Eyewitnesses reported seeing several people fleeing from the Dedication Games Arena when a swarm of Coreplay-funded particles descended in their thousands and began causing significant brightness. All indications suggest that the surroundings quickly became too bright for the panicked arena patrons to tell what was going on, leading to overall confusion at the scene and complicating the task of emergency services once they arrived. ”The protective eyewear had no effect,” commented one disgruntled citizen shortly after being given a pair of sunglasses by a paramedic.

Since they’ve been around since slightly before the dawn of time, particles aren’t especially a new phenomenon in gaming. However, over the last year or two, developers seem to have cottoned on to the fact that 3D graphics cards coupled with some clever coding can produce an environment where literally bazillions of the little devils can invade your screen at once – and what’s more, that they can actually be used as a proper gameplay element in their own right!

Enter the two most recent indie advocates of such thinking, Swarm Arena and Ion Assault. Both games wield an eye-watering amount of particles to make them look good and play good. But today, dear reader, I’m here to ask one thing: isn’t it all just a bit of a gimmick?

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Research is important whenever you’re going to write about something and I try my best to at least make a feeble effort of getting my facts straight before I start attacking my keyboard. Unfortunately my search for news about Work3‘s OokiBloks on Google wasn’t very helpful; it believed that I was wanting to find out about Pokéblocks from the Bulbapedia instead. Yee-es. Thanks for that. Since my fad of playing Pokémon is some distance in the past I thought it best to tell Google that for once I did actually type my search correctly. This helped massively – I now possessed a link to the OokiBloks homepage! But I already knew this because it’s in my darned Watch List…

Information more recent than that on the game’s blog, dated 2009, is hard to come by. The game has great potential to be a colourful arcade action-puzzler with a prominent focus on catchy music (just watch this gameplay video and enjoy the nifty audio!), but for the last 18 months, it seems to be dead in the water. An iPhone port was talked about but got dropped, then a hint was dropped that the game may get finished after all – but there’s been nothing since then.

Although it was nominated for an Excellence in Audio award in 2008′s IGF the game came away with nothing for its troubles of travelling to San Francisco.

To a humble outsider it looks like this is a game whose developer has suffered the cruel side of Lady Luck’s scales. I certainly think that it deserves a chance to succeed in the increasingly-competitive indie market. It has a cute main character and a rare amount of charm; y’know what? I reckon it’d do quite well – so spread the word! Let’s get this game the attention it deserves and bring it back from the brink of the void!

Happy Easter, folks! April the first has been and gone and I had an idea for a great joke to transform the site with… but it’ll keep ’til next year, I guess What definitely won’t keep that long are the last of the Assemblee reviews, so here’s another batch of four to liven up your weekend…

The King, the Queen and the Jester by Jeferson R. Silva
A very stylish RPG that is best summarised as a combination of the author’s inspiration, Eye of the Beholder, with a hint of Tower of the Sorcerer. As a prisoner in the dank, dirty and generally not very pleasant underground dungeons you must escape and find out what the devil is going on. Fantastic in more ways than one, this Assemblee version is “only” a 2-level demo with a good couple of hours of playability. 90%

The Little King That Could by Linus
Your King needs YOU! Build an empire that can withstand the attacks of the evil Drows, Greenskins and other assorted nasties that want to wipe you off the face of the procedurally-generated earth. It’s not finished to the point of having an objective but is still a nice sandboxy Civilization / Roguelike combo. A rough idea of the mechanics and controls can be found here. Worthy of being developed further. 78%

The Lonely Tower by Tempel
Plot: a boy invites a friend over to his place to play a holy awesome new game. What will transpire? In a world where most games are driven by their story, this is a story that’s driven by a game. Intelligent design and dialogue make it a short but uniquely entertaining diversion. The only real complaint is that it’s too short and sweet for its own good. 75%

The Sunset Strider by Crimsontide
This one appears to be a Fez-like 2.5D platformer. A quite nice one, at that. Only complication is that it requires a decent joypad to play, and unfortunately my crappy gamepad couldn’t control the camera (which left me with no way to explore the world properly). Good 3D-ified use of graphics, though it could use some sound and music. Possibly brilliant and clearly well done but needs keyboard controls badly. 71%

There are only 17 Assemblee games to go! No more half measures – let’s make a push for the finish with these six new contenders! Coming up in today’s exciting episode…

• Space Smuggler
• SpriteGears
• Super Treasure Ball Gasm
• The Birth of Selthar
• The Girl and the Shadow
• The Journey

For such a massive batch as this I’ll see you after the jump! Oh, and another new icon at this late stage in proceedings (which I should’ve possibly added earlier) – this one indicates a Java file which you may or may not be able to play on all of Windows, Linux and Mac. Have fun!

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Another mini-TAR today with just two more contenders entering the ring. Let’s see if they’re any good…

Space Penguin by harima555
Your cute ‘n’ cuddly space penguin has run out of food on his home planet, so he jets off in search of supplies on another world. The only slight complication is that he only has 5 minutes to do his job. Watch out for the penguin-hating locals! Use your dual-purpose laser pistol to both defend yourself and vacuum up those juicy bits of fruit. Pleasant enough; above average quality but a bit short. 73%

Space Short Bus by Bob le Moche
What we have here is a mix of Space Taxi and Gravitar including some nifty tactical ship upgrades. Navigate a series of landscapes to take the students of the future safely to school by braving inclement weather and avoiding the hostile turrets that try to stop you. Why are the turrets attacking you on an everyday school run? We’ll never know, but it’s all good. An enjoyable game let down a little by rockabilly ship rotation. 77%

You might pretend to tolerate it but no-one really likes the number thirteen. I personally shun it wherever physically possible. Thus, today we have part 13a of this epic TAR saga featuring a humble two games. Better to do half a post rather than none at all, eh?

SonnenmördeR by Jph Wacheski
Need more shmup action? Fear not! Accomplished indie Jph Wacheski has made a quite lovely entry with ZGameEditor. It shows off a variety of neato graphical effects (dynamically coloured 1-bit sprites, shaders and more). So much fun in just 59KB! This almost reminds me of a slightly less trippy and more Galaga-ish version of Spheres of Chaos. Horribly addictive – don’t miss it! 90%

Space Garden Punchonaut by Gyorgy Straub
What would you get if you combined Tetris, Columns, Puyo Puyo and… erm… any action platform game? That’s exactly right: you’d get this! Help your failed astronaut to punch marauding space vegetables into lines of 3 or more so that they’ll disappear. A unique way of playing a tried and tested classic formula. Kudos to the designer chappy for thinking it up. A little rough but nevertheless fun to play. 81%

Cripes! We’re onto the third page of Assemblee goodness! I wonder what occurs therein?

(yes, the Shine screenshot is from the TIGSource listing page… I couldn’t make one better )

Seasons of Change by Perrin
For the love of Ra… 74MB download?! This’d better be good! Unfortunately I wouldn’t say it’s entirely worth it, though the sentiment and idea behind it isn’t bad.  Visit three visions to prepare for a final sequence in this sombre platformer. The mini-stories are okay but the irksome jumping and buggy event handling make it less rewarding than it should be. 52%

s h i n e by Kazerad
Holy crap! Dark, creepy, atmospheric scary stuff here. Survival horror isn’t something that anyone else has attempted during the competition and Kazerad has managed to craft something palpably unsettling. A massive list of assets, all used in interesting and fairly unique ways, coupled with enemies that’ll freak you out… can you find the ending? Several rough edges but still very impressive. 83%

Shmuparadox by Flyweight
Can’t beat a bit of old-fashioned arcade shoot ‘em up goodness. This one takes Braid‘s time-reversing mechanic and allows you to be in two or even more places at once, as well as cheating death should you meet a grisly end at the hands of the evil invading space aliens. A pleasant way to while away a few minutes, and comes with a selection of game modes and boss fights. 77%

Snaptrix by William Broom
Are you thinking Wetrix? ‘Cos I am. One minor detail: there isn’t any water, and instead you’re just trying to fit as many layers of blocks together without (a) going outside the black border and (b) leaving blocks hanging with nothing underneath them. Tricky controls don’t make this easy, and the lack of freedom in rotating pieces left me feeling frustrated rather than entertained. 54%

Hokay, let’s get this show rolling again. My most appreciative thanks for bearing with me during the past two weeks of slacking and panicking (roughly in that order). It’s TAR time once more!

Ranger by menki
Jump into the boots of a ranger and do rangerly things like plant trees, harvest the fruit they grow and, erm, use them to kill nasty monsters. Defend the forest! ‘Cos you’re a ranger, and that’s what rangers do! Feels like a quirky combination of Rogue and Harvest Moon. Curiously enough, it seems to work. Playable but unfinished; could easily grow into something big, har har! 75%

ro9 by Crackerblocks
Controlling one character at a time is just so 80s. Fortunately Crackerblocks is here to break the mould and give you the chance of controlling 9 (!!) adventurers simultaneously! Quite simply you job is to get as many of them “ascended” as possible, remembering that each move you make is mirrored across all nine of your heroes. A simple idea implemented really well, making brilliant use of Oryx’s first-person graphics. 84%

Roguelet by Hyperlogic
Sadly, without a Mac, I was unable to play this one. Shame – it looks interesting…

Running Pandja by prof
What is this, Bleeding Obvious Name Day or something? Now, this may come as a shock, so best sit down before I tell you that this game involves a panda… that can run. Just think of it as really short version of Knytt. Explaining more about it would ruin the 2 minutes of gameplay. Barring some kooky dialogue (English or Gibberish? You decide) there’s not much to see here. Way too short… but does have an editor. 41%