A Mini Falafel Adventure is the first platformer submitted for a recent four color competition held by Retro Remakes recently. Press the left control key to jump, and use the arrow keys to move the falafel around.

There's a special collectible to be found in this game and at least one boss encounter to reward the brave, among other surprises.

Name: A Mini Falafel Adventure
Developer: Chris Nimmo
Category: Platform
Type: Freeware
Size: 1MB

Axion is a horizontal scrolling shmup by BenH that puts most of the releases posted in the GMC forums to shame. Smooth controls, a super blast which can be activated using the space key, tons of power-ups to collect and even a minor boss encounter thrown in as icing on the cake.

The only drawback is that the one level included is rather short in length. It will definitely leave most players wishing for more.

Name: Axion
Developer: K-ero
Category: Shooter
Type: Freeware
Size: 1MB

After Burner Climax on D-language is a test project by keim, developer of Nomltest FS, Invisible Vision and Quantized Blaze. Only two keys are used, and though the gameplay is currently a little unbalanced this particular production is already showing plenty of potential in it's early stages.

If his previous achievements are anything to go by, this could end up being a lovely remake indeed.

Name: After Burner Climax on D-language
Developer: keim
Category: Shooter
Type: Freeware
Size: 1MB

The new Pixeljam.com website is now open.

Play the moonjumper game or click on random images to find all four hidden unlock codes. Use these passwords in the downloads section to access additional content. [games.pixeljam.com, Gamma Bros review]

Voting for the GameSpot-hosted 2007 IGF Audience Awards is now open.

"All IGF finalists who were able to submit a playable demo (or had significant public play opportunities in the last year) are eligible, and the one with the most votes picks up the $2,500 prize."

Freeware: Gamma Bros, Armada Online, Racing Pitch, Bubble Islands, Toblo, Bang Howdy

Playable demos: Armadillo Run, Bone: The Great Cow Race, FizzBall, Toribash, Blast Miner, Samorost 2

Videos: Castle Crashers

Stack Attack is a very simple concept game with minimalistic and almost DOSlike graphics. Click grouped blocks to make them disappear from the playfield, and the number of blocks in the group will determine the score given.

Clicking on a single block will cause a thousand points pentalty to be taken from your score. If you remove an entire column then a free column bonus will be awarded for the duration of the free state. More blocks are being pushed into the playfield from below, slowly at first but then faster as the game continues on, until it is very frantic indeed.

If you need more blocks and the blocks are being pushed on to the screen to slowly then use mouse button two, or the space bar, to bring them on faster. You may want to do this at the start of the game, but once the speed is higher this will be the last thing on your mind.

Name: Stack Attack
Developer: TCKSOFT
Category: Puzzle
Type: Freeware
Size: 1MB

Itty Bitty RPG is a single player passive role playing game that anyone can embed in their own website. Basically you can visit the site, slay a few monsters, upgrade your equipment and be off to your next thing all in a few moments. This code combines the convenience of a simple web counter with a role playing game.

Click on the IBRPG icon in the navigation to create an account. Mouse over the icon to see your experience grow. Click on one of the random monsters that appear on the page and do battle. After you succeed or fail, go back to the town to restore health. Click on the treasure chest to get some money. Reload at least ten or so times to see the spiffy alert dialog when you level up.

Playable only with Firefox 2.0.

Name: Itty Bitty RPG
Developer: Andrew Wooldridge
Category: RPG
Type: Browser

All concept art. Click on images to view in large size. [Force Majeure, Junkboy's web site]

Barbarian for the New Generation



Hot Amazon woman, PHWOAR!



A proper Double Dragon remake



Another Cave Story 'rip-off'



Pirates of the Carribean: The Video Game

Tower of Moai is another fun little diversion from SKT, creators of the equally brilliant Nest of Moai and Nobuyuki Forces series. In this game, your task is to direct statues towards a swinging ladder. The platform that these guys are on is slightly unbalanced, so there's some work to be done in order to get the required quota for a good ranking.

Occasionally large objects will land on this platform, though these hazards can be pushed out of the way with a little effort. Rescue a hundred Moai statues in less than ninety seconds to progress.

Name: Tower of Moai
Developer: SKT
Category: Action
Type: Flash
Size: 1MB

Mr. Sweets is a rather fun puzzler which involves matching three or more sweets together. A candy will expand in several directions when clicked, indicated by the odd shape and bumps on each. Other sweets will be pushed outwards, and when a match is made the chain begins. Remove enough candies from the playing area to fill up the heart before the sun sets. Sweets change after every ten stages.

The game has a rather catchy though campy tune, reminiscent of something that is usually featured in Katamari Damacy. A view of the soundtrack CD can be seen in the credits page by clicking on the sound team button. It's quite unfortunate that the music can't be turned off without muting the sound effects, so headphones are recommended if you still want your mates to take you seriously after playing this one.

Name: Mr. Sweets
Developer: SKT
Category: Puzzle
Type: Flash
Size: 1MB

Losted is a decent four color Robotron: 2084 variation by DevlSoft, featuring ten levels worth of action with a boss waiting at the end. A nice diversion for at least a couple of minutes.

Name: Losted
Developer: DevlSoft
Category: Action
Type: Freeware
Size: 1MB

Hoiuchi Sekai is an alright horizontal shooter which features an array of cute sprites, and though the game does work well enough the pace is slightly sedated with little of the manic action that is pretty much the hallmark of doujin shmups.

Plenty of power-ups to collect, but the omission of a hit point for your ship does make dodging bullets a rather tricky task. There are eight stages to beat, while an autofire option can be enabled in the configuration menu.

Instructions on navigating the Vector site can be found in the FAQ.

Name: Hoiuchi Sekai
Developer: Houichi Plus
Category: Shooter
Type: Freeware
Size: 2MB

DieFeen is an alright vertical shooter by the creator of Visionary Wings, though this particular production features 3D enemies and backgrounds much like those found in the Shikigami no Shiro series. The title refers to little fairy creatures which act as options, surrounding your character and offering some protection from the hail of bullets usually prominent in most doujin shmups.

You can retrieve up to four of these fairies from your inventory at the press of a key, and switch their formations around at any time. They will have their own health indicators, which are depleted whenever a bullet hits any of them.

Still only a Comiket 71 release at this time, though a full version will be made available in the next expo.

Name: DieFeen
Developer: Nekomimino Kakera
Category: Shooter
Type: Demo

Review written by Maenny @ Runtime Entertainment

The independent turnbased strategy title Starship Kingdom tells the story about a universe at the edge of chaos. Two royal houses decide to fight for the hegemony. As a side effect, they will destroy a whole lot of independent and peaceful smaller houses, which have no intention whatsoever to expand. So far this game reflects reality...
You play one of the royal houses, of course (what an interesting game it would be if you played one of the smaller, peaceful houses!). Each turn consists of 4 phases: Deployment (new ships can be added to a fleet of one of your planets), Attack (what would that be?), Fortify (shift one planet's ships to it's neighbour) and Upgrades, where you either can upgrade a planet or the production itself.

You fight for dominance and the more planets you own, the more credits you will have and the more ships will be ready for battle at the begin of each turn. There's one thing to be mentioned: The planet are connected by lines, which indicate that you can travel from one to another planet in one turn. Planets not connected can't be invaded directly. That's an important fact to know for your strategical consideration. Planets which are only connected to your other planets you own don't need no big fleet, you can fly the ships to the front. But consider this: Once your front is being defeated all planets behind with only one ship are an easy prey.

The graphics of Starship Kingdom are nicely designed. The starmap is 2D and is like a strategical commandfield, which fits excellently the atmosphere of the title. The battles are animated in a traditional way - they are being automated, you can't take influence once the battle has begun. The battles are in 3D and with nice fire and smoke effects. At any time you can skip the animation and directly see the result of the battle.
Starship Kingdom is a solid programmed turnbased title with a normal strategical depth. It will be excellent a game for people who like statistics and board-like strategical titles visualized on the computer. Nevertheless learning the game claims some time and patience, there's no tutorial game but a text file which can be accessed any time during the match, which will explain the phases and the gameplay.

The good news is that you can play this game in singleplayer, hotseat or online. And you have an editor for the creation of custom starmaps. This guarantees a lot of content and hereby could interest you for a longer period. I think a turnbased game could do with an Email-Mode, giving you the possibility to play a game over several days while not being online the whole time.

Altogether Starship Kingdom is a good game for strategics who like board-like games with a challenging turn based battlesystem, mostly visualized by numbers and icons. If you prefer classical Age of Empires-ressembling games this won't be the right title. But if you are a Risk-fan this could be a nice futuristic alternative. There's a demo on their site to download for free.

System Requirements: Windows 98/Me/XP/Vista, DirectX 8.0 or better, 1 GHZ Intel or AMD Processor, and 3D graphics card capable of displaying at least 1024x768.

Name: Starship Kindom
Developer: ApeZone
Size: ~11MB
Licence: Demo
Price fullversion: 19.95$/16.95EUR

You lucky modern kids with your high-speed Internet connections and graphical interfaces actually got luckier. You got yourselves two (well, another two, that is) free retro games to enjoy, without even downloading a thing. Simply click here for a web-game of Puzzle Bobble (aka Bust-a-Move) or here for a look at the classic PC platformer/shooter Commander Keen.

Jonathan Blow's game Braid has been much talked about but little played, since he has been keeping the game under very tight wraps. Braid won the award for Innovation in Game Design at the 2006 IGF, but no demo was posted. Braid was discussed at the 2006 Experimental Gameplay Workshop, but no demo was posted. Braid was entered into the 2007 IGF and Slamdance festivals, and still no demo was posted.

Braid was selected as a Slamdance finalist, and I was heading to Slamdance too, so it seemed like I was finally going to get to play this elusive game. Alas, controversy erupted (when SCMRPG was pulled from the finalist list), and Jon pulled his game from the festival in protest. I wasn't going to play-test Braid at Slamdance after all.

However, somewhere along the way, Jon was nice enough to send me a snapshot build for review purposes. That build, version 0.847, is the subject of this preview. The build is a little rough around the edges, with place-holder graphics still lurking in the later levels and some performance issues in the early levels that were nearly complete (on a 1.9 GHz machine with a GeForce4 graphics card, this 2D platform game saw major slow-down when played at it's ideal resolution). Even with this rough build, I was able to draw one simple conclusion without doubts or reservations: Braid is the most innovative and interesting game I have ever played.

Braid has the potential to change the way you think about reality. It will certainly change the way you think about video games. In this preview, I will explain why it has this power, using detailed examples from the game. However, part of the game's interest lies in it's surprise factor: there is great joy to be had in discovering just how clever this game is for yourself. In fact, I am glad that I never read a preview of this game before I was lucky enough to play it myself. All I knew, and all you should know if you want the full experience, is that Braid is a 2D platform game in which the player manipulates the flow of time. If you're willing to wait for an official release, you should stop reading here.

You can read the full preview at Arthouse Games.

Name: Braid
Developer: Number None
Category: 2D Platformer
Type: License not yet set
Size: 120 MB (download not available to public)

The creator of Nanozoa is currently developing Honeyblaster for the four color competition held by Retro Remakes.

Click here to view an animated gif of the game in action.

Some lovely games currently in development over at the Retro Remakes forums. Competition ends on February 11th. [Deathchase: UFO, Doctor Who and The Daleks review]

The creator of Begemed is currently developing DIA RPG engine, an engine made with Game Maker that can be used by others to build their own RPGs. [Begemed review]

Colocoro updated to version 1.4.0, with new Shooting course and plenty of other changes. [Colocoro review]

New Star Blog updated. [New Star Soccer 3 review]

The White Chamber translated to both Italian and Portugese.

Animated sprite from Buster's next mini-game?

Buster's post, translated by Shih Tzu: I'll be ending the net rankings for mini01 this month. Thank you for all the records. I'm impressed by all the high scores! [Guardian of Paradise]

Minion interviewed by The Game Creators. [Star Wars review]

Get your own desktop Kiwi pet right here.

New sketch added to Pixel's desktop.

Shooters

Shoot the Core updated with five new entries.

Riders on the Storm postmortem published at the2bears.

Platformer

New Tormishire image posted.

Knytt source code and soundtrack released, according to Total Klik. [Within a Deep Forest, Knytt, other games by Nifflas]

Puzzler

DUOtris Mobile now available for both Blackberry and Java. Echoes will be released very soon. [DUO, DUOtris, Mono review]

Home Base updated. Now includes fifty levels in both Normal and Reverse modes. [direct download link, Home Base review]

rhacp is a brilliant variation of Snake by Crostar, a regular 3Punge competition participant and also the creator of Round and Round. This particular effort uses 3D models, but retains much of the gameplay elements from the original.

The objective of the game is basically to swallow other enemies which resemble shorter versions of your creature. If any of them touches other parts of your snake's body besides the head, mines will begin to appear from the end of it's tail. Touching these mines causes the current game to end instantly.

The number of enemies to eliminate in order to progress is shown at the upper left side of the screen. Collecting all round objects will make every mine in the vicinity disappear, clearing your way when the area is getting a little too crowded.

Only the arrow keys are used to control movement. Press the Z key to start from any level. Continues are unlimited.

Name: rhacp
Developer: Crostar
Category: Action
Type: Freeware
Size: 10MB