Windows Archives - Page 5 of 9

#WeeklyGameMusic: Title Theme (Orchestral Arrangement) (Ib)

Posted on January 3, 2015 by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

Welp, I’m in the mood for a RPGMaker horror game. Here’s a pretty darn good one, with a simple but moving narrative, forgiving horror mechanic, and very likable characters. KaRASU’s rearrangement of kouri’s Title Theme does a great justice to Ib‘s use of juvenile perspective to increase its creepiness factor. Welcome to Ib‘s mystical art gallery, where the lead character’s 9-year-old innocence can’t save the gallery’s dark influence on her sanity.

Ib is a 9-year-old girl walking around curiously through the legendary Weise Guertena’s art gallery with her parents until she comes upon one large, very immersive painting. It’s at this moment that the lights turns off, all visitors (including Ib’s parents) disappears, mysterious writings starts appearing on the walls, and the paintings starts to animate and even make creepy sounds. Amidst the horror and confusion from all the commotions, Ib finds herself staring at a floor installation depicting the ocean that’s begging her to jump in. And so she does, into the prideful, distrusting, and envious world of Guertena’s finest works.

Ib is a story-driven RPGMaker horror game that is thankfully tame on both story and horror. This surprisingly well-balanced adventure involves avoiding enemies while solving very clever puzzles, and learning more about each character that joins your party. While the game is very forgiving, with a unique 5-hit-point health meter depicted by an image of a rose, the method of recovering health is very limited.

Ib is available on the PC for free. An English translation of this Japanese game can be found here: http://vgperson.com/games/ib.htm

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Sync (Fez)

Posted on December 13, 2014 by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

Do you feel the beat? Yes, that one. Careful, don’t skip that one. You don’t want to fall off of those disappearing platforms! Great, now keep the rhythm. Now we’re all in Sync, a piece by Disasterpeace from the mind-bending game, Fez.

Fez is a fairly simple puzzle-platformer with a simple story. Gomez, the lead character, lives a rather sheltered but still peaceful village whose knowledge and experience ends in 2D. Yet as a chosen one, Gomez obtains a magical fez from the village elder that allows him to travel in semi-3D. Abusing this power, however, causes the one thing that keeps the world together to break apart, and defrag across different worlds. It also crashes the game. Stuck in a progressively degrading world, it’s up to Gomez to fix his mistake.

The gameplay of Fez, as mentioned earlier, is about traveling in a bizarrely 3D way. More accurately, the fez allows Gomez to rotate the world on its vertical axis by 90 degrees. But since Gomez operates in 2D physics, the depth of the level collapses after every rotation, allowing him to make platforms align properly. While most puzzles rely on understanding how this physics system works, another set of puzzles rely on deciphering codes. When one finds a Fez code, they can input the button combination the code represents, unlocking some fun collectables. Overall, it’s a delightfully colorful platformer that isn’t very punishing, but has some nasty difficult codes to decipher.

Fez was originally released for Xbox 360 as a downloadable. It is now available for Playstation 3 & 4, and on Steam for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Temple of Rain (Guacamelee!)

Posted on November 8, 2014 by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

This week’s music, Temple of Rain, is mucho Mexican composition by Rom Di Prisco. It’s a bueno piece that makes you excitado for the majesty that is temple número uno. ¿I mean, what were you expecting, señor luchador? ¡This! ¡is! ¡The pun-filled! ¡Guacamelee!

Guacamelee! is a metroidvania beat ’em up starring lone farmer Juan Aguacate in a pursuit to save El Presidente’s Daughter (the game reveals her name only after completing it; I’m unfortunately not that bueno). He also gets killed by the skeleton Carlos Calaca within the first cinco minutos. ¡Ay! Fortunately for Juan, he is sent to the parallel universe where the dead lives, and finds a legendario luchador mask that lets him travel between the living and the dead. With his newfound powers, he heads straight towards Carlos’ base to beat him once and for all. But first, he needs to break that Choozo statue. ¡It’s importante!

Unlike the common metroidvania tropes, Juan doesn’t use weapons to fight against enemies. Like a true luchador, he fights with fists and kicks, leading to some surprisingly deep combat system. Each power he gains can be used not only to smack harder on his enemies, but can also increase his combo and reach to higher and/or farther ledges. A huge amount of focus in the game is in teeth-gritting hard platforming and gauntlets, and boy is it satisfying to get through this game’s many challenges. Combined with lots of universe-hopping, genuinely useful dodges, and a grapple & throw move that adds more to both puzzles and combat, and we have a winner.

Guacamelee! was originally developed as a downloadable for Playstation 3 and Playstation Vita. It is also available of Xbox 360, Xbox One, Playstation 4, Wii U, and Steam for PC, Mac, and Linux.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Sunny Side Up (Toki Tori 2+)

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

Wait, a simple, jolly music in this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic? What is this madness!? Yup, it’s time to enjoy an easy-on-the-ears music called Sunny Side Up, composed by SonicPicnic and featuring the Royal Eggbert Choir. I’m glad relaxing tunes and cute graphics define Toki Tori 2+‘s presentation, because the game’s puzzles are incredibly difficult. Gah! You thought those later levels in Candy Crush Saga are hard? You’ve seen nothing.

Toki Tori 2+ tells a simple tale: dark, evil matter encompasses the world, and you have to save your flightless friends and bring back peace to the world. What, were you expecting something more than that? Hey, I like this simple story structure, and how the game actually narrates through gameplay instead of giving you huge chunks of text. Anyway, Toki Tori 2+ uses a simple platformer-like control scheme: arrow keys to move, a button to sing, and another to stomp. The latter two are critical for solving puzzles, as they have various effects in the environment. Singing for example, attracts platform crabs, while stomping repels them. Using this simple system, Tori has to navigate through complex platformer puzzle without jumping once. And it’s insanely good at making your head scramble. I highly recommend it for puzzle lovers.

Toki Tori 2+ was originally released on the Wii U. It is also available on Steam for PC, Mac, and Linux.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Unreasonable Behaviour (Off)

Posted on October 18, 2014 by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

This week, we listen to yet another sad music, although it’s a rather different kind of sad compared to Gone Home. I’m also going to be unconventional, and select a dark track, Unreasonable Behaviour by Alias Conrad Coldwood for this week’s cult hit freeware game, OFF. Compared to the more popular Peper Steak — an offbeat swing music that plays during the normal battle sequences — Unreasonable Behaviour brooding tone better fits with the actual mood and narrative of OFF: dark, twisted, and a terrifying deconstruction of JRPG tropes.

Developed by yet another one-man team, OFF is a very French take of JRPG (FRPG?). You, the “puppeteer,” are suddenly dropped into an unusual world where you take control of the Batter. A quick walk leads Batter to a Cheshire cat named Judge, who politely introduces both the Batter and the player to a world composed not of earth, plants, wind, and water, but rather, metal, meat, gas, and plastic. What is there to do in such a bizarro world? Simple: do what the main character says, and purify the world from evil, first starting with the ghosts, and eventually to the violent guardians of this universe.

Much like the older Final Fantasy games, OFF uses random encounter and an archaic turn-based battle system where the party attacks after their cooldown time is over. This does mean that while selecting an attack, enemies can attack your party as well. That said the battle system isn’t exactly known to appeal the fans. Rather, it is the fourth-wall breaking story that progressively gets more complex and violent that turned this game into a cult hit. Much like Spec Ops: The Line, the player’s action is constantly in question as he or she blindly follows the Batter’s direction…and watch in horror as the world steadily loses its unique colors.

OFF is a free PC game that was originally written in French. A translated version is freely available at Starmen.net.

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#WeeklyGameMusic: Gone Home (Journey’s End) (Dust: An Elysian Tail)

Posted on October 11, 2014 by Taro Omiya

#WeeklyGameMusic: New week, new music.

Oh man! I’ve been dying to tell about Dust: An Elsyian Tail, a game made by a single Korean-American. But first, the music: from Hyperduck Studios comes a touching credits music called Gone Home (Journey’s End). Can you hear all that rain pouring from your eyes?

The game’s story starts with Dust waking up in a forest, and having a terrible case of amnesia. For one, there’s a floating, talking sword flying towards him, vaguely informing him the journey he must overcome. For another, there’s a squeaking nimbat following the sword, claiming it’s hers. And lastly, they’re surrounded by monsters. You know, a typical video game hero’s morning.

As it turns out, the game has a lot to give. For one, the game has very tight combat and platforming controls. Outside of the quick one-two-three combos, Ahrah, the talking sword, can also pull out the dust storm that sucks everything in and hit them multiple times. Fidget, the flying nimbat herself can cast magic, which combined with the dust storm creates devastating attacks. Outside of combat, the map is organized in a Metroidvania fashion. Unlocking new skills also allows Dust to traverse places he hasn’t before. And the story of Dust is surprisingly pure, which despite having only a few twists, is endearing on its own.

Dust: An Elsyian Tail was originally released as a downloadable on Xbox 360. It is currently available on Playstartion 4 as a downloadable, and Steam for PC, Mac and Linux.

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