GAME > Mailure (Ahmed Hassan)

Mailure is a fun arcade experience, where you take the role of a naughty schoolboy who wishes to prevent letters written by his principal reaching his mother. The concept sounds simple, but Ahmed has made it anything but that. The main aim is to knock out passing postmen before stealing the letters and throwing these in the sole waste bin, all with an unnecessarily complex control system. And it doesn’t help that the ‘How to Play?’ explanation is quite awfully written. The three platform levels, which are accessible by using the tiresomely positioned ladder, make this more challenging than need be. However, the pretty pixel graphics are pleasant to the eye and the light choice of colour reflects the mood of the game very well. The letter animations are well designed, but after a while become tedious and overused; an option to toggle the speed of said animations would be nice. The music doesn’t really fit with the graphical style, but it’s a catchy tune and monotony is surprisingly minimal. Overall, it’s an entertaining arcade platformer with cute visual feedback.

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GAME > Bactoriam (Ahmed Hassan)

In Bactoriam, you play as… well, Bactoriam – ‘king of all bacterias’ (yeah). Bactoriam seems to be enraged that bacteria is considered to be a minimum bare organism. Using the Goo substance surrounding Bactoriam, you must fire bubbles of the matter, killing the viruses (while using up precious Goo), as you bounce helplessly around the arena, hoping to avoid as much harm as possible. There are two game modes (‘Time’ and ‘Score’), where you move onto the next level by reaching the required value relevant to the mode name. The enemy viruses come in a variety of forms, offering a more diverse challenge, as the game gets harder. The graphics are similar to that of Ahmed’s previous game, CrytorYan, only green instead of red. Once again, the colours are well chosen and are nice and consistent. Also, there’s an interesting bubbling effect that crops up throughout; it dramatically improves the visual aspect of Bactoriam. The music is suitable for the genre and the sound effects aren’t too loud, creating a sort of calm air, even if it is a game with explosions. From this game, I think we can conclude that Ahmed Hassan likes chemistry (or just science in general).

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GAME > Swing 2 (Liam Berry)

Swing 2 is a remake of Liam’s original Swing game, expanding the idea with much more content; there are five modes each with an online leaderboard. The aim of the game is to destroy the attacking circular enemies by colliding the small circling ball with them, while making sure you avoid losing the three lives you begin with. However, this is an exception in two of the modes, where the rules are slightly altered. The visuals are subtly improved over the original, with more panache and nicer colours. Pretty much all aspects of the graphics have been enhanced in some way. The music is extremely repetitive, but the swift tempo fits the style and speed. Overall, Swing 2 has much more replayability than the original and it’s clear more effort has been put into the development side.

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GAME > Sound Shower (EasyBeak)

Sound Shower employs a very straightforward concept, but the variety and nice-looking visuals make this game fun to play. As the music notes fall from the top of the screen in tune with the background song, you must make the faceless character stand on a button to destroy the correspondingly coloured plummeting notes. There are four modes of increasing difficulty, each with their own song, although generally, the game is fairly easy. The graphics are nice to look at and are polished well. Some nice effects are included and the whole game just seems to flow very well. The music is nice to listen to and the nature of it allows for some varied note patterns. This is a small game that’s well rounded in every aspect.

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GAME > ScattleWare (David Scatliffe)

ScattleWare is a game quite clearly inspired by WarioWare; simply, it features several very quick minigames that are controlled by either the mouse or keyboard. The fast-paced style makes for a fittingly overdramatic and challenging experience and quick thinking is an absolute must here. ScattleWare is visually represented very nicely, with an attractive cartoon style complementing the funny slapdash approach. Strangely, there’s no background music (which would arguably be appropriate for this style of game). There are a few cheesy sound effects and an amusing portion of music from Michael Jackson, however. Overall, if the game had a few more minigames it’d definitely be worth a good play.

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GAME > Fly in My Hat (Black Parchment)

Fly in My Hat is a psychedelic scrolling arcade game where you have to guide the character through a testing chamber of fuzzy walls. The slippery controls and far from normal visuals make this a hard game, even in ‘Easy’ mode. As you move from checkpoint to checkpoint, fighting the annoying pull of gravity, things get rapidly more difficult. Visually, it’s very abstract, with a blurred trail of the player and a lively screen being a couple of many mad graphical aspects. All this makes it harder to play, but more exciting too. The music goes well with the general style and graphics – yes it’s pretty crazy. There are no sound effects, but they’d probably interrupt the jerky music. If you like playing games produced by The Poppenkast, you’ll most likely enjoy the challenge.

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GAME > Bullrider (G.I.L.)

Bullrider is a small arcade game made for the Poppenkast Western competition. It’s very simple to pick up and play, with a linear objective. You must stop the bandits running off with the cattle by stomping on them and the game ends when all of the livestock have been taken out of the red circle. The graphics are nothing special, but they’re good enough not to displease. A nice effect was the leaving of a dirty trail after the bull and the bandits. Bullrider features a basic background tune which fits fairly well, but that’s about it in regards to audio. So, an extremely simple game, but you should get some entertainment out of it.

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GAME > Lighthouse (Orbic Entertainment)

Lighthouse puts you in control of a lighthouse. That makes sense, right? Okay, so the basic objective is to guide lost ships on their way to safety by shining light on them, while destroying anything unwanted that gets in the way, may it be water mines or pirates. This is done by focusing the light, essentially frying the enemies. After a while you’ll stack up a multitude of points, especially if you concentrate on achieving high combo scores. A small limit on the amount of ships that can be crashed before the game is over keeps the tension high in this fiddly arcade experience, but also makes it a tad too demanding too soon. Lighthouse is visually very pleasing, with well picked colours and consistent graphics in-game. The only graphical setback is an exception to the visual uniformity – the menu doesn’t match at all and is pretty unappealing to say the least. Unfortunately, no audio accompanies this game; I believe sound would improve the game vastly, especially in creating a fitting hostile atmosphere. But if you don’t mind silence, this game is worth a play.

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GAME > Infidels (Andrew McCluskey)

Infidels puts the player in the year 2071, where a religion based on ginger hair colour exists. It happens to be your job to electrocute the anti-ginger infidels. Holding the mouse, you fire charge-limited waves of electricity towards the oncoming enemies, watching them suffer endlessly, while accumulating points that can be submitted to the high score leaderboard. The game is very tough in the sense that you’re continually darting around the 3D playing field to avoid your health reaching zero. Although monotony has been combated with the flourishes of new enemies and a selection of power-ups, it still arguably becomes a little monotonous with such a one-dimensional method of attack. The graphical style is typical of Andrew McCluskey, with vibrant visuals concealing his limited graphical abilities. As for the music, it’s very upbeat and fits with the general pace of the game. Perhaps it’s a little high in pitch for some peoples’ tastes, though. Incidentally, the game was made for the Game Jolt ‘Shocking’ competition and came in a warranted second place.

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GAME > Constellation Chaos (David Scatliffe)

Constellation Chaos is a short yet fun yet challenging arcade game created for the Poppenkast 3 Hours Astronaut competition. The aim of the game is fairly clear-cut – the player must launch a tiny astronaut between randomly placed stars, through tracking the trajectory, forming a constellation while gaining points and avoiding wretched enemies which kill on impact. If the player misses a star and hits the edge of the screen, the game is over. Constellation Chaos is highly addictive; the ‘just one more go’ attribute encourages the player to get a score good enough to submit to the online leaderboard. The graphics come in the typical Poppenkast pixel retro style, but they actually do look good. The slightly repetitive music also adheres to the graphical style, with the sound effects following this trend as well.

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