The Scoop: When Pigs Fly is the latest game from Auntie Pixelante, the woman behind Mighty Jill Off which we spotlighted earlier this year. Like her other games, When Pigs Fly is very very hard. This is balanced out by there being virtually no penalty for dying, however. So I never got too frustrated.

The premise is pretty cute. A pig falls into a cave, and has to sprout wings and fly his way out in order to escape. Auntie Pixelante is a very very smart woman and most of her games are rife with subtext about the world and videogames specifically, but to keep things easy on myself and avoid having to do any true critical analysis, we’re going to keep this a strictly surface-level examination.

When Pigs Fly is basically a game about momentum-control. Your flying pig is extremely fragile. If anything, anything touches his (her?) wings, it’s a death. That, coupled with the finicky control set-up, makes this a tricky little game. But once you get the hang of the momentum your pig generates… once you understand the rhythm you’ll need in order to hover in mid-air… none of the game’s rooms will seem insurmountable.

The game will be too tough for some gamers to clear, but those that do will unlock a variety of extras, including a time attack mode, and a just-plain-evil “only one life” mode. It’s hard, but since you aren’t penalized for dying, it isn’t too scary. Give it a shot!
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Links
Truly Excellent Auntie Pixelante Interview
JayIsGames Review
BigDownload Write-Up
GayGamer Write-Up
Play This Thing! Write-Up

The Scoop: Fun fact: Blocksum is the game that convinced me to buy a USB game controller for my computer. Out of the dozens and dozens (hundreds?) of games I’ve played, Blocksum is what convinced me to take the plunge. So… yeah. It’s good. If you’re even remotely fond of Tetris-style block-clearing puzzle games, you don’t even need to read this write-up. Just download it, and say hello to your next addiction.

Blocksum is similar to other puzzle titles, in that a well will fill up with blocks (this time rising from the bottom), and if it gets completely full, it’s game over. To clear them, gamers must join blocks together, totaling the number shown on the face of the block. It’s confusing to describe, but very simple in practice.

Example: You want to clear a “4″ block. To do this, a total of four “4″ blocks will need to be touching. You can make them by joining a “3″ and a “1″, a “2 and a “2″, two “1s” and a “2,” etc.

The brilliance is in Blocksum’s risk vs. reward design. If you join blocks together to make a “10″ block, you’ll need a TOTAL of ten of these 10 blocks to touch each other – no easy feat. But buku points await the gamers that can pull it off.

Like most puzzle games, it truly is simple and accessible once you’re hands-on with it, but hard to explain via text like this. So I strongly encourage you to check out the video linked below – it explains the premise well.

The download itself is remarkably polished, for a free game. The interface and gameplay is silky smooth and professional, the sound & graphic design is well-done, and the ability to download replays of the highest scores is a great touch.

Blocksum is EXTREMELY addictive, so consider yourself warned!
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Links:
Download Mirror
Gameplay Video
JayIsGames Review
indygamer Profile

Genre: Variable Bullet Hell 2D Shooter
Platform: Mac, Windows, Linux
Developed by: Kenta Cho
Download Here

The Scoop: rRootage is the absolute best kind of free game. It isn’t great “for a game made by one guy,” or great “for a game released for free.” It’s great, period. No qualifiers necessary. I own dozens of $10 downloadable titles on my Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii, and rRootage contains more value than nearly all of them.

Like Warning Forever, rRootage is a 2D shooter consisting of nothing but a series of boss encounters. No scrolling stages, or enemy waves. Just your ship, lots and lots of insane bullet patterns to dodge, and a boss at the top of the screen to destroy.

What I love most about rRootage is that it has four modes of play, each one copying a different popular shooter franchise. Ika mode imitates Ikaruga. Enemies will fire white or black bullets, and you can swap the color of your ship to absorb either one type of the other. Psy mode imitates Psyvariar, which allows you to deal more damage when “grazing” as close as possible to enemy bullets. GW mode apes Gigawing, in that you can charge-up and unleash a temporary shield that reflect bullets back at the boss. Lastly, Normal mode doesn’t imp any specific game – your Special just clears bullets from the screen, giving you some breathing room.

What sets rRootage apart from other free shooters, and earns its position as a TFG Signature Selection, is that each of these four modes contains 50 stages. For a grand total of 200 unique levels to make your way through. Each one with their own unique bullet patterns.

With so many stages, the increase in challenge is very gradual. You can select any stage at any time. If you were to hop into a late-game level right from the start, you would likely be annihilated. But by starting at the beginning and working your way up, it becomes very satisfying to see each mode’s stages get checked off one by one. Each stage is only the smallest amount more difficult than the one that preceded it, so it’s motivating to know that if you cleared that, you can clear this new challenge too, with a little practice.

Kenta Cho has other brilliant 2D shooters that we’ll eventually profile, but I advise you to not rush through rRootage to get to them. The game’s bullet patterns are subtle and clever in ways they might not initially appear to be. What initially seems like an incoherent and impossible mess of bullets is always an actual, discernible pattern that quick-thinking and observant gamers can conquer. Satisfying.
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Links:
OSX Fan Port
ABA Games Wikipedia Entry
Free iPhone Port
Gameplay Video
TIGdb Entry

The Scoop: Karoshi: Suicide Salaryman is the first Flash version of indie developer Jesse Venbrux’s morbidly amusing puzzle series. Gamers play as as a nameless, generic office worker, and the goal of each stage is to find a way to kill yourself.

The game gets a lot of attention for it’s suicide-centric premise, but that premise is really just an excuse to create puzzles that aren’t really that different than those found in most platform puzzlers. The only difference is instead of opening a route to the exit, you’re opening a route to a pit of spikes to throw yourself in. Fun! This means you’ll be pushing and pulling blocks to activate switches, making sure you’re in the right position when activating a switch, figuring out how to reach specific levers, etc.

Across the game’s 49 stages you’ll ultimately end up killing your salaryman protagonist only a handful of ways – touch an electrified block, run into a spike wall or spike pit, get splattered by a falling safe, or get hit with a flying bullet. This simplicity works in the game’s favor. When you start a new level, how you need to kill yourself is usually immediately apparent. If you see spikes but no other dangers, that’s your answer. The trick is then working through the puzzles to get your salaryman over to them. There are a few tricky exceptions later in the game that require outside-the-box thinking, but for most stages, a little logic is all you’ll need.

The kill-yourself theme leads to some amusing moments for longtime gamers, as videogame conventions are flipped on their head. During the game’s final bossfight, hearts are thrown at the player. When collecting one, the player actually gains a life, meaning they now have to be hit by the boss one more time in order to “win.”
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Links:
Newgrounds Mirror
Kongregate Mirror
JayIsGames Review
Guide/Walkthrough
The Escapist Write-Up

The Scoop: I didn’t really like Splume, at first. The first several levels make it come off as a poor man’s Bust-a-Move (or Snood, if you prefer). It just feels a little loose and imprecise. As I spent more time with the title it’s true colors began to show through, however.

The key difference between Splume and the aforementioned ball-shooting titles is that the objects in Splume are based on actual physics. They have weight and inertia, and it’s possible (indeed, it’s required, later on) to push one string of pieces into another string to make matches.

The game is at its best when it makes good use of its physics foundation. Several stages seem nearly impossible, until you remember that the pieces all have real physical properties. This really shines through in the stages where you shoot right to left, instead of bottom to top. By that same token, the plain stages, the ones that most resemble Bust-a-Move, are among the least enjoyable. Regardless, Splume scores lots of points in my book for doing something genuinely new with such a time-worn formula, and managing to make it all work.
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Links:
Trailer
Blurst Mirror
Rock, Paper, Shotgun Write-Up