limbo is the highly stylised game from Playdead, in which you play a boy looking for his sister in the dark and sinister world of Limbo. The black and white silhouettes provide a grim popup book feel, which when combined with the gruesome fate of the inhabitants (including yourself) of the world.

The platforming is solid and it is filled with unique and inventive puzzles. Whilst some may complain about its length, it does not overstay its welcome.

15 minutes with Limbo

Bastion is the hit indie title by Super Giant Games that has a beautiful art style and combines RPG elements with arcade isometric twin stick shooter gameplay.

The unique narrative, entertaining visual style and fun gameplay combine to make a great game.

30 minutes with Bastion–Part 1

30 minutes with Bastion–Part 2

Eufloria is an RTS indie title with a charming minimalistic visual design (both visually and in terms of gameplay), where you control a race of sentient tree like beings. However, whilst it may appear simple, tactics are still required to beat the game, taking into account what type of units each planet grows, and deciding where to build the next tree (basically the unit factory).

And award winning game which is great for coffee breaks and available for under £10 is a great combination.

15 minutes with Eufloria

Anomaly: Warzone Earth is tower defence with a twist: instead of placing the towers and defending from the invasion of creeps, you instead play as a commander trying to get past the defensive towers.

An inventive twist on the genre works well and combined with great presentation this makes a great indie budget game.

15 minutes with Anomaly: Warzone Earth

Blood Bowl by Cyanide Studios is the video game adaptation of the Warhammer board game of the same name. Due to being based on a board game, it can be quite complex at times, but does this fantasy sports game do enough to make it accessible to players old and new?

The game does have the option to allow you to dive right in, but luckily there is an extensive tutorial that lasts roughly half an hour and covers all the important mechanics, and shows off some of the humour that can be found in the game.

Whilst some people may find some of the mechanics stick a bit too close to the board game, especially with the blatancy of the dice rolls, it is the best way to run the game, and by default dice rolls are done instantly, letting the game run a bit smoother.

The main game modes are basically the same as you would expect in your typical American football game: a story mode has you start off as a poor, down on their luck Blood Bowl assistant coach, and you must work your way up the ladder and eventually levelling up your individual teammates and other parts of the team; a mode that allows you to play as one team against another in a one off match and finally there is a championship mode where you have team that you must simply win the championship with your own custom team.

There is also a multiplayer mode which still has a thriving multiplayer, so if you ever get bored of playing against bots you can always join a fan made tournament.

The gameplay is solid, as you would expect for a game that has been refined over a period of several years as a board game and two years being updated on the PC. If you wonder if a real-time version would be better than turn based, you can try a real-time mode, and immediately see why the game is meant to be played turn by turn.

Of course, which such an expansive lore to pick from, there is a huge variety of species to pick teams from, and loads of locations to play in.

This is also the legendary edition which bumps up the number of races from eight to twenty, adds more stadiums and includes the aforementioned story mode. Updates from the board game rules were also including in the new expansion.

The sound can be a bit unrealistic at times, with the sounds of steps and throws sounding a bit cheap, but the ambient noise is satisfactory.

All in all if you can take the time to learn the rules there is plenty of fun to be had out of this game, with the story mode possibly going on for a very long period of time, and with a bustling community still playing, you shouldn’t run out of willing opponents to play.

30 minutes with Blood Bowl –Part 1

30 minutes with Blood Bowl –Part 2

Flotilla is a turn based strategy game created by the one man gaming company ‘Blendo Games’ and was released back in March 2010.

The moment I played Flotilla I fell in love with it. The ship navigation reminded me of the classic Homeworld series, but the gameplay itself is brilliantly original. The art style is clean yet the system the game takes place in and its many characters are colourful and quirky, from space mad hippos to laid back cat smuggler.

You start the game with only a few months to live, and so you decide to get the old space gang back together to have one last adventure. This adventure mode is the meat of the game, as you travel from planet to planet encountering a random assortment of characters and events. This may range from a power mad deer threatening you to pay a fee or else having to face the consequences, or being hired by a mysterious corporation, whilst being paid quite handsomely to carry out their bidding. Put simply, you never know what’s going to happen next, and as soon as you finish with one encounter, you can never be sure if the next one is, or even can be, as crazy and bizarre as the last.

The combat itself, as I mentioned earlier, handles movement similar to homeworld, with the player choosing a horizontal and then vertical position for the player to move to, however, that is where the similarities end (for example, you can also set the orientation of the ship). It’s a control scheme that is very easy to pick up and feels very fluid, never being a hindrance to the actual game.

During your turn, you have three modes of travel for each ship: attack move, where you select a location and a target and the ship moves at a regular rate whilst attacking a target; focus fire, where the ship has greatly reduced movement, but gets a significant boost to weapons; and the ship can also flank, which gives a movement to bonus whilst sacrificing weapons. Once you have planned the movement for all your ships, you start the turn, where your orders are carried out The enemy also moves simultaneously, so it is not such much considering where you should go to be in the best position to attack (for example, missiles only do damage from the underside and back), you must also consider where the enemy is also going to move to, and then considering the best way to counter that movement. Of course, this only works if your opponents move where you expect them to, and whilst it is fun to see your plans spectacularly fail, predicting your enemies movements perfectly brings a great pleasure and feeling of superiority of the scum of the galaxy. Whilst turns may start of slow as the ships perform a graceful dance of death around one another, by 3 minutes in rockets are firing left, right and centre and you are hoping that your frigate can move out range of the lasers before it is obliterated and your other ships can rush under the enemy and fire a volley of missiles and destroy the battleship before it can do any serious damage.

You start with two Destroyers, which can be considered the “jack of all trades” of your fleet, however as the game progresses you may find other ships ranging from small beam gunships to the imposing battleships. Every time you win a battle, there also seems to be a random chance of finding an upgrade for your ship, which can be items such as health regeneration and speed upgrades. In what I consider to be a wise move, you can only attach two upgrades, so you can not just stack piles of upgrades onto one ship. You can also unlock the smite ability, which essentially kills one random ship during the match, but only after killing enough ships.

Sadly, after a few adventures, you do start to see the same scenarios from game to game, and the pure randomness of encounters does mean that you can be blown to pieces in your first mission. The seven month time limit may feel limiting, however there is a hardcore mode which extends the time but also ramps up the difficulty. Finally there is a skirmish mode that allows for the custom setup of matches, however this is limited to choosing what ships you and the enemy have and nothing more. If you so wish, all modes allow for a second player to plug in a controller and play along, although I have not had chance to try out this mode yet.

The sound design is good, with the game producing a satisfying chime with every hit, and the weapons produce a good solid noise with every hit or rebound. The soundtrack consists of a variety of classical pieces, which fits well in a way I can’t quite describe. However their is something about the sound that doesn’t quite engage me. One thing I don’t understand is that the crewmen of your ship speak backwards, although this may just be another way of adding to the game’s oddness.

In terms of replay value, the randomness and quirkiness are certainly enough to bring me back to play another adventure, and the highscore boards is there to give you an aim, but it is ultimately the solid gameplay that draws me back in every time.

To summarise, this small indie title is well worth your money, and if you are into space strategy games, you could potentially sink hours into this game. As a full product to sit down and play it isn’t, that’s what Homeworld or Sins of a Solar Empire is for. As a game to play during a half hour break or waiting for some files to download, this game is a true blast to play.

30 minutes with Flotilla–Part 1

30 minutes with Flotilla–Part 2

I’ve chosen not to speak during the videos, so you can see the game for what it is. Still unsure about including the games’ tutorials, as some of them can be quite long, but then it would help later on when trying to understand what’s going on.

And to celebrate the relaunch, the blog has a brand new logo!

Created by the brilliant Onlight Media!

So, keep an eye out, and all feedback is much appreciated!