Posts Tagged ‘Indie’
Every so often I encounter a game that, in expressing beautiful art direction, stunning animation, and gorgeous visuals, comes across more as a cinematic and visual experience than as a gaming one. The latest release from Damp Gnat, Icycle, does precisely this. The game's premise is delightfully simple: the world has entered an ice age, and you alone inhabit it. You have nothing else to do but ride your bicycle in search of a friend.
Movie poster-inspiring name aside, Captain Forever is a classic 2-d shooter (imagine asteroids) with a twist. All of the ships in the game are built from a simple set of modular blocks, like Lego or the International Space Station. if a ship's command module is destroyed before all of its modules are trashed, the surviving pieces crumble into space, and can be picked up and added to your own.
From the first moments of your existence, something registers as unmistakeably wrong: your eyes open to the blackness of space and you are alone. Then, yawning across the gulf of plangent time, a beeping hits your ears. It is a bitonal register, a dualistic dance, one part auspicious, the other nefarious. Up and down it goes, transmitting - what? Knowledge? Information? Light? None of these things. All you see now are the words: RAM CHECK OK! ROM CHECK FAIL!
