When one of the best animators in the business starts creating his own game, you pay attention. Not only has Johan Vinet (@johanvinet) done spectacular work on Flinthook in the animation department, he’s also a master at pushing characters to the minimum of pixels, as well as inspiring awe with environments such as some of the stages in Rivals of Aether.
When you combine all of Johan’s skills together (and—I shit you not—he does music as well), you get Lunark, a cinematic platformer packed into a tiny resolution with highest levels of fluidity.
The Canada-based artist combines both 3D animation and rotoscoping to channel the best of 90s entries in the genre—Flashback, Prince of Persia, Another World—and brings them to unique heights with his extreme sense for stylization and animation.
After working for other independent studios, it’s now Vinet’s wish to make his own vision come true and work full-time on Lunark. To that end you can join pretty much every other pixel artist I know in supporting the creation of the next best cinematic platformer on its Kickstarter campaign ($13+, macOS/Windows).
Remember when I used to write about video games? Yeah, me neither. But the long-awaited release of Chasm by @bitkidgames (6 years in the making) gives me good enough reason to make an exception.
When it comes to platformers, I’m in it for the game tourism. I dig through the gameplay to uncover beautiful nuggets of location art that the genre so prominently features when given the right talent for the job. After Owlboy and Iconoclasts and Aegis Defenders (and MoonQuest) we now have Chasm with environments skillfully painted by Dan Fessler and Tony Redmer (Glauber ‘@unseven’ Kotaki did character/fx animations btw). It’s perfection at the highest level, but you can see that for yourself.
Now, I did end up enjoying the platforming as well. It’s fun to figure out enemies’ patterns and find the right maneuvers to defeat them given your choice of weaponry. There are plenty of the latter, which together with random(ishly) generated maps give you enough reason for multiple playthroughs. But I leave that to others—the tunnels between the aformentioned nuggets of gold are not exactly art vacation material. The constant progression of your abilities (hanging from ledges, lantern, wall jump …) did make the frequent recursive trips more interesting though.
It took me 15 hours to finish (on Medium difficulty), 4 of which were spent retracing my steps because deaths are punishing. You have to go in with an 80s/90s mentality, because the game could care less that in the last 20 years you became soft from playing narrative walking simulators. If you’ve got what it takes, it’s well worth the indie price of $20. Available for all PC systems (Steam), as well as PS4 and Vita.
It’s been two weeks since Moonlighter, the debut title of Spanish studio Digital Sun Games, hit practically every possible platform (except Switch, coming soon). You know I’m a bit slow writing news these days, but in this case I’m late because I’ve had way too much fun with the game. Between my sporadic gaming sessions, it took me 15 hours to finish the game. Now I’m now ready to share my comprehensive thoughts.
The game launched two years ago on Kickstarter. Its combination of polished graphics with nostalgic Zelda/Atic Atac top-down view immediately converted me into a backer. The game had a unique twist to it: you wouldn’t raid dungeons in your typical save-the-world RPG (excuse of a) story. Instead, you will play Will, a shopkeeper in a quaint little town, going about his business as usual—and the business is selling the loot you skillfully bring from the depths below.
The game’s cycle between filling your bag in dangerous roguelite levels, and selling the merchandise in the safety of your shop, makes sure you can barely quit the game in a Civilization-like fashion: JUST. ONE. MORE. TURN … erm, dungeon raid!
You get to choose between five weapons of pretty distinct feel, two of which you switch between in the heat of battle. Piercing the enemies from a distance with a spear plays different than throwing quick punches directly in monsters’ faces. I opted for an even safer distance with a bow, and slow, heavy swings of a two-armed sword when the baddies get too close. Possible combinations offer replayability, further enhanced with weapons that vary between normal and magical craftsmanship.
Selling your loot is also surprisingly satisfying. The main gameplay mechanic is figuring out the right prices, deduced from customers’ reactions as well as relative positioning of the items in your guidebook. The other part of the fun are simply dopamine-inducing clangs of coins hitting your purse, which lead to better armor, weapons, shop and town upgrades …
There are more nuances to the game and for its indie price of $20 it is absolutely worth it. My playthrough did lose some steam towards the last of the 4 dungeons. The enemies didn’t feel diverse (or dangerous) enough and presented the least of a challenge for my fully upgraded gear. The final setting was also the least imaginative. On the other hand, I could easily drop extra hours in the previous levels as I only glossed at the extra secrets that hide in the not-so-bottomless pits below. To prove that there’s more, in 15 hours I only managed to get a third of the achievements.
All in all, if you want to get surrounded by a warm, beautifully pixeled world, spend plenty of hours perfecting your combat technique, and count coins falling into your cash register, grab Moonlighter for your favorite platform from the game’s website. Highly recommended.
The moment has come; we finally know quite a bit more about Robotality’s next game Pathway. Its hybrid pixel/voxel engine has been fascinating me since the game’s announcement two summers ago, with dynamic lighting unlike anything we’ve seen before in seemingly pixel-perfect style. The game’s first trailer (as well as the marketing bullet points) put this into the forefront, and I can hardly wait to experience the passing of time in a more calmed-down setting while immersed in the game.
A few things immediately jump into my mind: Indiana Jones, Curious Expedition, and Jagged Alliance. The pre-World-War-II-Nazi vibe could hardly be more reminiscent of George Lucas/Steven Spielberg’s favorite archeologist, whereas the board game overworld navigation with narrative intermissions remind me of physical Eurogames—not surprising, since both Maschinen-Mensch and Robotality come from Germany. Finally, we can only hope that the character-driven turn-based combat will be as good as in one of the best tactical strategy games of the DOS era.
It makes me chuckle (oh god) that we’ll be getting two turn-based epics from Chucklefish now, as they took on the publishing duties for Pathway. This puts the 20th-century adventure on the same excitement hype train as Chucklefish’s medieval/fantasy Wargroove, which means 2018 is gearing up to be a spectacular year for turn-based strategies in the world of pixel art.
