Through the Indie Looking Glass – 1st April 2007

Welcome to Through the Indie Looking Glass! This is the rather sophisticatedly yet lovingly cliché titled regular feature on the blog where we, the writers, will write for you, the readers, to read, about up-and-coming indie games that will make your eyes bleed (in a good way) or maybe make your ears fall off--though this is unlikely as they’re probably pretty well attached by sinew and flesh (unless you’ve been mauled by a dog, in which case you’re probably not that concerned about the goings on in the indie scene at this moment, are you??)

Lemmy&Binky is the only place you will ever need to go to find out about all those up-and-coming indie gems! And we’re not only talking about the kind of gems that you can match 3 of to make them disappear, oh no! We’re talking about the kind of gems that—

Scratch this, it’s not working. Now on with the games:

Addage

This long awaited title from Gibbage creator Donatello Marshmellow is top of our list of most anticipated indie games of the century.

Dubbed by its creator as “Multiplayer Mathematical Fun—With Blood”, and continuing on Don’s tradition of old-skool social gaming. Addage sees two players violently duking it out in 30 diverse arenas with every increasingly difficult mathematical puzzles, along with wise proverbs from the man himself, and promises to be the most violent edutainment title ever made. This has not stopped “The Don” marketing the upcoming release of the game to schools across the country, where he hopes to “breed a new generation of twisted and violent youths with an excellent grasp of long multiplication”.

Good luck Don, we look forward to hearing more on this exciting title!

Jill Goes Postal

Jill, the heart-meltingly lovely-yet-bland and pert-breasted lass from the hit Cake Mania series, is back, and this time she’s pissed off!

After the violent murder of her grandparents by rival cake-shop proprietor Mr. Trifle, Jill embarks upon a hate-filled quest for bloody vengeance, which will see Jill travel across America handing out terminal justice to all of her enemy’s friends and family by ever more sadistic means, before finally ridding the world forever of his disgusting apple and carrot marzipan cakes.

After playing an early beta copy, we feel the developers must be commended for the brave social commentary that runs through the game, broaching such taboo subjects as racism, incest and buggery. This is a day that Jill, and her helpless victims, will likely never forget!

We’ll keep you posted on any news about this one!

Bill O’ Reilly’s Coconut Knockout Extreme Challenge

A bit of a scoop here! Seems that Fox News presenter Bill O’ Reilly has stepped into the indie development arena, with a fun little casual game which is similar to the Coconut Shies that have entertained fairground visitors for centuries.

BORCKEC, as it’s being referred to across the interweb, is a pleasing blend of casual mouse-driven arcade game-play, and right-wing elitist propaganda that is sure to please all but the most hard-core, leftie gamers. Your task is to knock over enough coconuts in the allotted time so that “Bush the Great Commander for the Good and Just” will award you a golden button. You must win all 14 golden buttons before you will be able to annihilate all countries in the Middle East and claim all that “black go juice” for your brave leader!

In a highly generous move, Bill has revealed that BORCKEC will be completely free to download, and is even vying to get it included in the next service pack for Windows Vista to sit alongside old favourites Solitaire and Minesweeper.

What a lovely bloke!

LINUX USER 3

As the only realistic Linux user simulator on the market, the LU series is often touted as being as close to the experience of being a Linux user available. LU3 puts you in the driver’s seat of the most accurate virtual Linux box to date, and promises to be the best iteration of the franchise so far.

LU3 sports ultra-high definition 3D graphics of an authentic looking Linux terminal and desk, with amazing attention to detail (even in as far as your character’s smug and self-satisfied grin reflected in the monitor) as well as full-stereo sound of humming machines, distant tapping of keys and violent retching, this game puts you straight into the action. The mouse can be used to focus on different parts of the monitor while playing, or to look around in distain at other characters in the game, with the keyboard being used to type in unnecessarily long console commands, as well as to trigger various patronizing snorts and half-baked, biased arguments at passing PC users about how much better and more secure Linux is than Windows.

You can take control over 30 different Linux users, from the balding, overweight, sweaty Linux-head who just hates Microsoft purely for the sake of it, to the weedy, creepy Linux user who claims erroneously that Linux never, ever crashes, and that anyone who uses a PC is obviously a brainwashed idiot. As well as this, LU3 realistically simulates many different Linux distributions, from Gnome, to some of the lesser known ones like those that we’ve never heard of and can’t be bothered to google.

The game has a steep learning curve, and the user interface is very clunky, unreliable and difficult to use, while later levels will undoubtedly prove a near impossible challenge when PC users start using counter-arguments about how much of an unnecessary arse on it is to do even the simplest of tasks in Linux--though all these shortcomings are unavoidable if the game is to provide an authentic experience.

For those who are looking for a simple and arcadeier operating system simulator, this will probably not be your cup of tea.

Also, the game is only currently available on Windows, like pretty much every other piece of software that exists today.

Match-4 Match Mania Madness 4

No, come back! This is the Match-3 game that will turn the entire genre on its head. Why? It’s so daringly original it is hardly fair calling it a Match-3 game. For a start, you match 4, not 3! And you’re not matching gems! Oh no! You’re matching matches!

These matchsticks have different coloured tips. Once you match 4 of them, their coloured tips will ignite, burning all adjacent matchsticks that have tips of the same colour!

Also the matches don’t fall down from the top of the screen as, in a radical twist on the genre; they kind of slide in from the right, and wobble up and down a bit.

There are also no green matches! M4MMM4 has a shockingly original brownish colour match tip instead. Totally crazy!

There are also “power matches” which… (You were going to say: you bet they destroy all the matches on the screen that are the same colour as the match it lands on? Weren’t you?) Well, HA! HA, HA and triple HA! They don’t do that at all!) They do something completely different. They destroy all the matches on the screen that are the same colour as the match to the right of where they land!

Also the gravity goes up… and to the left! Plus you play the levels in reverse order!

Genius!

This list goes on and on. As you can probably tell, this is as far away from a traditional Match-4 game as you could possibly get without it spontaneously transforming into some kind of first-person-shooter or farming simulator or something. Awesmoe!