Aliens Kidnapped Betty

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Kongregate's newest featured game, Aliens Kidnapped Betty! It's like canabalt with more timing! It's like a generic platformer, but with a twist! Combine those and what do you get?!?!?

(A pretty awful game)

First off, let me put it out there that I am very biased here. I love platforming games, and something about removing a sense of control from a complex platforming game tears at my very being. See Meat Boy and then PETA's parody Tofu Boy for an example. The PETA devs, bless their big crazy heart, did everything right in emulating super meat boy except for the movement. The tileset layouts were the same, the sawblades, art style, everything was well above par, except the controls. Tofu boy slips around like he's made of mercury, his speed is more erratic and his horizontal jumping is too short by about a third. These small, minute differences turn two otherwise identical games into, well, a comparison of normal bacon and soy bacon. Aliens Kidnapped Betty does the same thing, it turns what would be a generic platforming game into a completely subpar experience by applying an interesting game mechanic in a place it does not belong.

That said on to the story. Betty gets kidnapped by aliens, and guess who is going to rescue her? Congratulations, you are correct, those of you who chose the obvious answer and not something ridiculous like Lisa Edelstein. You play as Mike McManly, a man with restless leg syndrome who is able to jump 8 feet high in a single bound. This comes in handy as your woman has been kidnapped by aliens who seem to not understand the danger of leaving magical doors of teleportation around town. Mike however, and full advantage of this, and uses said doors to get his woman back.

(note: none of this is actually said in the game, but I feel it was implied)

What do you do to win? press up or click.What do you do to get away from an enemy? press up or click at the right time. How about getting coins? Press up or click in the specific pattern the level designer intended. That last bit is unfortunate, because of the 16 levels I played, two of them had genuinely interesting mechanics that went along with the game. The rest were just standard platformer fare, sans everything but the jumping.

On a graphical note, I really do like the background and tileset for this game. The people look out of place, but the urban tilesets are done neatly, and the backgrounds are well done in that retro 8 bit style.

Well folks, that's my take on the game. Not one I'd recommend, but to each his own, and if it seems like something you'd like, have at it.

Endeavor

Endeavor is a platformer in which you play a dwarf on a quest to obtain a secret treasure which each of his ancestors have tried to get, and failed. Naturally, things don't go as planned and you end up in purgatory just in time to be caught between a fight between a god and a demon, or so it seems. The game has three story routes, and the endgame of the story surprised me quite a bit.

As far as graphics go, the games sprites and layouts mostly do the job, with one notable exception, albeit a major one. The main character is composed of about 15 pixels, and doesn't appear to be anything resembling a dwarf. I never would've guessed I was a dwarf without being told multiple times. The rest of the pixel work is quite nice though, it all fits and whatnot.

The actual game play consists of a lot of jumping, falling, rinsing and repeating. The is also a water section somewhere in there, but other than that, its just a lot of bouncing. If you are the type who loves hidden collectibles, there are tons of stamina improving berries scattered across the landscape.

I found that the story was far and away the main reason I kept playing the game. Collecting all the energy orbs for the god, building my stamina, finally getting to find out the secret of the treasure that my family searched for, it was all very well done and vaguely lovcraftian nearing the end. The morality system involving the demon ruler was nice too, and killing the innocents actually offered a great reward in stamina, if you so chose to do so.

I can't really say much more about the game without giving away the plot, but its definitely worth playing if you want a minimalistic story based game.

Cat Astro Phi

Cat Astro Phi is a retro top down adventure game and asteroid shooter. The game emulates the style of the classic Game Boy games, from the four colors, to the classic midi music, to the outer GUI shell of a pixelated game boy mock-up. The story is ever-present, and some of the dialogue presents itself as both a satire and an homage to the games it emulates.

The game consists of two game types, a sidescrolling asteroid shooting game and an top down game not unlike the original legend of Zelda. I honestly didn't care much for the asteroids mode, but its thankfully short and you can purposely fail it if you wish. The main game involves finding your lost cat, and collecting 10 power cells to repair your ship. Each of the three levels includes simple puzzles involving bombs, boxes, keys and three types of guns. Its simple, but its fun as hell, and the game only gets better as it goes on.

The graphic art is nicely done, the animations are simple, but they work. Like the old gameboy, it only uses 4 colors, but nothing is muddled or hard to make out. The explosion sprites are a bit of an exception, as they seem to blend horribly with all the other ground textures.

I went into this game expecting a mediocre and tedious little town down shooter, and was pleasantly surprised. The writing is well done, the art design is iconic, and the game is a tad short of the perfect length. The only real problem with the game is the poorly done asteroids mode, but even that is more bland than it is bad.

Great Dungeon in the Sky

Great Dungeon in the sky is another one of those dungeon crawling games with a twist (I seriously think straightforward dungeon crawling games are outnumbered by their meta companions at this point), where you take control of an 8 bit character, and crawl through dungeons killing other 8 bit characters using one to three special powers. The shining features and core of the game is the fact that when you kill a monster it gets added to your list of characters you can play as. This means that while you may start out as a bland warrior, if you manage to kill a cat or an astronaut, you will gain the ability to play as either a cat or astronaut.

The amount of characters in the game is incredible, and while many feel exactly the same (gender swaps, race swaps for the same class), no character plays like a cube, or an angel for example. You start out with a mere 32 characters unlocked, but all in all there are well over 300 characters.

                                                     Manticores, now with 50% more stealth!

The characters themselves don't really matter much, its just a graphic. The skills and traits are what really make them unique. There are over 200 unique skills, each assigned to between 1-10 characters, and each character in turn, can have up to 3 skills. There are skills to speed you up, make explosions, shoot guns, create ropes, turn invisible, jump high, summon an ally, cast spells and generally anything you could think possible. The most notable flaw in this system is that every skill has a cool down timer, and that every skill shares the same cool down time bar. This means that a lot of the more interesting attacks are worthless, because in the time it would take for a spell like blind to cool down, you could have swung 5 times and killed the monster. Other than that minor flaw, the skill system is quite impressive.

The main goal of the game is to slay four dragons, then fight the final boss, which is a lot easier than it sounds. In fact, you'll probably spend more time dicking around with characters like the red cube and the cucco than you will actually doing the quest. Collecting the characters in a pokemon-esque manner is more of the point of the game though, as the main quest is easily doable in about 15 minutes. There is a benefit to doing the main quest though, because every time it's completed you get one free monster unlock, which is nice as about half of the monsters aren't prone to spawning often, while others like goblins occur about every other level.

Great Dungeon in the Sky is a short and cute game where you try to kill everything in sight just for the purposes of seeing what it does, and really, what more could in want in a game?