Indie Platforming Two'fer: Depict1 and Loved

In a holiday season that emphasizes good behavior for just rewards, it's especially fun to play two indie platformers where breaking the rules and disobeying authority is sometimes the only way to get ahead.

Depict1 (top left) has a slightly "Portal" feel about it, with you essentially going through test chamber puzzles guided by a disembodied voice. The voice gives you instructions on how to play, but the question arises very early on whether or not you can trust his/her/its advice, when it gives you clearly incorrect information that does nothing or just straight-up kills you. Between reverse psychology and outright lies, the game goes into a metaphysical realm that almost defies the conventions of ordinary video games.

Loved (bottom right) gives you the freedom to obey or disobey the voice's commands. Following orders causes the game's visuals to become clear and detailed, while disobeying turns the visuals into crude blocks and distortion. The voice rejects you from the very beginning, declaring you the opposite gender of whatever you picked, and when asked if you want a tutorial, you'll either be denied one (if you said "yes") or be told "you will fail" (if you said "no"). The nature of the voice (and indeed, the game) changes depending on your choices.

The thematic exploration of both games is very similar, in each case offering a unique twist on the way you play the game. Depict1 can be played on Newgrounds or on Kongregate; Loved can be played on Newgrounds or on Kongregate.

My Top 10 Horror Games

Horror is a tricky genre; it's really easy to get your game billed as "horror," just by throwing zombies and blood into it, but the best horror games are the ones that evoke a genuine feeling of dread, discomfort, and, well, horror. A lot of so-called "horror" games aren't really scary or horrifying, and it always boggles my mind that these faux horror games always top the mainstream "best horror games" lists.

So here's my pick of the games that best capture the essence of horror. As an added bonus, I'll even throw in a couple of honorable mentions to titles that accomplish some of the crucial aspects of horror, despite not being full-on horror games.

November Was a Slow Month for Posting

And yet it was my most active month yet, traffic-wise, bringing in over 50% more hits than last month. Losing both of your computers within a week of each other can throw a wrench in your routines; consequently I only posted seven articles in the month of November, and two of them were about my computers dying. So to commemorate my 7 articles in November, I'm going to describe 7 of the top November 2011 releases in exactly 7 words, none of which I've actually played. 

1. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Hopefully not as overrated as Oblivion was.

Click the full article for the rest of my concisely poignant and descriptive opinions.

Despair in Life and Death: Wither

What's this? More GameBoy graphics on the almighty PC? Surely a modern PC can handle better graphics than the 1989 portable gaming brick, right? Well, yes, they can, but this is a design choice called style. I guess.

Wither is a free RPG Maker game by Rastek. It's a short adventure game where your only goal is to collect 12 flowers to place on your recently-deceased brother's gravestone. There's no combat or any other tricky nonsense, you just explore the small town, talk to people, find clues, and collect flowers. The game design is intelligent, with sufficient clues to guide you through without obvious solutions, but the story (or premise, perhaps the better term) is the real hook as you try to figure out what happened and what's going on.

This one is open to interpretation, meaning that a lot of its meaning comes from your own thoughts and reactions. These kinds of games have a tendency to come off as pretentious, but I don't get that vibe from Wither: it's a solid game with enough cranial stimulation to make it worth recommending. (It takes about 30 minutes to play.) My own analysis comes after the jump.

Great Games You Never Played: Killing Floor

"Fine, obscure gems." Part of a periodical series: Great Games You Never Played.

On the surface, Tripwire Interactive's Killing Floor is a lot like Valve's Left 4 Dead series: multi-player first-person shooter survival co-op with zombies. Except that Killing Floor is actually much deeper than L4D, requiring more tact, strategy, skill, teamwork, and experience to succeed. Killing Floor boasts more enemy types that all function differently, a greater quantity and variety of weapons to use, and a class system that has players performing different roles in the group. To top it all off, Killing Floor has superior "in your face" gunplay that simply proves more cathartic than what you can find in any other co-op zombie-killing game.

A Smashing Good Time: Super Smash Land

In an ever-popular avenue of indie games development wherein people "demake" classic games for older consoles, Dan Fornace has given us Super Smash Land, a free "GameBoy rendition" of the Super Smash Bros. franchise. Everything about it screams nostalgia, harkening back to the good old days of the early 90s portable gaming scene and the usual fun of smashing classic Nintendo characters to bits. Super Smash Land is definitely worth some of your time; it's impressive and fun, but I do have some minor nitpickings to lay against it. Video footage and my full run-down after the jump.

Another Computer Bites the Dust

A little more than a week after my laptop fried itself and became completely useless, I dug out my old desktop computer that I had custom assembled back in 2004/2005. I dusted everything off and it booted up just fine, except that the CPU seemed bogged down with a bunch of software and processes that I don't remember putting on there. Since I hadn't reinstalled the OS in all the time I'd had that computer, I thought maybe it was time for a fresh start---reformat the drive and start new.

Well I couldn't find my Windows XP (Home Edition) disc, so I borrowed one from my brother and proceeded to reinstall the OS like usual. Formatted the hard-drive for a clean installation, thereby wiping out the old installation and all of the cluttered file systems on the drive; installation went fine. And then when it prompted me for my license key, I entered the key from the sticker on my case and it told me it was not valid. Reinstallation of Windows XP came to a crashing halt.

So now I'm left with two completely useless, inert computers. The hardware on the laptop is fried and the software on the desktop refuses to cooperate. I'm not even sure what the problem is with the desktop, since I'm using a valid key and using the same disc version as my OS. I may have to resign myself to calling Microsoft tech support in the morning, but until then I'm left with nothing to do but cry myself to sleep, if my brain doesn't have an aneurysm before then.

I mean, why wouldn't it verify that I have a valid key BEFORE reformatting the drive? At least that way I could've determined that I had a problem and still had a functional PC.