer for that purpose. 

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

The Hagia Sophia, one of the more important locales in the story.

For those not familiar with the  Ottoman siege, Constantinopolis is a useful companion. It portrays events in an historically accurate way, and Shipman delivers authenticity by stressing the importance of faith and family to the societies in play. On one side of the fence, the establishment is embodied in Constantine XI, Emperor of Constantinople. The city has seen far better days, yet the people seem to love Constantine and see him as a capable ruler. Constantine must also balance his duties against his love life with Zophia, an entirely fictional romantic foil. Opposing Constantine is the disruptive Mehmet II, a brash, young sultan with a lot to prove. While Constantine’s story arc is primarily one of being honorable to his fellow Greeks, Mehmet’s storyline is thematically composed of his desires for glory and vengeance against those who doubt his capabilities.

The chapters themselves are woven seamlessly in their transitions. Each chapter focuses on the point of view of either Constantine or Mehmet, with a few occasional chapters devoted to the Hungarian rulers who would play an important part in the siege’s conclusion. Unfortunately, each chapter becomes more and more repetitive. For example, Mehmet leads a failed Ottoman charge in one chapter, followed by another where Constantine discusses the enemy’s failure from the previous chapter. This will then get broken up by Constantine trying to organize his love life with Zophia. While the point-of-view  format is a great way to spin the narrative and make the characters more believable, the writing does not always work. The dialogue between secondary characters is as interesting as porridge and the reader will likely see the phrase “As you know” countless times.

Not all the writing is poor, however. The characterization of Constantine is historically accurate and Shipman does a fine job representing him as a young ruler with too much on his plate. The emperor’s mind constantly wanders between his vastly different personal desires and professional duties, and this thinking stands in contrast with Mehmet, the Muslim Sultan who sees his personal desires as his professional duties. However, Constantine’s chapters eventually become quite uninteresting, again due to repetition. Constantine tries to gain the affections of Zophia, a beautiful woman who returns his love with loyalty. Their relationship is important, and when things get rocky between them, Constantine makes poor decisions. While the romance is forced and seemingly arbitrarily thrown into the mix, it does help to advance the plot. In the long run, Constantine is simply a likable enough protagonist without this extra angle.

Countering the good guy Constantine trope is the villainous Muslim, Mehmet. While many writers would paint him as a mustache-twirling caricature, Shipman gives the reader ample understanding of the sultan’s motives for wanting to capture Constantinople. Living in the shadow of his father and his Grand Vizier Halil, Mehmet acknowledges that he was not always a wise ruler and wishes to make up for his previous failures by adding Constantinople to his empire. His advisers trust the counsel of Halil, who goes against Mehmet’s interests at every turn and often makes a fool out of the young wolf. Readers will find themselves rooting for Mehmet many times, which paints both warring leaders in shades of grey. While Mehmet’s methods may seem cruel, his faith and his desire for personal growth add humanity to an historically complex character.

Of course, this is a story about war and action scenes are bound to pop up, which are as entertaining as they need to be for those unfamiliar with the historical outcome. Shipman’s description of the battles is vivid, and interestingly enough only seen from the viewpoint of specific characters. Staying true to history, it is unlikely that Mehmet and Constantine would have ever met face-to-face, swords drawn, in the middle of a field while bodies flew every which way around them. Shipman handles the battle scenes with care, and yet everything else is described in much fewer words. A palace is simply described as that – a palace. A wall is simply a wall. Shipman wastes no time in painting the world, which is both good and bad. On one hand, it is a relief not to sift through seven pages just to read the description of a tree. On the other, it would help to have more detail in certain aspects of the novel.

Overall, Constantinopolis is a short read with many great moments. Sadly, there are less than stellar moments that truly weigh down the novel. While it is historically accurate, the modernist dialogue and forced romantic subplot dragged much of the excitement. There is an epilogue at the end which explains what happened to each character after the battle as well, and while it is short, it should be interesting to those who are not as brushed up on their history. If you are inclined to learn more about the great siege of Constantinople, you can purchase the book from Amazon here.

This book was reviewed using a copy provided by the publisher for that purpose.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.