The Download Munkey : A Link A Day ;)

Katakijin is my favourite of the 10+ newly-discovered games I downloaded featured on the list of 365 games from Games Radar’s recent article about a year’s supply of freeware/open source games (and demos - unfortunately, they don’t exactly distinguish between the demos and the rest of the other games).

Created by Ultim8, Katakijin is a side-scrolling hack n’ slash featuring loads of ninjas - you control one particular black ninja who’s out to prove himself against a host of other ninjas with his dual katanas and flashy moves.

The controls are smooth and responsive which makes controlling and watching your nimble ninja leaping and running on walls extremely enjoyable. The sprites are very nicely animated which add tons of style to the combat - your foes explode in showers of blood and flying katanas (can’t believe each tiny ninja has so much blood in him ) If you’re still not convinced, just witness how your ninja makes his grand entrance into the game below

Style isn’t the only plus point for Katakijin since melee combat is quite tactical too - mashing of keys won’t help a single bit here since your ninja isn’t strong enough to stand and duke it out with multiple opponents at a time. Mixing evasive manuevers such as rolls and dashes with your attacks and parries will ensure that you don’t get cut to pieces in the first couple of minutes into the game.

The default keys as follows:

Movement
Move with cursor keys
Tap left or right twice to dash
Tap down twice to roll (good for evading attacks)
Press Z to jump.
Hold Z when jumping towards a wall to wallrun

Fighting
Press X or C to slash with your katana
Hold C for an alternative chargeable slash attack
Press Space to throw shurikens
Block attacks with Shift. Note that blocking two consecutive strikes stuns your ninja and leaves him vulnerable to enemy attacks. You can cancel out enemy attacks by pressing X when you anticipate an attack.

Download Katakijin or read more on GameRadar’s 365 Days of Free Games. There’s another (probably older) version of Katakijin at 64digits which is pretty fun too (comes with unlimited shurikens)

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A cross between an exploratory dungeon romp and a card based tactical game (tactical isn’t exactly the correct choice of word since combat is conspiciously missing), Casey Sillito aka MrFalcon’s Loot places you in the shoes of an adventurer on a treasure hunt in a deserted underground crypt.

Unfortunately, while the crypt you’re in is strangely devoid of monsters, each level is littered with devious traps to deter greedy adventurers like you.

Each turn as your adventurer enters a previously unexplored tile, he has a chance to recover bags of coins or other valuable loot (hence the title) or encounter a trap which will deduct a point of health (your adventurer has a maximum of 3 health). Traps are always active on both explored and unexplored tiles so make a mental note of where each trap is. Mapping out each level is important since you’ll have to carry your treasure back out of the dungeon for your score to count.

Occasionally instead of loot, your adventurer may come across useful items represented as cards which can played on the spot (e.g healing potions) or stored for later use (e.g disarm trap scrolls) which help offset the strong luck-based element prevalent in this game. Up to six cards can be kept on hand at any time so forget any idea of attempting to hoard a whole truckload of healing potions

Each successive level holds more valuable treasure in larger quantities and even more traps but will you survive and bring the loot back to the surface?

While the current version is addictive enough, I would love to see an RPGish like system in Loot where your adventurer could actually increase his chances of spotting, avoiding or disarming traps upon levelling up (or entering a lower level) which would make the downward journey much more attractive (besides you would think that an adventurer would learn after falling into the same pit trap several times )

Download Loot at YoYo Games, YoyoGames Forum or fullgames.sk (older version) where I found this.

UPDATE (03 Sep 2008) : The final version of Loot with improved graphics has been posted at the YoYo Games page above. Download from the YoYo Games Forum link if you’re experiencing issues with the main Yoyo Games site. Many thanks to Casey for informing me about the release of the completed version.

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TIGDb seemed to be on a Roguelike spree several weeks ago seeing that a majority of the newly added games were roguelikes including classics like Nethack and Thomas Biskup’s Ancient Domains of Mystery (my first introduction to roguelikes. Yay!)

Iter Vehems ad Necem or IVaN in short, is a graphical roguelike which means glorious tile based graphics instead of the standard ASCII art common to most roguelikes. While both graphical styles have their charms, I’m pretty sure that any newcomer to the roguelike genre will pick a game with the flashier graphics anytime over a ASCII roguelike.

Nope, those aren’t green slimes. They’re something else.

Unlike most roguelikes which require you to deliberate on a choice of race and class, IVaN dumps you in the thick of things with absolutely nothing in hand (or in your inventory for that matter) as a simple banana-grower of New Attnam sent to dispatch a letter by taking the dangerous route through a monster-infested underwater tunnel. You have to utilize what you can find on hand and improve your skills and attributes by regular use e.g chopping your foes with a axe with your right hand improves your skills with your axe (and even your right hand).

As befits its name Iter Vehems ad Necem which roughlt translates to Violent Road to Death in Latin, there’s a lot more weapons available in this game waiting to be used on your unfortunate foes and vice versa. Futhermore, IVaN being a graphical roguelike, displays damage to individual parts of your persona with a paperdoll diagram akin to those used in RPGs to manage your inventory and equipment. White is healthy, red is bad and black is well, gone

There’s also a lot of ways to get yourself killed in this gory roguelike like smashing an potion against a wall in the dark and repeatedly stepping on the glass shards of its broken bottle until your persona bleeds to death. Or being killed by the spines of a hostile hedgehog while attempting to kill it with your bare hands. It’s really a violent road to death, isn’t it?

Anyone who has played other roguelikes before should find the keymapping very familiar A quick keyguide for newcomers to start playing. (Capital letters mean letters + Shift key)

C - Chat
> - Descend/Enter
< - Ascend/Exit
l - Look
k - Kick (useful for locked doors)
t - Throw
, - Pick up items from ground
E - Equip Inventory
i - View Inventory
r - Read (scrolls & books)
@ - View weapons skills

A word of advice for the newly-intiated, do grab a lantern when you first enter the underground tunnel with the , key since the tunnel is going to be dark and scary Besides, a lantern can serve as a club in desperate times.

Yes, indeed.

After battle (and looting, of course), you might want to head out of the dungeon back to the town of New Attnam to buy bananas to sustain a longer journey into the depths of the underground caverns or for healing any grievous injuries at the friendly village healer.

Download Iter Vehems ad Necem (or check out the TIGDb page where I first found Iter Vehems ad Necem.

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Been seeing quite a few biology inspired strategy games of late at the Indie Games blog from the addictive Nano War to the beautiful procedurally-generated world of Dyson (don’t know what it really means but hey it sounds cool :p ).

While such games inspired by biology aren’t exactly new, y Jenova Chen and Nicholas Clark’s flash version of flOw notably comes to mind, it’s interesting how games on the actual evolution of digital lifeforms are so strangely addictive.

Today I present Shalin Shodhan’s Cytoplasm, a game of intracellular domination where two different types of creatures duke it out in a violent struggle for supremacy inside the confines of a single cell. This game was previously featured by 1UP.com as one of the best 101 freeware games of 2007.

A mother cell on each side continually generates a stream of vicious little critters which gobble up food and smaller enemy creatures alike. These little creatures grow in both size and number and before long, this swarm of simple organisms morphs into a irresistance force that wipes out all opposition in front of it. The appalling savagery displayed by the victorious creatures as they mercilessly and relentlessly smother a defenseless mother cell to death really brings the chills when you think of a similiar scenarios happening right inside us whenever we fall sick

The player acts as a general of this swarm of belligerent lifeforms and dictates the direction of the campaign to completely destroy the enemy cells. Marshalling the creatures to form a solid defensive line to contain an incoming enemy assault while consolidating a massive reserve forces to deliver the ultimate counterblow, offers you the best chance of terminating all resistance in one fell swoop. It’s amazing to think that the main tenets of strategy apply even to the tiniest of creatures

The end…

Download Cytoplasm from Shalin Shodhan’s official site. A post-mortem of the project which delves into the game mechanics and possible improvements to the current game can also be downloaded at Shalin’s site.

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Developed by ALTAR Interactive and published by CENEGA Publishing, UFO Aftermath is currently distributed in Singapore by Replay Interactive under their Replaygem label at the cool price of $9.95.

Bought this game on impulse a few weeks ago and looking at the screenshots on the box, it’s pretty evident this game derives much of its inspiration from the classic X-COM series. If you played the X-COM series before and you’re thinking how UFO Aftermath compares against against X-COM, hopefully you’ll find your answers here.

The most crucial difference that you realize when starting a new game in UFO Aftermath is that the concept of funding is totally non-existent. So how do you build bases, upgrade base facilities, hire soldiers, scientists, technicians, etc? The fact is that you don’t - bases are captured not built (more on this later) and hiring of personnel is not required.

The world is divided into many territories, one which is under your control at the start of the game and the rest under alien control after their invasion in 2004 (remember that UFO Aftermath was released in 2003). Multiple successful missions in alien territory will add that region to your possession or generate a base capture mission which will then provide you with a new base upon successful completion.

Now any player who has played X-COM knows that research and manufacturing alien weapons is the most viable defense against the aliens, but without scientists and technicians in UFO Aftermath, how do you conduct the all-important R&D? Well, UFO Aftermath has abstracted the R&D by allocating bases one of four different roles - military, research, engineering and anti-biomass. You need at least one research or engineering base to start any research or manufacturing project and having more bases of each role significantly cuts down on the time required. Bases can be switched from role to role but several hours are required to change roles.

One thing that X-COM players have to note is that tactical missions spring up on the strategic map very frequently (expect to complete more missions in a week than what you normally rack up in one month in X-COM). Since your squad cannot be everywhere at all missions, you can delegate (aka auto-resolve) the more tedious or boring missions to other troops and have your squad deal with the more important or interesting ones.

The tactical missions are conducted in what ALTAR calls their Simulatenous Action System (SAS) which is essentially realtime pauseable mode. I feel that SAS makes squad based tactical games more realistic than the turnbased mode of X-COM or the realtime/turnbased hybrids used in the Jagged Alliance and Silent Storm series.

Simply tap the Space button, issue your orders and tap the Space key to resolve those orders. Want an operative to shoot two bursts before running for cover? Coordinate an assault from multiple directions at once? Easily accomplished in UFO Aftermath.

However, the combat feels slightly shallow after having experiencing other games like Jagged Alliance 2 Mod 1.13, mainly due to the lack of options - your operatives can shoot and throw grenades but that’s basically about it. The flexibility of the pauseable system for positioning and manuevering your operatives during the missions more than makes up for the lack of depth though.

X-COM players might also be interested to know that UFO Aftermath employs an RPG system in progressing your squad. BTW, you don’t have a say in which operative gets hired for your squad since the games doles them out to you on a regular basis.

Exprience points are earned after each mission and operatives eligible for promotion to the next level get to upgrade one out of six attributes which improves corresponding skills and possibly opens the chance of training in one or more specializations e.g soldier, sniper, medic, for further skill improvements.

As for outfitting your squad, UFO Aftermath is similiar to X-COM or any game of this genre in using a paperdoll system. Beware of loading your operatives with more than they can carry as they will move more slowly than the rest. You wouldn’t want them to straggle and get picked off by aliens during a mission, do you?

Also since there’s no funds involved, you can only equip your operatives with weapons scoured from the battlefield after a mission. (at least until you can start manufacturing new technologies) The base has a quite decent armoury at the start of the game with an infinite number of certain weapons and ammo like the pump-action shotguns, SMGs and pistols. Thankfully, light armour and helmets are provided which reduces the risk of your operatives getting shot to pieces during their first missions.

All in all, UFO Aftermath is a decently entertaining game (feels like X-COM Lite). The streamlined (some might say simplified) strategic game may put off some players accustomed to tweaking their bases and R&D efforts for maximum efficiency but for the rest, it should be quite as interesting and addictive as X-COM. The low price doesn’t hurt either. - Singapore players can get the Replaygem version (comes with a decent paper manual and patched to version 1.4) while European gamers can purchase it online for 9.90 EUR (excluding VAT).

Download the UFO Aftermath demo (176 MB) or purchase it online from Sprocket.

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