Physics-based shooters, platformers, and puzzle games seem to be the bread-and-butter of the indie market, right alongside retro throwbacks. If there’s at least one other thing that distinguishes them, though, it’s how darn colorful they are. Whether it’s a simplistic ZX Spectrum palette as employed in games like VVVVVV or Bit.Trip BEAT, or a vibrantly detailed masterpiece like Braid, a lot of thought and effort is put into the presentation of these games. Sometimes, though, the looks of a game are made so minimal and simplistic that they literally are nothing more than a game mechanic. In the case of Colour Bind, this ends up creating an innovative spin on a common indie game staple, but does the experience transcend the simple visuals?

In short, yes it does. Not by a whole lot, but that just depends on how far you’re willing to go.

Colour Bind is a very simple game that’s difficult to master. In it, you are a two-wheel buggy that can move about with the WASD layout or arrow keys. A (<) and D (>) move the buggy’s wheels either counterclockwise or clockwise, respectively; the S (Down) key brakes, and the W (Up) key causes your tires to inflate and gift you a bounce (what the game calls “embiggen”, which would be a neat trick for my [redacted]). Your buggy is very sensitive to changes in the terrain, meaning you can upend it easily by spinning your wheels too fast up or down a slope. In cases where you have to execute platforming-style jumps, you will want to brake first to get your bearings before embiggening your way across a gap or two; many times it’s wise to accelerate more slowly than it is to mash a direction and not let go, and before you know it, it’ll be necessary. Most of the time you’ll probably feel like an inflatable dumbell in a bounce house with a little engine that could.

The game itself is a gauntlet of successively unlockable stages. The more you play, the more you keep playing. I got to level 20 before I decided to give it a rest, but it wasn’t so much from frustration as it was from having my fill for the day, and that’s probably the best way to play this game. Bottom line, in order to really enjoy this game, you have to relax and have a healthy but modest amount of patience. Don’t get me wrong, this game isn’t a huge dick to you; it’s definitely here to show you a good time. You just shouldn’t feel like you have to rush through this game to get to the end. For all you know, there isn’t one. It could be as endless as the triple-parallax 2D space that bounds each stage, so it’s not useful at all to get frustrated over your failures. If you’re stumped, just hit E to pan out and get a view of the whole stage, or hit F to start the stage over if you get stuck. It’s even nice enough to tell you when you’re stuck by use of a color-coded “F” logo on the surface you land on.

Speaking of colors, that’s the game’s most important feature. You know how gravity is invisible to all but migratory birds? Well, this game decides to make gravity distinguishable by all of three colors, each representing either up, down, left, or right: Red, Blue, and Green. So instead of just having a pile of boxes just fall down all over itself, it can fall left or up and cause another set of boxes to fall right or down. Of course, Colour Bind throws more than just a pile of boxes at you to manipulate: you’ve got balls, bridges, columns, confetti, and even your buggy that can be color-coded to adapt to each challenge.

The way the game leverages these two sets of elements–gravitational direction and color–is through switches and lasers. Switches will either open a door or change which colors fall in which direction, while lasers paint an object a given color. Already, an myriad of possibilities should be exploding in your head right now, but the only way to appreciate the complexity is to play the game for yourselves. Remember how I said the game may as well be a neverending gauntlet? Well, that’s probably not true, but you can bolster the illusion with your friends using the level editor that comes with the game. If you’re thinking that maybe this is too complicated a game to want to design stages for, then you’re overestimating the simplicity of its components. It takes a bit of imagination, but you’re no longer limited by the conventional gravity we’ve all gotten used to in videogames.

In conclusion, is Colour Bind a fun game? Yes. I like it. It’s not the most thrilling game, but it’s not trying to be. Instead, it’s a very relaxing game that challenges your coordination, your control, and to a reasonable degree, your patience. The more patient you are with yourself, the more rewarding the game is, and it doesn’t ask for much but a good chunk of free time. So pull up a comfy chair to kick back in, have the keyboard on your lap, and laugh at yourself as you make a false move that sends you tumbling into space.

Wheeeeeeeeeee~!

The post [Review] Colour Bind appeared first on Twinfinite: Video game news, reviews, opinions, and community..

Click here to view the embedded video.

Oh ho ho, this is goooooooooooooooood.

Capcom just uploaded the very first trailer for Rockman Xover, a social RPG for the iOS, and it seems they’re pretty eager to make a grand 25th anniversary celebration out of it. At least, that’s the impression I get from all this old artwork:

Let’s get a head count: three Classic Mega Mans, three Xs, and two each from Battle Network, Star Force, and ZX. I guess they decided a red Mega Man would’ve thrown the whole thing off. Either that, or our NEW HERO won’t be swinging any sabers in this game. I’m not terribly heartbroken about it.

In this trailer we catch a glimpse of the Battle Chip system this game is featuring, which, as you can see below, is also sporting a bunch of old official artwork.

It appears as if the cards will be influencing your hit points, attack, defense, and something called “CST”, which I’m guessing is an alias for the traditional RPG magic points. I wonder if there will be more abilities you can spend CST on besides just the standard Giga Attack. I’m guessing “Yes”, based on those cryptic silhouettes of what look like armors or forms for Over-1. Whenever and however you get those, the card combination also changes your Over model’s color scheme.

Not much else to report. It’s interesting how much this trailer (and even the game itself!) just shamelessly recycles content from older, better videogames; yes, that includes the more contemporary X games. You gotta love how the trailer also starts with the boss intro from Mega Man X, serving as yet another affirmation of the fact that this game wishes it was Mega Man X. The only new artwork this game seems to be sporting is Over-1, which most people seem to like from what I’ve been reading. To me, he looks cool, but he might as well be an armor for X that brings him one step closer to looking like Casshern.

I’m expecting the new forms/armors/whatever will capitalize well on the one barely original piece of this game. Mr. Claws on the left there is looking pretty rad; Sigma from Mega Man X2 would be proud.

Sources: The Mega Man Network, Rockman Corner

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Looks like Namco Bandai is kicking off the TGS 2012 party early with this new juicy demo footage of Project X Zone. I’m truly tempted to import a Japanese 3DS and a limited first-press edition of the game just to be among the first to enjoy the privilege of playing (and reviewing) it. Life’s too short, baby, gotta live it up!

…

But before you live it up you should weigh your situation, save up cash, pay your bills, don’t drive drunk, don’t forget to call your folks and do you’re homework or you’ll be hosed GOT IT? Great! Stay fierce Twinfits.

You know what this game reminds me of? Breath of Fire III, one of my favorite childhood RPGs and beloved Capcom titles. Actually this game reminds me more of Final Fantasy Tactics, another great (tactical) RPG, but the way the camera moves and pans around reminds me more of the former. Makes me wonder where and when Capcom will decide to pimp their proprietary Dragon Man if not here and now with Project X Zone, but ah, you can only have so much. I’m pretty happy with Capcom’s Mega Man headliners, along with Devilotte and company.

Anyways, bringing down my broiling optimism for a moment, I suspect there may be too much dialogue and voice acting interrupting the game flow. However, this could be spread out just well enough for me to enjoy the meat of the game’s action without the narrative gravy overpowering it, so I could be wrong. If anyone’s played Namco x Capcom and wants to gives their impressions on the talk-to-fight ratio, feel free to leave a comment below, assuming anyone’s even reading this. I don’t care, I’ll keep writing until I’m good and done.

On that note, let me just finish by saying that I love how cool it looks to use X and Zero, but mostly X. In a sea of mostly bisho characters dual-wielding magic and absurd stabbing-and-cutting implements, it’s so refreshing to see such love and thought put into a largely basic jump-and-shoot character, especially after I’ve seen people swear up-and-down that jump and shoot characters don’t fit well in fighting game contexts or can’t compete with melee characters. If you’re detecting a faint whiff of bitterness over X getting snubbed in Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, then your finely-tuned Internet Smell-o-Matic 7800 is functioning perfectly! You should really get to patenting it before someone else does. Quick! Time is money.

Source: The Mega Man Network

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DID YOU SEE THAT UP THERE?

Stop reading this, watch it all, and then come back and tell me this shouldn’t be localized.

Don’t believe me? It’s all in the numbers:

Number 1: 16 Minutes of Pure Unadulterated Crossover Action

See video above.

Technically it’s a cross of strategy RPG and action, but who really doesn’t want to play this? There’s plenty of room for strategy action RPGs on the 3DS, let alone the gaming landscape. Especially one this expensively pretty. Another great thing to look forward to with this game is some pulse-poundingly nostalgic muzacks to accompany all the action. Few of us actually got to play Namco x Capcom when it came out, and for me that remains an unfortunate fact, but if there’s one thing we all probably managed to enjoy, it was the soundtrack. Chances are you’ve gotten your hands on it, one way or another. Admit it. I have no reason to believe this soundtrack will be any less impressive, if the 16 minute promo is any indication.

Number 2: Capcom X SEGA X Namco Bandai = Huge Star-Studded Cast

Like its predecessor, Namco x Capcom, Project X Zone is a huge party of characters ranging from the obscure to the popular. They feature a fairly even distribution of “Pair Units” accompanied by “Solo Units” for in-battle assists, working much like a typical Capcom VS game. For some reason Capcom gets one less of each unit than the other two companies (not counting the pair of original characters exclusive to the game for Namco Bandai’s camp), but it still counts out to 53 fully-voiced and lovingly animated characters to bust heads with.

Plus, you gotta love the attention given to Devilotte, a mildly obscure character from the greatest fighting game that time forgot: Cyberbots. You could make a whole game out of her and her quirky entourage, and it could be more successful than Misadventures of Tron Bonne. Which reminds me, I should start drafting that petition to beg Capcom for a Devilotte X Tron Bonne crossover game.

Number 3: Three Mega Man Cancellations in a Year + Assorted PR Bungles = Opportunity

You should be noticing a pattern with my articles.

Now, it should be noted that Capcom is neither publishing nor developing this game. Project X Zone is being handled jointly by Banpresto of Super Robot Wars fame and Monolith Software, which developed the Xenosaga series. It’ll be published in the land of the Rising Sun on October 11 by Namco Bandai, with no announcements for Western localization at this time. So, in the case of both Capcom and SEGA, the roles are as overseers rather than producers or developers.

However, would Mega Man fans really care? Especially those that were burned by, *ahem*, a few recent disappointments? I didn’t even realize this game wasn’t being made by Capcom until someone told me (and neither did Dale North of Dtoid apparently!), which I think reflects just how much non-Namco fans are looking forward to this game. Right now, with Mega Man‘s 25th anniversary looming in December, the fans are just clamoring for something good to come along and tell them, “Everything will be alright, baby; things are gonna get better from here on out.” Either that, or just a good old video game distraction.

Even if Capcom isn’t actively producing this game, they’re definitely in the position to spearhead localization of Project X Zone, because despite the fact that this isn’t explicitly a Mega Man game, it stars a whopping four (now five) heavy-hitters from two different Mega Man series: X, Zero, Iris, and Vile from Mega Man X and Tron Bonne from Mega Man Legends. Both of these series are unfortunately inactive–the former from stagnation and the latter from either betrayal or lack of interest (depending on who you ask)–so releasing something like Project X Zone stateside would be a good start to mending fresh wounds, warming up the shivering Mega Man IP for the future, and calming the bitter anxiety that seems to permeate the fanbase. Lord knows no Mega Man fan wants to be told a second time that they’re not getting a game they REALLY wanted because they didn’t want it enough. At that rate, considering the poor state Mega Man has been driven into in the last 10 years, it’s a wonder if Capcom will put out something good enough that they and other gamers will in turn get hyped for, lest the cycle of mutual disinterest continues.

“That’s terror. Terror built into the system.”

Anyway, it’s not like Capcom need be motivated to do this just for Mega Man fans. You can just as easily appeal to Devil May Cry fans and Resident Evil fans with character pairs like Chris Redfield + Jill Valentine and Dante + Vergil, not to mention starving Darkstalkers fans with the juglicious Morrigan Aensland and the demonic Demitri Maximoff. Also Ryu, Ken, and Chun-Li are in there too, which is always nice.

As an aside, I’m really stoked to see Kite and BlackRose team up once again. It’s been too long. Hey, wouldn’t it be awesome if they included Tsukasa and his Guardian as a Solo Unit assist? THAT’D BE GREAT! I love .hack//SIGN so much. And now, the moment I’ve been waiting for ever since I saw KOS-MOS use an attack called the “X-BUSTER” has finally come to rock face: Double X-Buster

I’m telling you guys: Star-studded cast, with great chemistry. Not to mention the first time X (and Vile) show up outside of their franchise and in a fighting game of sorts. No, the costume in UMvC3 doesn’t count. It’s nice, but it simply wasn’t the same, and this game demonstrates that fact quite nicely.

Now go grab these gifs courtesy of Solknight–these and these and these and also these–and stick them in your sigs all around the interwebs. Spread it around like the restless fire demons I know you probably aren’t but wish you were anyways. Cheers.

UPDATE: According to a rumor from the Project X Zone Localization Community, an alleged Namco Bandai rep stated that Japanese sales of the game may determine the likelihood of its localization to the West. Seems like an disjointed method to determine how well it would sell outside of Japan (read: useless), but perhaps the aim is to reach a revenue milestone that would greenlight localization. In that case, PREORDER THE GAME FOR GREAT JUSTICE.

Alternatively, you can keep your eyes on TGS starting tomorrow and NYCC starting October 11–the day the game releases in Japan–for any Project X Zone related news hencewith.

The post [Rant] Project X Zone Needs to be Localized appeared first on Twinfinite: Video game news, reviews, opinions, and community..

Oh, hey Iris. I thought you were dead.

News from Famitsu reveals that Iris, Zero’s sweetheart and tragedy magnet from Mega Man X4, will be joining X and Zero in Namco Bandai’s hot new “Cross series” iteration, Project X Zone. This surprise appearance of a beloved dead character reminds me of how Aeris showed up in Kingdom Hearts despite a nasty case of sword-in-the-heart. Fortunately in videogames, it’s common for characters to just get better from death in order to suit the narrative or the fan service. Zero of all people should know this, having been brought back two or three times, so I doubt he’ll be too surprised to see her. Or will he? I’m just shooting in the dark here, but I imagine the conversation will go something like this:

Strangely enough, X seems to remember Iris as “that girl from the Repliforce incident”, so either Zero told him about her sometime after X4 or we’re looking at a plot hole or two. Either way, it’ll be interesting to see how her role plays out in the game. If this gets localized, anyways, which it totally should.

Source: The Mega Man Network

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I don’t know about you, but sometimes I just want to play a game that’s more relaxing than challenging. At the end of a long week, or even a long weekend, I haven’t got the energy to endure through something like The Binding of Isaac or Star Wars: Dark Forces on Hard mode (where the difficulty lies in subtly respawning enemies, loads of booby traps, and trigger-happy Trandoshan bastards). Even all the bright, beautiful colors start to get to me after a while, especially late into the evening. But make no mistake: whether you’re hanging by a thread of energy or are just looking for a nice massage rather than full-body stretching session from your videogames, you’ll find what you want and more with Love+.

So what is Love+, and what makes it different? For one, it’s a relieving lack of visual flair. Some might count this against the game and prefer more stimulating graphics, but I think that’s missing the point of a game like Love+: relaxation. Stress-relief. An easy-going adventure that massages your brain and your eyes instead of straining them. You’ll die and make mistakes, but you’re more likely to laugh at your pratfalls than be upset about them or ragequit. This is aided by not only the game’s presentation, but also by its play mechanics. This is a very friendly game; there are no bad guys out to try and kill you, you start out with 100 lives off the bat, and you don’t need to collect coins or other MacGuffins to save your game or set up a checkpoint. All you have to do is push a button and a swirling checkpoint appears right where you’re standing. You don’t even have to be on a special platform for it, and if it turns out you don’t like where you put your last checkpoint, you can either make a new one or hit Down+S to replace the checkpoint to the beginning of the stage. And if you want some more challenge, just don’t use checkpoints at all and test your skills. You can even self-detonate to reload from the last checkpoint. It’s all good, man.

Let’s talk about the presentation now for a bit. For starters, the game makes good aesthetic choices with the Atari-esque color palette, using contrast to directly serve the gameplay. You are white, the background is black, and stuff you can interact with that isn’t part of the level architecture is also white. Hazards likes spikes, though also white, are easily distinguishable from safe objects like the elliptical bounce pads. The structures you’ll be running and jumping across range from simple and functional to artfully detailed, using negative bit space and single-tone colors to create complex-looking stages that are both easy on the eyes and a pleasure to look at. It’s a perfect example of minimalism in action, and I love every bit of it.

You might find yourself comparing this to another classically minimalist Atari-esque indie game by the name of VVVVVV, which accomplishes much of the same things that this game does in combining simple visuals with lovely musical atmosphere and a forgiving game design. However, unlike VVVVVV, Love+ occupies the same halls as classic indie titles like Super Meat Boy or I Wanna Be the Guy, where you go from stage to stage in a classic platforming gauntlet; whereas VVVVVV is in the same Metroidvania boat as Cave Story. That being said, what’s nice about Love+ is that it isn’t just an affair where you faff about from left-to-right, but also from right-to-left and top-to-bottom. It’s a great way to change the feel from one stage to another in conjunction with differing color schemes.

Love+ is at once both a cute love letter to classic platformers and a very, very relaxing game. Resembling a lost Atari title, you’ll find yourself laughing at your own pratfalls thanks to a fun assortment of death sound effects, 100 lives to burn through, and an even friendlier checkpoint system than They Bleed Pixels. All the while, you’ll find yourself flowing to the lovely music and gelling with the game until you are both one in a Zen-like singularity of loving perfection. Plus, like any good Atari classic, it’s perfect for playing at the dead of night. Go enjoy the first two levels and the soundtrack for free here and give it a vote and favorite while you’re at it. Fred “Trunks” Woods and James Bennett are counting on you to prove Anna Sweet wrong. Let’s bring this game to Steam, people!

The post [Preview] Let’s Chill Out with Love+ appeared first on Twinfinite: Video game news, reviews, opinions, and community..

Coming in hot from the folks over at The Mega Man Network, we’ve got some more details on the new social RPG hitting the iOS with the Rockman brand slapped onto it: Rockman Xover.

That’s pronounced “Crossover” by the way, and not “Zover”. Although Zover is funnier because, well, Rockman’s Over.

To bring you up to speed, Rockman Xover was recently announced for the Japanese iOS audience for this autumn, followed by a confirmation for North America and Europe at a later date. The game’s premise is set on space-time shenanigans courtesy of every single Mega Man villain ever–although only Wily and Sigma are referenced. Not surprising, considering they were the most reused. Presumably they’re merging their respective space-times to amass an army of baddies with which to take over the Earth, so Dr. Light and Dr. Cossack respond by making a new mass-production Reploid model armed with “Battle Memory”. The first model goes by the appropriately industrial designation: “OVER-1″.

The “Battle Memory” that OVER-1 will be using allows OVER models to adapt abilities from existing Mega Man characters across time, and this is achieved through the use of scattered Battle Chips you pick up throughout the game. This is how I usually procure memory sticks for my computer as well. Come to think of it, I should make a case mod for my new machine based on the OVER design and refer to its RAM as “battle memory” and memory sticks as “battle chips”. My gaming rig will not only conquer ALL THE TOURNAMENTS, but it will also compute the mathematical formula(s) for ripping the space-time fabric asunder.

Although that fur collar’s gotta go. That’s a fire waiting to happen.

Gameplay seems to consist of separate sidescrolling campaigns called “quests”, wherein you can bring your friend’s custom OVER models along to do battle against legacy Mega Man (X) bosses such as Storm Eagle, D-REX, and that claw-handed robot who looks like Auto from Mega Man 7 that guards the chest plate to X’s first armor . As is the pricing scheme for much of social gaming, Rockman Xover will be free-to-play with in-game items treated as real-world merchandise, although you don’t have to pay for all the items you can get for the game. You’ll be able to run the game on iOS devices from 3G and later, including the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, although the screen resolution is designed for the smartphone iOS devices. It will also be making an appearance at the Tokyo Game Show this month, so I’m sure all you ecstatic Japanese fans will be there to flood the queue for it.

Extra Sauce: Rockman Corner

The post [News] New Deets & Pics on Rockman Xover appeared first on Twinfinite: Video game news, reviews, opinions, and community..

For most of us who grew up during the 80′s and 90′s, videogames were pretty harsh. Contra, Castlevania, Battletoads, and Ninja Gaiden are probably the most tossed-around titles when it comes to defining the meaning of “Nintendo Hard”, but there are more examples out there–good and bad. These games raised us to endure one-hit-kills, few if any extra lives (unless you cheated), and ridiculously difficult levels filled with treacherous terrain and the most annoying bastards to ever cross your 8-bit path. I’m talking flying assholes, shooting assholes, and hopping-around assholes. They were all assholes, we all hated them, and they all ended up either building our gaming character or costing us some bloody knuckles, shattered TVs, and a hole in the wall.

In a nutshell, this is what They Bleed Pixels is all about: intense, bleeding-edge trial-and-error trials with a steep but rewarding difficulty curve. Well, here’s my first review ever! Presenting Spooky Squid Games’ They Bleed Pixels.

[Playability]

If you’ve played Super Meat Boy, They Bleed Pixels adopts the same basic gameplay of jumping and wall-sliding and adds a fun layer of kicking-and-stabbing combat to spice things up–the spice being copious amounts of pixelated blood, or if you’re Yahtzee, lots of jam. In this game, you’re rewarded with the ability to create checkpoints called Save Sigils throughout each level for executing fancy combat moves like kicking Shamblers into into buzzsaws, deflecting tiny Sephiroth posers from above with an up-swipe before knifing their little bodies in midair, and kicking things into buzzsaws. It’s worth mentioning the buzzsaw fatality twice because not only is it a lot of fun, but the game rewards you for being so terribly sadistic. You get three hits until you yourself dissolve into a watery mess of pixels, but fortunately each Save Sigil regenerates your health, so spill and collect as much blood as you can, as quickly as you can. Don’t rely too much on mashing X, X, X to stab the enemy over and over again, or according to Tak Fujii, you’ll be sucked.

You start out with a tutorial level learning your basic kick, high-kick, claw-jab, and jump-stab moves you’ll use to clear slow-moving Shamblers and other Kingdom Hearts-like baddies from your path; you can unlock tutorials to even sweeter moves as you progress, like the Exploding Fist. You also have a double-jump, ducking, and sliding if you want to speed past enemies instead, but only do so if you’re okay with not having a single checkpoint to respawn from besides the beginning. Don’t flatter yourself; you will die a lot. Later in the game, you’ll be begging for a break, even with checkpoints. Platforms become fiendishly small and slippery, preventing you from creating Save Sigils, and increasingly more and more surfaces crawl with buzzsaws or are riddled with spikes, and all of this madness combines with flying enemies that will wreck your concentration and send you screaming into a pit of pikes–for the 500th time. Sometimes the game will tease you by allowing you to collect enough pints of blood to make a checkpoint, but only by leading you into an area with slick floors where you can’t stand still to make it. Also, you’re probably down to one more hit. The only technical drawback I experienced was slowdown in the later chapters, but this can be fixed by disabling Parallax under the options. You won’t be missing much. As an aside, though: the slowdown inadvertently helps you to act and react much faster when the speed picks back up again, but it also screws with your rhythm. Other than that, it’s worth noting that there’s a distinct lack of bosses in the game, which I think is a shame, but your mileage may vary: the game’s challenge is more as an obstacle course than it is about a traditional beat-the-hard-boss scheme.

[Playability Breakdown]

[+Save Sigils][+Bloody Combos][+Kicking + Saws = Fun X Evil][-Parallax Slowdowns][*Frustrating Difficulty Spike][*No Bosses]

Cthulu's Little Murderer. How adorable!

[Production]

They Bleed Pixels is brought to you by Spooky Squid Games, the same people behind the lovely-looking Guerilla Gardening and Night of the Cephalopod. In conjunction with a foreground of simple 8-bit level assets and sprites (and suspiciously 16-bit buzz saws), the backgrounds for each of the four chapters are large, sprawling dreamscapes straight out of a Lovecraftian horror classic, or to compare it with something I’m more familiar with, Yahtzee’s Chzo Mythos. The terrain assets themselves are little more than monotone bump maps with white outlines save for the slick surfaces, and much of each stage’s surface area is covered in bloodied pikes or stubby spikes. While there’s plenty of atmosphere to get lost in with the background art, you’ll be spending most of your time focusing on the near at hand foreground action lest you get horribly butchered by a buzz saw or manage to impale yourself. Still, props for having it break up the monotony and adding to each chapter’s distinct mood.

Speaking of mood, the music starts out strong with the first chapter. After completing the first tutorial, you’re greeted with the tinny rock sound of upbeat electronica that sets a good starting pace for the game. The pacing slows down with each level/chapter, but nevertheless stays pretty consistent until the end. The music is composed by DJ Finish Him and bears a really nice retro-PC-sidescroller flavor, although I think I would’ve appreciated a bit more Mortal Kombat aggressiveness to my music, especially considering that my character is basically Baraka. She kicks, stabs, AND trips people: a shoe-in for MK.

Last, and arguably least, are the little cutscene intermissions between each chapter. Minor spoilers below:

—

Outside of the first and last ones, they’re basically the same thing: girl wakes up and finds her hands turning into claws, looks over to her night stand to find the Necronomicon, frowns, and goes to dispose of the book before laying down to sleep at the end of the day and dream of slaughtering hellions. They’re not bad, and I certainly appreciate the little scraps of story as a reprieve from exhaustion, but even Super Meat Boy’s cutscenes had a lot more meat to them.

YOU SAW THAT? IT’S BECAUSE HE’S MADE OF MEAT!

[Production Breakdown]

[+Immersive Dreamscapes][+Upbeat Electronica][-Fluffy Cutscenes][*Music Mellows Out]

Some of the levels are actually lovely instead of hellish. Still, the plants would probably eat you.

[Value]

For $10, you get a solid gameplay campaign reminiscent of classic NES sidescrollers; not big on story, but very big on action and difficulty. You also get unlockable stages that consist of a palette-swapped main character and an entirely different mood and art style to the original game. With the first bonus level, Seraphs Bleed Stardust, you control a luminous seraph that controls the same as your original character and fights sprite swaps of the same enemies against a starry moonlit backdrop. Better yet is They Bleed Ponycorns, where you play as a blond-haired little girl fighting floating lemons as an adorable little girl sings something about ponies in the child-drawn background. The third one I didn’t manage to unlock, so I’ll leave that to you hellseekers to find out. In the meantime you can unlock one of several badges on the next screen and gain keys to unlock some sweet artwork, all interpreting the game’s heroine differently; most of these you can just grab from the main site’s front page. This is all here just to serve as that little side-morsel of motivation to really dig into the meat (there I go with the meats) of the core gameplay–and if you’re really made of sturder stuff, you’ll be back for more after the first playthrough. You DO want to be an elder god, don’t you?

Yeah, me neither. I beat the game. That’s good enough for me.

By the way, the game is two bucks off on Steam until September 5th, so beat the rush! Or you can grab the game-and-soundtrack bundle for just 39 cents more on the cover price!

[Value Breakdown]

[+Solid Core Value][+Hall of Badges][-Meager Extra Levels][*Artwork Already Available Elsewhere]

This totally reminds of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. Excelleeeent!

[Reviewer Impression]

They Bleed Pixels is an addictively painful experience. It’s not for the faint of heart or limp of dicks. Whether you consider yourself a seasoned speedrunner, a veteran videogamer, or a casual commoner, you will be punished, broken, and hardened by this game. Where games like VVVVVV or Super Meat Boy are designed solely around the act of platforming, Spooky Squid Games’ entry into the hurt-me-plenty sidescroller throwback genre combines frenetic platforming with perilously-close-quarters combat, which in itself is a novel departure from traditionally projectile-based sidescrollers like Contra and even Ninja Gaiden to a large extent. They Bleed Pixels may be one of the most punishing games I’ve ever played–harder even than the unbeatable NES classics of old–but I accept it for what it is. It’s not as fun or rewarding as VVVVVV is for me, but for those of stout hearts and no sleep, it is worth the reward of being awesome enough to 100% it.

And no, I don’t know how this compares to Demon’s Souls or Dark Souls in sadism. You be the judge, you hip modern gamers, you.

[Final Breakdown]

[+Save Sigils][+Bloody Combos][+Kicking + Saws = Fun X Evil][+Immersive Dreamscapes][+Upbeat Electronica][+Solid Core Value][+Hall of Badges][-Parallax Slowdowns][-Fluffy Cutscenes][-Meager Extra Levels][*Frustrating Difficulty Spike][*No Bosses][*Music Mellows Out][*Artwork Already Available Elsewhere]

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