The guys from vlambeer, creators of Super Crate Box, have released their new game.
Serious Sam: A Random Encounter.
An interesting take on the franchise, instead of just running and shooting, the game is built a bit like an old RPG such as the Final Fantasy series. It's got a world map and battles are sort of turn based but with action... it's somewhat hard to explain, so just have a look at some gameplay footage: www.youtube.com/watch.
Anyway, I'm quite liking the game, and I recommend you have a look at it. You can buy the game for $4.49 €3.59 £3.59 on Steam.
Well produced little gem. It really has it's moments.
Funny thing is that we tried something very similiar (mix of turn-based and real-time battle). But it never made it beyond prototyping since it was a click orgy and felt kinda blurry. I think they did a good job in bringing this mechanic to life in this game, but I'm still not convinced it works too well.
I played through it and can honestly say that it's seriously notsa-good. It's woefully insubstatantial and obscenely difficult (and not to mention glitchy). The pixels are good though - I guess that's what counts, right?
Anyway:
If you want an awesome $5 game on Steam, get Binding of Isaac.
If you want to support your fellow pixel artists (Ptoing, Helm, Panda etc...), get Aliens: Infestation.
If you want to get a good Vlambeer game, get Super Crate Box.
But just don't bother with this.
As a close friend of the Vlambeer team, I'm obligated to tell you to buy this game. Please, they'll torture me mercilessly if you don't! ;)
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If only the sprites had little 1 color shadows. As it is, there's nothing to anchor the characters to the flat plane of space they use as the ground, so they look like they're floating. File this under "lessons they should have learned by playing older games."
Very consistent art direction otherwise, with competent character design and animation.
The five second turns seem very disconcerting. Maybe they could have implemented something like Mass Effect, where you can hold down SHIFT any time to access you team/spell/weapon menu (this could slow down the game in the background instead of pausing it). In addition, you could map the commands to keystrokes.