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%

Mushroomer by Jotapeh
Seeing the phrase “Just like a real video game!” immediately made me smile, but sadly the rest of the game couldn’t quite pull off enough to keep that smile on my face. A run and jump platformer made vaguely interesting with slidey controls and ninja rope goodness. Escape the cave before you lose all your lives or a ten minute timer expires. Competently done (nice backdrop!) and points for the rope, but a tad plain. 63%

Mushroom Stew by iarwain
Wahey, more mushrooms! You can never have enough mushrooms, folks. In this case you have to blast through a story of confusion and deception to find out why your mushroom buddies are suddenly trying to kill you. Use your crouching and time-bending skills to reach the end. Technically very good with several tricks used to enliven the graphics – sharp gameplay too, if a tad repetitive. Even has a level editor! 77%

Oh Crackers, Not Again! by The Greenest Banana
In a spicy, tangy twist to normality, here you have to protect a helpless little girl as she tries to get back home following a path which is infested with monsters. You take the part of her faithful and happily indestructible hound who can jump on enemies’ heads to stop them from being such a nuisance. A charming Flash effort but quite challenging even on the easiest difficulty. Needs more levels but still a great effort. 78%

One Pack by MrRoboman
Being a toned ace space pilot is all very well but it’s oh-so-easy to pile on the pounds in your retirement. Such is the problem Ace Fatman now faces in his quest for… okay, I have no idea what his quest is, since this game is one for the “unfinished” pile. But it’s enough to raise a guffaw at the creative use of assets. Multi-purpose flab, anyone? Throw a can or three of polish at this and it could have an entertaining future! 52%

discussion forum

GoonSwarm were founded by members of the Something Awful community and achieved notoriety for being one of the least restrictive groups to inhabit the outer reaches of space, operating under the philosophy that anyone, regardless of skill, should be able to get a taste of what life can be like in 0.0 territory. Their sudden departure from the region leaves a massive vacuum that may well trigger a widescale conflict for control of valuable resources.

No official explanation has yet been given for why the alliance has broken up in this way, but whatever the reason, it’s definitely a pivotal moment in EVE’s history.

One thing I forgot to mention in the first TAR post is that the download links will point you to the final competition version of the games – bear in mind there may also be further updated downloads! For the most recent links be sure to check the TIGForum threads.

Anyhow, this installment should be a good one, so let’s not hang around any longer. Here they come…

Bang Bang Roguelution by Sos
Holy macaroni, it’s a thinly veiled clone of Dance Dance Revolution complete with hordes of retro sprites! Get ready to mash your keyboard like there’s no tomorrow and maybe, just maybe, you can bag yourself a highscore. Includes 23 blippy tunes to savour the madness with. Steer clear of this one if you are prone to seizures, but otherwise get in there and have a laugh! 71%

BirdyWorld by Logan Ames
Billed as a “collaborative Zelda“, this has to be one of the competition’s star entries. Explore a world that has been created by other players (that includes the monsters and dungeons, too) and expand the world yourself as you go! A cool concept indeed. It’s let down by the lack of any sound or music, but the gameplay is horribly addictive despite the lack of clear objectives… 83%

Bitworld by Ivan Safrin
Imaginative use of 2.5D makes this another strong challenger for an Assemblee victory. It’s a Roguelike dungeon romp where you take either a knight, wizzard (sic) or archer into ye olde dwarven fortress in order to defeat the stompy red demon of doom which has invaded the place. Very, very smoothly done. Switching between axiseses is fun! 86%

Bleerg …
I couldn’t get this to work, so I’ll return to it later in TAR when I’ve had chance to find out why it hates me

Boulder Dodge by EzekielKnight
A single-screen time attack where you must keep the counter running for as long as possible while picking up gems and multipliers to increase your score. And, weirdly enough, there are these boulder thingies which you have to… erm… give me a minute… dodge, that was it, dodge! Or they’ll bash you on the head and make you lose, and stuff. Nothing special – good, simple fun for a few minutes. 59%

Quick note: click on the or icons for an appropriate download link, or  to visit the relevant thread on the TIGForums. Anything not safe for work is marked with a .

6nine by JMickle
Oh, good. A game packed with male reproductive organs. How original! This game isn’t just made of cocks – it is cock. Almost non-existant gameplay. In truth, a waste of perfectly good bandwidth. 15%

30 Bomb of Awesome Frags by C. A. Sinclair
“I seize my material!” Quite fun. Bonus points for nonsensical storyline. Short but tough gameplay in a style you could liken to  Meritous – navigate through a dungeon and kill enemies by charging your attacks to release bombs. 74%

87 Spiderbats go to the Inn by Sos
Points awarded for technical skill – this is a proper Atari 2600 game! Nice, but unfortunately the game itself is rather basic. Stop the dreaded spiderbats from invading your inn by killing 87 of them before you lose all your lives or too many get past you. 58%

Backworld by Juha Kangas & Anders Ekermo
An impressive game with an interesting gameplay mechanic. Guide the rabbit to the end of each screen in a grayscale world. To do so you will need to paint holes into the “backworld” to erase obstacles, reveal platforms or even reverse gravity. Good stuff. 84%

Expect more TAR over the weekend!

Jamie Woodhouse has followed in the trend set by World of Goo and Crayon Physics and decided to run a “Pay What You Want” special sale offer for Qwak. Whatever you decide to pay you’re going to get a lot of fun for your money! Don’t hang about, though… the deal ends on January the 22nd.

Normally you’d be paying £12.99 – still an excellent bargain – but for now you can purchase the PC or Mac version of Qwak for whatever you think it’s worth through  this ordering page. Marvellous!

Many people who submitted their game for the competition this year have posted the feedback they received from the judges on the TIGForums, and some of it is pretty gasp-inducing. For an event that’s become so prestigous in recent years, to see that games might be accepted or cast aside based on a one-sentence critique is really quite an eye-opener. The gory details are right here – you might have to dig in a few pages, but it’s all a stimulating read.

Of course, there’s always another side to the coin – if you are curious to know a little more about how judging for the IGF really works then I’ve got just the article for you. Entitled “Demystifying the IGF Judging Process”, Jens Bergensten (of Harvest: Massive Encounter fame) offers a considerably detailed insight into the proceedings and includes a couple of alternative opinions from Alex May (Eufloria / Dyson) and Michael Rose (editor of IndieGames.com), all of whom are judges in this year’s contest.

It seems that today is the day when the Dominion expansion for EVE is released, laying the groundwork for a most ambitious vision of player-controlled territories that include both the vast reaches of space and the planets that lay within. What I find interesting is how CCP plan to merge their future title Dust 514 – a first-person shooter / MMO hybrid game for consoles – into an existing online universe in such a way that actions taken in either game will affect the shared environment.

While the reality of this grand design is still a long way away, Dominion’s feature list should keep new and old players alike busy – it boasts a complete overhaul of the way players can control and influence star systems, gorgeous procedurally-generated graphics for planet surfaces, further improvement to the New Player Experience (that’s the in-game tutorial to you and me), and epic mission arcs for pirate factions. Should any of this tickle your fancy, check out the expansion’s homepage.

Which, in a round about way, brought me to thinking: “Hey, I wonder how many of today’s Modern Warfare 2 players would know about the real online games of the past decade that sparked everything off?” Probably not a whole lot. So I reckon it’d be nice to go back and cover some of the best oldschool 2D multiplayer games – some that time caught up with, and others that are still going strong.

As a series of posts I won’t say they’ll be done overnight – I want to at least try and be concise with the content for each game, and knowing how lazy / easily distracted / generally slow I am, it could take a while. Still, I’ll try to keep prodding myself in the direction of getting them done.

If you think you have some interesting information, historical or otherwise, about any of these games, I’d love to hear it, so feel free to post a comment here or contact me with your thoughts. Watch this space!

As I was saying – tinkering with Median XL hasn’t turned out to be a five minute wonder like most of my gaming habits, so it’s probably only right to put into words (and pictures) what has kept my interest so far…

If you have a peruse at Median’s homepage, you’ll soon see that the change list is ever so slightly HUGE. It changes all of the classes by giving them brand new skills. It adds new monsters that use sneaky AI and uberquests for tough-nut characters. It adds new gems, new runes, and “mystic orbs” you can use to create crafted items with the exact bonuses you want. There’s just a lot more action, right from the get-go… and for an action RPG, I’d say that’s a good thing