hellerphant

Did you ever think to yourself “wow, I wish QWOP had some guns in it”? They Killed Your Cat is basically that premise. Some goons killed your cat ala John Wick, and now you are running down corridors murdering those responsible. You are controlling movement of each leg manually, you are reloading your weapons

A short but relentless first-person shooter featuring manual reloading, walking, and blinking, with settings that let you customize your experience. Every “normal” action has some kind of friction, for example, to reload your gun you need to pop out the magazine, insert a new clip, then slide back the safety before shooting. You need to reach a computer terminal and interact with it in order to save. And yeah, you need to take each step individually. This looks stupid, but in a fun way, and the reviews definitely seem to be saying exactly that.

The next “let’s take a random thing and roguelite it” is here, and it’s called Dice A Million, a roll ‘em up that has you trying to roll 1,000,000 with a set of dice. As the numbers grow you will be unlocking more dice with crazy unique effects and modifiers, and getting some cool powerup rings for your hand. Speaking of the hands, there are 10 to choose from which indicate your player class. Also, the developer wants you to really notice their “cutting edge next-gen graphics”, which were all drawn on Microsoft Paint.

Who am I?

I am a former game journalist, current game developer who wants to put a spotlight on indie games and the people who make them. I run a newsletter called Indie Dispatch which is sent out Japanese Friday evenings with 5 games I’ve found that I think you should check out for the weekend. We also have some developer interviews coming up too!

Did you like Phasmaphobia but thought “maaan this would be cooler if it was in space, and it was kinda like Alien”? Enter Species: Unknown, a 1-4 player co-op survival horror where you enter a derelict ship, investigate the carnage, discover what alien murdered everything, and then try to get out alive.

This one is getting some praise and some momentum, just hitting 250K players. I’m definitely going to grab this when pay day rolls around with some friends - it looks great!

Demon Tides is an incredibly sharp 3D platformer that follows Beebz and her crew across the vast oceans of Ragnar’s Rock. You can explore the open seas at your leasure, completing unique challenges at every structure and uncovering the myriad of secrets that have been hidden there, with some of the smoothest movement I’ve seen in a while from the genre. 

Who am I?

I am a former game journalist, current game developer who wants to put a spotlight on indie games and the people who make them. I run a newsletter called Indie Dispatch which is sent out Japanese Friday evenings with 5 games I’ve found that I think you should check out for the weekend. We also have some developer interviews coming up too!

This is a digital tabletop game called Dobbel Dungeon, that comes from a two-person team out of the Netherlands. This light fantasy romp has you assembling a party of three before you venture out armed with your dice. At the start of a turn you roll the dice, and then power up your abilities. There are no chances to hit or misses in Dobbel Dungeon - as long as you have the numbers you can perform your abilities and defeat your foes. 

Looks like a cute fun game. I’m a big tabletop fan but rarely get games to the table anymore so this could be a good one for me personally.

Hi there! So I understand that federated systems can speak to one another and interact. My question I guess is should I be using my Mastodon account to log into PieFed, and PixelFed, and Bookwyrm? Or do I need to create specific accounts for all these services, just as I did before?

I understand that someone on Mastodon could potentially follow my PixelFed account and see my posts. But wouldn't it make sense to have one single identity (if one wished) so it collected all of my stuff in one place? Just wondering if I am missing the point?

Sorry if I sound like an idiot here. I really love the idea of federated services, just want to make sure I am "doing it right" so to speak.

Friend slop (positive) isn’t for everyone, but Super Battle Golf looks like a tonne of fun.

There are 27 different courses to fight across, with a barrage of offensive and defensive items to use against your pals. If you grew up playing Worms, then you will probably get the vibe going on here. It’s a little bit Peak meets Worms, and I mainly say this because putting a landmine into the path of your friend zooming towards you in a golf cart just for some reason puts memories of Worms 2 in my head that i didn’t even know I had. 

I stumbled across this one while scoping out the Quebec Games Celebration this week, and the weirdness of the art immediately had me hooked. Horripilant is an incremental dungeon crawler (which I THINK is a fancy way of not saying “Roguelite”), with a strange pixel art style that also somehow manages to feel like hand painted ink nightmares with a dot matrix vibe. Yeah, it’s a lot. Pulling from classic dungeon crawlers, this one looks super weird and delightful.

Worth mentioning that there is a demo for this one on Steam, but I haven’t had a chance to play it myself yet.

Who am I?

Former game journalist, current game dev who wants to put a spotlight on games. Indie games are struggling to get enough coverage. I run a weekly newsletter of games I find that look cool called Indie Dispatch.

I left Melbourne 7 years ago to live in Japan. I’m heading back next month with some co-workers to exhibit at The Game Expo. They want good food, good coffee, good beers. I don’t know anything that is open anymore. My old go to spot was Pope Joan and it’s long gone. I don’t even know if Faraday’s Cage is still around, or good.

Please help me be a good host and give me some recommendations. I also plan to go to Very Good Falafel if it’s still there!

Oh, and how much am I looking at for a latte these days? My family say the price of everything has gone up so I’m scared.

I am an indie dev and former game journo, and I run a newsletter where I share recommendations of cool indies coming out every week. I’m not going to link to it here but I thought I could drop an interesting find on here.

LOVE ETERNAL is a brutal platformer with a psychological horror story behind it. A soft sequel to an insane platformer called LOVE that took 7 years for someone to actually beat it or something like that. This has some of the edges sanded down, and does some really unexpected things. Worth checking out if you love hard platformers.