Platformers

Tormishire poster added. [Tormishire preview]

Within a Deep Forest 2 has been abandoned by Nifflas. The latest version is available for download from this page.

Lyle in Cube Sector updated to version 1.04 with bug fixes and stuff. No sequel yet. [Lyle in Cube Sector review]

A trailer for Cypherians Systems was recently posted on the Banq-it web site.

Adventure

As mentioned on Gnome's site: a demo for The Blackwell Legacy was recently released.

Duty and Beyond gets a mention in this month's PC Zone magazine. [Duty and Beyond review]

Shooters

More screenshots from Force Majeure posted.

Shoot the Core writes about Magical Cannon Girl, a Comiket 71 release.

The translated version of Ikachan has it's own page now. [Ikachan, Glasses review]

Action

The Alien Shooter 2: Vengeance 190 MB demo (in English) is available here. [More Alien Shooter 2 info]

FLD will release the updated version of Holiday Hills soon. [comparison screenshot, Holiday Hills review]

Miscellaneous

According to The Podunkian, Fallen Angel Industries should return soon.

New screenshot from The Spirit Engine sequel posted. It will not be freeware.

In Battle City X, you play as a tank and your mission is to protect your HQ against enemy tanks. If you hit tank which is glowing red, a random bonus will appear.

Expect to find extra terrain, new enemies, new bonuses, ability to load maps from files and saving your hiscore, all absent from the original game.

Name: Battle City X
Developer: Kostey D.
Category: Action
Type: Freeware
Size: 5MB

Vampire Castle is an average platformer at best, with some rather unforgiving action sequences even at the easiest difficulty setting. Best to stick with Cave Story or Akuji the Demon, this one doesn't quite make the grade yet.

Name: Vampire Castle
Developer: RezetiA
Category: Platform
Type: Demo
Size: 50MB

Ovine by Design's remake of Driller is out. More info on this page.

Name: Driller
Developer: Ovine by Design
Category: Remake
Type: Freeware
Size: 20MB

Four Elements V Contest results are out. [from Andrew's site]

Gravitron updated with multiplayer feature. [Gravitron review]

Yahtzee will release 6DAS soon. [Yahtzee's past projects]

The horror series might be getting a 3D remake as well.

Retro Remakes is currently running a four color competition.

In The Marionette, you play as a struggling sculptor named Martin. One evening he finds in his mail a strange white envelope, unmarked except for the number '1011' written in the top right corner. Inside is a photograph of a room with ropes hanging from the ceiling. He has barely registered that fact when he is struck unconscious, and later wakes to find himself in completely unfamiliar surroundings, with only a house nearby to offer any hope of help...

Name: The Marionette
Developer: Team Effigy
Category: Adventure
Type: Freeware
Size: 10MB

From Andrew Wooldridge's site:

From the creator of Aveyond comes a new game called Grimm's Hatchery. This looks to be a casual game where you hatch and raise pet animals such as dragons and gryphons. The artwork looks top notch, and given the great work of the previous game, this looks to be another success for its creator.

Funny that there was never an announcement in the Indiegamer forums.

Reviews by jcsworld

Flash version of River City Ransom

A demo of the NES classic, River City Ransom, remade in flash. Unfortunately it's only two screens of game, so there is little to do other than beating up opponents. Still, an interesting attempt that hopefully gets developed further.

Spin It Up

A music game made in flash. Using the mouse, spin the pink bar to the right spot in time to score points. Song selection is a bit limited, but will probably expand soon.

Xeno Raider

Xeno Raider is a short flash game by Babara. Explore a cave, collecting various items to progress through the game and ultimately save Princess Rena. Gameplay is somewhat like a simplified Zelda. Strangely, there is no HP meter of any kind, and you cannot be injured by enemies at all.

The mouse-driven movement system can be a bit awkward at times, but is mostly manageable.

Version 7 of my game Cultivation is available as a free download.

Cultivation explores the social interactions within a gardening community. You lead one family of gardeners, starting with a single individual, and wise choices can keep your genetic line from extinction. While breeding plants, eating, and mating, your actions impact your neighbors, and the social balance sways between conflict and compromise.

Cultivation features dynamic graphics that are procedurally-generated using genetic representations and cross-breeding. In other words, game objects are "grown" in real-time instead of being hand-painted or hard-coded. Each plant and gardener in the game is unique in terms of both its appearance and behavior.

For those of you who have found Cultivation to be confusing in the past, the game now includes an extensive in-game tutorial. The user interface has also been polished quite a bit, and one crash has been fixed. This is the version that I will be screening at Slamdance this coming weekend, so it counts as a "final" version.

Cultivation is certainly an unusual game, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's good. From my experience, some people absolutely love it, while others absolutely hate it. I'm pretty happy with this reaction (much better, I suppose, than everyone simply agreeing to shrug their shoulders about it). It's intended to be an "art game," after all, and mixed reactions go with that territory.

This seems like an appropriate time to explain a bit about what I was trying to do with Cultivation. You can read the full article at Arthouse Games.

Name: Cultivation
Developer: Jason Rohrer
Category: Social gardening strategy
Type: Freeware
Size: 426 KB

The epic and bloody adventure of the psychotic Cereus Peashy... Take control of the legendary Golgothan Cereus Peashy and carve a bloody path across the vast desert. Download this deluxe offline fullscreen version of the game and collect shycons, throw spikes, travel far and wide, slaughter anything that moves... and become legend.

Name: Cereus Peashy
Developer: Diverge Creations
Category: Platform
Type: Freeware
Size: 10MB

Lunaria is an alright horizontal shooter with cute sprites and decent gameplay. Power-ups appear in the shape of orbs, which are only revealed by destroying random tiles affixed to the walls.

Press the Z key to shoot, or tap the X key to switch speeds. Use the C key to access the pause menu. Click on the first link after the screenshots to download.

Name: Lunaria
Developer: Team HotPulse
Category: Shooter
Type: Demo
Size: 20MB

Tetris, Puyo Puyo, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo and Lumines are some of the best puzzlers ever made. Soon you can add Blocksum to that equation.

The game is rather simple to learn. Join a number of tiles together by using the Z key, and their corresponding number increases. Gather a large group of blocks with the same number to make them disappear. Grey orbs can be used to remove all blocks with the same number on the field simply by connecting it to a tile.

Hold the X key to move the tiles upward. Press the C key to access a pause menu. Requires the latest DirectX version to run.

Puzzle veterans will love the possibilites of chaining up combos with this one. Highly recommended.

Name: Blocksum
Developer: Shintaro Sato, Ginger, xor
Category: Puzzle
Type: Freeware
Size: 30MB

Rider V2 is a brilliant bike simulator with plenty of realism unseen in other similar attempts. The city is brimming with folks on their daily routines, which include the men in uniform doing rounds and will definitely halt your trip if any rules are broken.

The position of the mouse pointer in the target reticle determines the bike's speed and direction. Don't speed or ride past a red light when an officer is around, else you'd risk incurring their wrath and at least a ticket if you're fortunate.

There's a lot of personal touches added in, for example drivers turning on their signals before making a turn or even taking a smoke on a slow sunday morning drive.

Name: Rider V2
Developer: Crest Computer System
Category: Simulation
Type: Freeware
Size: 10MB

Warsow is a free open source first-person shooter game for Microsoft Windows and Linux. It uses a 3D engine based on Qfusion, itself a modification of Quake II GPL engine. The game uses cartoonish graphics with celshading style, mixing dark, flashy and dirty textures to achieve a unique look.

While Warsow is still early beta software, the Cyberathlete Amateur League has accepted it as a competition-worthy game since version 0.12, and its popularity is on the rise.

Name: Warsow
Developer: Warsow team
Category: Action
Type: Freeware
Size: 80MB

Hi Folks,

This time Runtime posts in own matter: Runtime's in-house developed game Hacker's Digest has not yet been mentioned here. Here's a brief description:

A reflexive style arcade game in which you are part of a hacker educational environment. To hack an enemy system, you have to guide a small ball into the enemy
computer by changing the direction of the panel reflecting the ball. Hacker's Digest was completed back in 2002. It is a reflexive-style arcade game with some unique features. The game consists of 60 different puzzles in 6 different difficulties.

Have fun,

Maenny from Runtime Entertainment