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GAF Plays Overlooked Indie Games

D3RANG3D said:
You can throw them by pressing up+attack.
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Oh man. No surprise I had issues reaching some enemies.

Anyway, the first entry for the Oniken Level 1 contest!
zsvLA.jpg
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6536 it is. Definitely not anywhere near being good, but hey. Its a start.
 
Anyone having issues with the caterpillar boss... try grenades. Wow.
 
Added the few highscores to the OP. Gonna try again later, maybe I even get a stream to work for another try.
 
Alright, I managed to set up the streaming solution. I'll probably do some Oniken Live Streaming tonight to try getting a higher score.

One of the first streaming tries until the fight with the caterpillar:
http://www.twitch.tv/tomalexi/b/328929699

Going to do some proper runs later.
 
Alright, going to stream Oniken in about 45 minutes if someone is interested. No idea how long I'll be at it. I'll see whether I can beat the highscore. Going to post the link when I am about to start.
 
Wee, Gaf is back up. Don't think I'll be able to top Grim Heapers score, but here is the stream:
http://www.justin.tv/tomalexi

Will be at it for 30-40 minutes I think.
 
Wee, beat the previous Gaf highscore:
YmW3t.jpg
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Since I am on top of our internal leaderboards atm, I am going to try the second level for a bit on the stream.

Edit: Woah, compared to the first level, the bosses in the second one are ruthless.
 
Another classic Toma thread.
I picked up Oniken from one of the previous Indie Royale's, so I may as well participate. It definitely does retro a lot better than some other indie games, but it feels kind of small to me. The levels are just little one-two punches. But still a solid game. Love the boss in mission 3.

tTJecl.png


I probably won't be able to do much better than that. But now I can spend some time with Opera Omnia!
 
Falxix said:
Another classic Toma thread.
I picked up Oniken from one of the previous Indie Royale's, so I may as well participate. It definitely does retro a lot better than some other indie games, but it feels kind of small to me. The levels are just little one-two punches. But still a solid game. Love the boss in mission 3.
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The other levels are as good? Still havent bought it, but its sort of nice to have my playthrough archived via the streaming thing if the rest of the game holds up.

While we are on topic, any more impressions on the game(s)? How/why did you like it/what would you like seeing improved?
Personally, I toyed with the idea for a more graphical interface on the Opera Omnia idea and add moe possibilities. Love that concept, such a shame so many people ignore it due to the graphics.
 
Updated my score. Just a tip for anyone else, there is a secret life in the first level which if you can find will give you a very nice points boost.

Oni1-2Score.jpg
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I've played a little further into Oniken now and I would recommend it. If you liked the fisrt 2 levels then it looks like it doesn't suddenly drop in quality or anything. I am finding this odd disconnect with it though that the game is paced fairly quickly and you rush through rooms and setpieces faster then you would do on a NES or Mega Drive game. Falxix said it well mentioning the levels as one-two punchs when actural games from the 90s would dwell a little longer on certain game elements. It doesn't make it a bad game by a long shot, but it makes this odd disconnect at times when you are just like 'oh, was that it.'
 
One Foul Note said:
Updated my score. Just a tip for anyone else, there is a secret life in the first level which if you can find will give you a very nice points boost.



I've played a little further into Oniken now and I would recommend it. If you liked the fisrt 2 levels then it looks like it doesn't suddenly drop in quality or anything. I am finding this odd disconnect with it though that the game is paced fairly quickly and you rush through rooms and setpieces faster then you would do on a NES or Mega Drive game. Falxix said it well mentioning the levels as one-two punchs when actural games from the 90s would dwell a little longer on certain game elements. It doesn't make it a bad game by a long shot, but it makes this odd disconnect at times when you are just like 'oh, was that it.'
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Hmmm, will need to look for that life and then start another run to get my position back! :P

I think I understand what you guys are trying to say with the on-two punch, and I totally agree in terms of game length. I'd still say its pretty good value for the money considering how polished the game is and how fun and diverse the bosses are set up. But yeah, you can probably finish the game in like 60 minutes, which is a tad short. Very smart decision to give it the highscore run incentive.
 
I needed to look up the location of that extra life in the first level. Did you find it by accident? That is almost too well hidden ._.

If anyone wants a hint on the location:
It is in the biggest room of the first level
 
I found it by accident yeah, I just like slashing my sword randomly at every opportunity and one of those times I luckily hit the secret.
You can see the damaged wall as a hint, but it is supoer easy to miss. There are similar secrets on the 2nd and 4th level behind walls too.
On a related note, the 4th level is roughing me up. I can't get past it. It seems the game does step it up a notch at that point.
 
One Foul Note said:
I found it by accident yeah, I just like slashing my sword randomly at every opportunity and one of those times I luckily hit the secret.
You can see the damaged wall as a hint, but it is supoer easy to miss. There are similar secrets on the 2nd and 4th level behind walls too.
On a related note, the 4th level is roughing me up. I can't get past it. It seems the game does step it up a notch at that point.
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I read that earlier too. The 4th level seems to be a wall for many, especially the boss there. Guess I'll try torturing myself a bit too :p

I might as well torture myself openly, going to stream my tries on level 3 as soon as it finishes downloading:
http://www.twitch.tv/tomalexi
 
Noooo, need to replay mission 1 and 2 after buying the full game. Argh.
Ah well, going to do that quick on the stream first.
 
Alright, after playing this level for an hour, I finally made it to the boss of the 4th world. Anyone here who beat this guy?

Here is the archive of my 40 minutes of level 4 fail btw:
http://www.twitch.tv/tomalexi/b/329079793

Really nice to see how much I improved over those 40 minutes though.
Probably trying again tomorrow.
 
Glad to see that Oniken is seen as a good game over here. This must be a good indication for my own game Snails, that was in competition with Oniken in a video game contest and Snails took (almost) all the prizes!!
Sorry for the bragging :).
 
Limanima said:
Glad to see that Oniken is seen as a good game over here. This must be a good indication for my own game Snails, that was in competition with Oniken in a video game contest and Snails took (almost) all the prizes!!
Sorry for the bragging :).
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Care to share a link? If you are bragging about it, let me at least check it out :P
I remember a snail game from a Ludum Dare competition that I played was very well recieved. If it wasnt that, I'd love a link to play it for myself. If it fits the bill, we could use it for this thread too.
 
I got to what I assume to be the last mission in Oniken and it's pretty brutal, so I decided to see if I could find your Snails game. I assume that this game is the one you were referring to since I saw you post about it elsewhere.

If it is the one you made, I give you kudos. It's a pretty fun little Lemmings-ish game. It doesn't look bad and though I only played a few levels, it was fun trying to tweak my setup and get the medals. I'm definitely going to try the rest of the game later though!
 
Falxix said:
I got to what I assume to be the last mission in Oniken and it's pretty brutal, so I decided to see if I could find your Snails game. I assume that this game is the one you were referring to since I saw you post about it elsewhere.

If it is the one you made, I give you kudos. It's a pretty fun little Lemmings-ish game. It doesn't look bad and though I only played a few levels, it was fun trying to tweak my setup and get the medals. I'm definitely going to try the rest of the game later though!
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Yep, its the game he talked about. He sent me the link via PM. Guess he didnt want to "brag" even more about it by posting it ;)
 
Falxix said:
I got to what I assume to be the last mission in Oniken and it's pretty brutal, so I decided to see if I could find your Snails game. I assume that this game is the one you were referring to since I saw you post about it elsewhere.

If it is the one you made, I give you kudos. It's a pretty fun little Lemmings-ish game. It doesn't look bad and though I only played a few levels, it was fun trying to tweak my setup and get the medals. I'm definitely going to try the rest of the game later though!
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That's the game yes. The game was in fact based on Lemmings (a game that I loved back in the days), but the gameplay is quite different.
Thank's. We are working hard at the moment to complete the game (we're just a team of 2, so it's taking a while). There are already visual improvements and a lot of new cool mechanics comparing to that build.

Toma said:
Yep, its the game he talked about. He sent me the link via PM. Guess he didnt want to "brag" even more about it by posting it ;)
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I was afraid admins wouldn't like it. I got a thread locked out a few weeks back.
 
Finally done stage 4, that level was a bit of a nightmare. If anyone is having trouble here is a quick hint:
There is a secret life on that level, on the 2nd screen if you stay close to the ground you will notice a damaged section of wall just below the 2nd cliff. Smash that wall to reveal the life.
 
One Foul Note said:
Finally done stage 4, that level was a bit of a nightmare. If anyone is having trouble here is a quick hint:
There is a secret life on that level, on the 2nd screen if you stay close to the ground you will notice a damaged section of wall just below the 2nd cliff. Smash that wall to reveal the life.
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Ah thanks. Any hint for the boss? My only strategy so far was jumping in the area between his hands and head all the time, hitting him when he looks to the side. But that was a bit weird, is that how I am supposed to do it?

Limanima said:
I was afraid admins wouldn't like it. I got a thread locked out a few weeks back.
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Eh, it all depends how and where you do it. Usually, its frowned upon to create threads about your own game yourself. The idea is "If someone not related to the game thinks a game deserves a thread, the thread is fine". No idea what thread it was, but thats why a thread you made yourself might have gotten locked.

Other than that it is most definitely fine to name and link your game if it fits the topic, as in this thread where we are looking for smaller games that deserve some attention. It simply should fit to the thread. Its in my hand to choose the games for each week anyway, so mentioning your game definitely wont interrupt the course of the thread.
 
Toma said:
Other than that it is most definitely fine to name and link your game if it fits the topic, as in this thread where we are looking for smaller games that deserve some attention. It simply should fit to the thread. Its in my hand to choose the games for each week anyway, so mentioning your game definitely wont interrupt the course of the thread.
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Ok, thanks for the clarification.
Maybe the game will fit the thread when it's finished, which I hope will happen by the end of this year.
 
Limanima said:
Ok, thanks for the clarification.
Maybe the game will fit the thread when it's finished, which I hope will happen by the end of this year.
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If the thread still is going by the end of the year, feel free to mention the release again! Do you want to sell it? If its free or if there is a free demo, I am pretty sure we can fit it in here.
 
Toma said:
Ah thanks. Any hint for the boss? My only strategy so far was jumping in the area between his hands and head all the time, hitting him when he looks to the side. But that was a bit weird, is that how I am supposed to do it?
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You can stand on his hands when they are not smashing the floor which will give you the height to hit his head. But yeah, I can't really offer much tips because it was probably more luck then skill that helped me. I just kept moving between his 2 hands and the platform and kept an eye on its tells to know what attacks were coming. Making sure you don't lose any health on the lava climb and carrying a stack of grenades would also help probably.
 
One Foul Note said:
You can stand on his hands when they are not smashing the floor which will give you the height to hit his head. But yeah, I can't really offer much tips because it was probably more luck then skill that helped me. I just kept moving between his 2 hands and the platform and kept an eye on its tells to know what attacks were coming. Making sure you don't lose any health on the lava climb and carrying a stack of grenades would also help probably.
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Are there even any grenades in that level? I was at the boss 3 times, never had any grenade. There is this one item box on the way while the lava chases you. Does that one contain grenades? A sonic boom sword wouldnt really be worth the risk.

Thanks for the hint with standing on his hands though, that might come in handy.
 
Toma said:
Are there even any grenades in that level? I was at the boss 3 times, never had any grenade. There is this one item box on the way while the lava chases you. Does that one contain grenades? A sonic boom sword wouldnt really be worth the risk.

Thanks for the hint with standing on his hands though, that might come in handy.
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Their are 4 boxes on the forest part. 2 right at the beginning, just drop down the cliff at the beginning rather then going over the tree branches. 1 right up high in the trees, fairly early on, and 1 like near the bottom at the mid point of the level (but that one is almost always health for me). Between those I had 10 grenades when I fought him. After the first few times I stopped going for the box in the lava part, I found it too risky.
 
One Foul Note said:
Their are 4 boxes on the forest part. 2 right at the beginning, just drop down the cliff at the beginning rather then going over the tree branches. 1 right up high in the trees, fairly early on, and 1 like near the bottom at the mid point of the level (but that one is almost always health for me). Between those I had 10 grenades when I fought him. After the first few times I stopped going for the box in the lava part, I found it too risky.
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Ah alright, thanks. Will give it another try going for the grenades then.

On a somewhat related note:
sCypb.jpg
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Taking back that top spot.
 
g9e5Zl.png
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Sorry, Toma. And how do you keep getting your "SCORE" so high?

One Foul Note said:
Their are 4 boxes on the forest part. 2 right at the beginning, just drop down the cliff at the beginning rather then going over the tree branches. 1 right up high in the trees, fairly early on, and 1 like near the bottom at the mid point of the level (but that one is almost always health for me). Between those I had 10 grenades when I fought him. After the first few times I stopped going for the box in the lava part, I found it too risky.
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And there's actually a free guy a little to the right of the bolded too.
 
Falxix said:
Sorry, Toma. And how do you keep getting your "SCORE" so high?
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At least tell me it took you a bit to beat my last highscore :/

If I understand the system correctly, you get points for every enemy slashed and every crate opened. Since those are rather static, you might be missing something somewhere. The jumping enemies in the second part don't give points, so its something from the first part, but what..
 
My next pick is Treasure Adventure Game

Downloaded when it first got added last year didn't really give it a second thought, probably because of the "originality" in the games title. Gave it a go, came away very pleasantly surprised, a very quirky metroidvania, with a killer soundtrack that oozes that familiar whimsy we got from 8bit/16bit games of yore, specifically the ones developed in Japan. This is easily one of my GOTG.

Word of warning though you need to run this game in compatibility mode if you are on win7/8, and will work automatically with a non 360 gamepad, if you want to use the 360 pad use joy2key.

Game Download
http://www.gog.com/gamecard/treasure_adventure_game

Soundtrack Demo
http://robitstudios.bandcamp.com/
 
Toma said:
At least tell me it took you a bit to beat my last highscore :/

If I understand the system correctly, you get points for every enemy slashed and every crate opened. Since those are rather static, you might be missing something somewhere. The jumping enemies in the second part don't give points, so its something from the first part, but what..
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It did take me a while. I was just trying to be speedy for a while and skipping the boxes the boss left behind. Picking those up managed to put me just above you. I also do a lot of grenade spamming, maybe using those gets you less points, or maybe losing health loses points. I'm not sure.

D3RANG3D said:
My next pick is Treasure Adventure Game

Downloaded when it first got added last year didn't really give it a second thought, probably because of the "originality" in the games title. Gave it a go, came away very pleasantly surprised, a very quirky metroidvania, with a killer soundtrack that oozes that familiar whimsy we got from 8bit/16bit games of yore, specifically the ones developed in Japan. This is easily one of my GOTG.

Word of warning though you need to run this game in compatibility mode if you are on win7/8, and will work automatically with a non 360 gamepad, if you want to use the 360 pad use joy2key.

Game Download
http://www.gog.com/gamecard/treasure_adventure_game

Soundtrack Demo
http://robitstudios.bandcamp.com/
Click to expand...

I remember this launching on GoG for free a ways back and totally forgetting about it. Now's a good time as any to try it out.
 
You're an animal, Toma.

And I'm really glad you recommended Treasure Adventure Game, D3RANG3D. The sound is excellent, it really sucks you in, and the graphics are done well enough to be charming. I'm only a little ways in (trying to get the sail), but I'm looking forward to exploring more. I hope more people try it out, and this thread gets busier.

b3isil.png
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Turns out I didn't know you could kill the floor thing before the first cannon. And that's my last try, Toma.
 
Falxix said:
You're an animal, Toma.

And I'm really glad you recommended Treasure Adventure Game, D3RANG3D. The sound is excellent, it really sucks you in, and the graphics are done well enough to be charming. I'm only a little ways in (trying to get the sail), but I'm looking forward to exploring more. I hope more people try it out, and this thread gets busier.
Click to expand...

If we have 2 people recommending it atm anyway, we might just use it for next week. Hopefully a few more people try it then and come back when we change the games.

And "oh man"@ that score.
 
D3RANG3D said:
My next pick is Treasure Adventure Game

Downloaded when it first got added last year didn't really give it a second thought, probably because of the "originality" in the games title. Gave it a go, came away very pleasantly surprised, a very quirky metroidvania, with a killer soundtrack that oozes that familiar whimsy we got from 8bit/16bit games of yore, specifically the ones developed in Japan. This is easily one of my GOTG.

Word of warning though you need to run this game in compatibility mode if you are on win7/8, and will work automatically with a non 360 gamepad, if you want to use the 360 pad use joy2key.

Game Download
http://www.gog.com/gamecard/treasure_adventure_game

Soundtrack Demo
http://robitstudios.bandcamp.com/
Click to expand...

Just tried this as well. Definitely going to be in this weeks lets play. Really great feel to it. Now onto deciding the other 2 games..
 
Played some more of Treasure Adventure Game, and I am having serious performance issues, especially when it rains. Running it in vista compatibility mode, doesnt help much. Any other ideas?
 
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