PRAXIS FIGHTER X shows pretty well both the chances and limits of following a traditional formula as a single game developer: It is rock solid in any aspect, and even good in some – but within a genre that is so rich of great and colorful games, many of them more experimental in both gameplay and sound, a bit more boldness in design-decisions on every layer might have been better – and ironically this is underlined by the very fact that it does everything it actually does probably as good as one can possibly expect from an underground game production. If you don’t mind the formulaic gameplay the likeable story, the very well polished gameplay, and the overall high quality make it a great pick for underground gaming enthusiasts and shoot ‚em up veterans alike.
arcane cache: Review to "Absent minded", a short, hard hitting hypertext story with a design and writing full of dreamlike atmosphere and some cool utilization of gameplay design for storytelling.
The Liberation is a short hyperlink fiction game done with the Twine-Engine.
The story is about a revolutionary who is sitting in an embassy, isolated from the outside and cut from his comrades since many years. He is pining to walk, and if it is for the last time, on the nearby street, knowing that this would be his certain death...
Arcane Cache: Review to Carcosa, a faithful rendition of a poem as video game.
This game holds an elegant, hypnotic beauty and goes down the path of minimalism in a bolt and consequent way that makes it rather unique – the playtime is probably around one minute. It is an adaption of a poem that doesn’t really attempt to refresh anything, and isn’t interested in re-contextualization; this is an approach that bears the risk of gliding into a uncritical relation to the source material, and of getting a bit dusty – the game plays very much like a game that was released when the poem came out could have looked like, like a forged relict from an era that predates the medium; and looking at the developer and their affiliation with goth this might have been exactly what they wanted to do.
Are you a game developer who isn't a professional, and/or do you develop games mainly for fun?
Or are you a player who enjoys to see games that done as their creator think they should be, rather than what sells best?
Finished my series about Underground Games. In it, I advocate for non-commercial game developers to define as a scene that is emancipated from the commercial orientated #indiegame scene - as things are, we are pitted among prototypes and (semi)professional productions; we can't find each other and can not be found.