Writer Mike Walbridge’s goal: play every Molyjam game and tell you about as many as he can. Want to know more? Click here.
246: Friends ’til the end: “You play as a small boy with a remote control helicoptor that is alive and your friend, then you discover a nuclear missle inside it”
The controls and movement abilities in this game need some tweaking, but the Game Over screen alone is a good reason to play this game. It’s also one of the most distinctive games. You have to delicately move a helicopter with a nuclear bomb in it? This is so dark and gritty, and you’d never see this one on Xbox Live. The challenge is frustrating, but at least there’s that screen. READ MORE
A Valley Without Wind is a unique game and is almost entirely procedurally generated, which means the areas in the game are created randomly. An apocalyptic event has left the world shattered, broken, and untamed, with survivors scattered. Monsters are on the Earth and you are trying to overthrow the Overlord that rules the planet. READ MORE
Writer Mike Walbridge’s goal: play every Molyjam game and tell you about them. Want to know more? Click here.
262: Molydeuxsa:“A survival horror game where the enemies can only be seen in mirrors? Could add more depth by having dirty mirrors that need to be cleaned?”
You are a window-washer trying to defeat Medusa. You defeat her by swinging a sword at her, and you can see her inside of washed windows. But all the windows are dirty! READ MORE
Writer Mike Walbridge’s goal: play every Molyjam game and tell you about them. Want to know more? Click here.
286: When Doves Cry:“You are a Pigeon who must go around the city trying to persuade business men not to jump off buildings by retrieving items from their home.”
This game truly does let you fly around the city, retrieving items to give to suicidal men on top of buildings and bridges, all during a serious, piano-plink-filled soundtrack. It’s particularly touching, as the items vary and each man says something different upon meeting you (and again when you give him his personal item to change his mind). Items include a watch, a wedding ring, a bible, a knife, a novel, and a letter. Each has a story to it. READ MORE
Writer Mike Walbridge’s goal: play every Molyjam game and tell you about them. Want to know more? Click here.
297: The Molydeuxds: This game represents a conglomeration of some of Molydeux’s worst ideas. There is a big, Populous-style map. I killed all of one tribe and nothing happened, and didn’t have the patience to eat the rest of them. Each character is supposed to represent a person. READ MORE
March 30th through April 1st marked the worldwide, multi-location game jam What Would Molydeux?, wherein participants design and make games based on the crazy tweets and musings of PeterMolydeux, a Twitterer that suggests radical game design ideas in a ramped-up style of impersonating Peter Molyneux.
The general consensus I’m seeing is that if you actually went to the jam and got to make something, it was fun. The games themselves are a lot to slog through. By my count, there are 242 different games listed in the 291-item list. In reverse order, I intend to play all of those games and give my impressions. READ MORE
If you played the original MDK 2, this is a carbon copy of the original with better graphics. If you haven’t played MDK 2, you’re not alone, as it is an 11-year old game that was tough to find at its release on Dreamcast and PC. So is it worth playing now? READ MORE
The Binding of Isaac is made by one of the guys who made Super Meat Boy, Edmund McMillen. Where the latter was a tribute to Super Mario Bros. and platforming, the former is a tribute to the original 8-bit Legend of Zelda. Instead of intensely-difficult levels you have infinite tries to beat to progress through, there are only six randomly-generated levels, and when you die, you have to restart. READ MORE
Orcs Must Die! is an action tower defense game where you play as a recently slain warmage’s apprentice, charged with defending valuable castles and keeps. The apprentice both sets the towers and traps and engages in combat personally, in the midst of the fray. There are very few other games with this formula (like Lock’s Quest, Trenched and Sanctum) and there are a lot of things that can go wrong in a game like this. It’s difficult to find tower defense games that are appropriately balanced, challenging, and controlled. It seems most either have an unfriendly interface or towers that worthless and a handful that you can stick with consistently. READ MORE
Like any other year, 2011 is a big one for shooters. Intensely anticipated but not as famous as this year’s “three 3s” is Red Orchestra 2, a sequel that has been at least half a decade in the making. World War II shooters seem to have fallen out of style and AAA-budgeted, squad-based, console-port-friendly titles with marines both modern and future are still the rage right now. But for those who never wanted to go away from older weaponry, Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad fills a niche that has been unsatisified for quite some time. READ MORE
