Star Guard is a little, but well rounded platform-shooting game. You fight your way to 9 levels with yellow walls. The red guys are the enemies, the green guys are the good guys. Background is black, weapons white. You don’t need much more to do a pretty straightforward platform-shooter. Animations, sounds, gameplay… all nicely done and liquid as hell. At the end also some solid made boss-fights are waiting!

Inspiring little free-game. Star Guard is available to download for Mac and PC.

Finwick is an absolute lovely crafted, triple-A flashgame. In this platformer you guide Finwick and his girlfriend Pentella through different levels, in order to deliver a mail to an ecologist. It is not so much about the story, but especially gameplay, graphics and soundeffects are totally unique. Blissful game experience granted. The only word of critic has to be made about the ingame-dialogues. They are also crafted very well, but somehow the number and frequency of the speech-bubbles not really fit the rhythm of the game and they are a little bit annoying. But this is not really a fault.

The first 25 levels are available free. To unlock the whole game you will spend 5,99 dollar. The game is played in the browser and it is almost a duty to check out the demo! This platform-game was made by Small Green Hill and definitely plays in the same league like Samorost or Machinarium by Amanita Design.

I just stumbled across ASCII pOrtal. An “Portal”-inspired ASCII game, but I bet, that Portal inspired ASCII-game would fit much, much more. The 2D-game is a puzzle game, that is available for download on the CymonsGames-site. Via Superlevel I also detected an interview with the creator. Check it out here.

Time Fcuk was released. And it is abolutely brilliant. Great storytelling. Lovely gameplay. And full of details. A must see!

You can also read a little more about the background of Time Fcuk.

Time to give a bit of worship to a absolutely well made free indie-game. Beacon (.zip) is a wonderful little platformer with the most remarkable feature, that is plays in the dark. Your guide your guy through this dark world and have to follow a “beacon”, a light, that shows you the way.

Beacon combines wonderful storytelling with engaging gameplay. It maybe is a total esoteric story, about light, darkness and death. Until you see the end (no I won’t tell you, go and have a play yourself).

From the beginning of the game you feel a strong desire to reach the end of this dark world. Some moments are a little frustrating, i.e. like playing the same scene over and over again, falling into darkness, not know where to jump off right. I also didn’t liked the uncertainty, how many levels there are still to solve (like is it a mini game? A small or a large one?). A mini-map, that gives an overview about the game progress in general, would be a nice thing to have, giving more confidence to the player, enlarging the gaming fun. I also also want to doubt the replay value of Beacon. Maybe some small tricks would make this game interetings, to “play” it into more than only “one” direction?

Anyway, a great game, that should be checked out! Let’s do not forget, that it was basically made for the Ludumdare 48-hours contest.

Screenshot from Canabalt

Adam Atomic and Danny B teamed up again and created a very unique gaming experience. Canabalt is a one-button-game. You play a guy, he has to run for his life. While the scrolling is getting faster and faster, you have to push the button, in order to get the guy jump of at the right moments and at the right heights. Like the previous games Fathom and Gravity Hook, this game features only some minutes of core gameplay. But the look, the feel, the music, the soundeffects and the overall quality is definitely worth a try!

Fig.8 is an unusual browser-game, with poetry at places, you wouldn’t expect. In Fig.8 you play a bike, that drives around in some sort of classical book, filled up with “figures”. That sort of technical drawings, books used to have in the pen and pencil era. Well, there is basically nothing more to say here. Best you experience the game by yourself, because all words are wasted here, trying to describe this experience. Only one click away! So play Fig. 8. The game was made by Intuitiongames.

At Intuitiongames we also find some interesting background about the game:

At first Fig. 8 was actually called US and it was an art installation. In my junior year of college I was walking in the snow one night and I noticed some bike tracks running through the snow; an unusual scene in the middle of winter. While I walked along I noticed the two paths diverging then returning to a single unified track, it made me think about how relationships change over time how we grow distant then return.

(via)