BLAEO — Backlog Assassins Extraordinaire

I’ve got a few more free games to recommend:

VANTAGE MASTER ONLINE: Turn-based tactics, free download on Falcom’s own website. It has an offline single-player campaign, but despite varied level design, it’s extremely obvious that the maps are built around multiplayer (which can also be done offline, by the way), resulting in the difficulty curve being wonky and certain mechanics not being made clear. Some levels are so hard, you’ll swear the only way to beat them is to get lucky, then they’ll immediately be followed by levels you’ll beat on your first try. Also, some cutscene text doesn’t display properly on modern computers, but it’s nothing important. Still, I did manage to beat the main campaign, so I can give it a tacit recommendation for any tactics fans reading this–especially if you know anyone you can play it with in multiplayer–but I admit I didn’t beat Expert Mode. I made it past a few levels, but the difficulty curve in Expert Mode is a result of your opponent having more and more max MP than you, meaning the only way to win is to know which low- to mid-level summons can hold their own against high-level summons, and this is something the main game absolutely does not prepare you for (and no, type-weaknesses aren’t a surefire bet for this). I didn’t feel like doing a free battle just to chart combat results for each possible matchup, so I stopped playing.

ISLETS: Metroidvania, went free on Epic a while back. I’m not the biggest metroidvania fan due to the backtracking and tendency for bland level design, and there are moments in this game where you might end up fighting your way to a progression roadblock and be forced to double-back, but the game does start to pick up after a while. Some bosses have a cheap attack or two that’ll catch you off guard on your first try and require memorization to avoid damage, but they’re mostly fine. I do remember the final boss taking things a bit too far, though. The game’s base price of $20 is also a bit much, but if you got it when it was free on Epic, it’s definitely worth a playthrough.

IFRIT: SHMUP, free download on Zac Soft’s own website (LZH files can be opened with 7zip) (English patch here). If you have a high-refresh-rate monitor, you’ll need to turn on VSYNC in the options so the game doesn’t run too fast. The level design is solid and the game saves after each level, so if you’re having trouble, you know you’ll be able to try again with a fresh set of 3 lives. The third level arguably gets too crowded with asteroids, but that’s its only real issue. Once you get past that level…you’ve beaten the game, but you can keep going for another loop where enemies shoot more projectiles. I thought it’d be like Gradius Rebirth where there’d be an ending after the second loop, but the game instead started a third loop that didn’t seem all that different from the second loop, so I decided I had beaten the game and stopped playing. Still, it’s a pretty good little game, if a bit derivative, and a nice change of pace from all those SHMUPs that arbitrarily decide you have to start the whole game over if you lose too many times. It’s worth checking out both if you like SHMUPs and if you haven’t tried one yet and are curious about them.

ORBOX C: Ice-sliding-style block puzzle, free on Flashpoint because it’s an Adobe Flash game. It may take a while for the challenge to pick up, but it does manage to have a bunch of tricky puzzles. Besides that, the only issue are the time-bombs that count down in real-time instead of per-move, making certain levels more action-oriented than puzzle-oriented, but it’s still not too bad. The only part that really bothered me is how the game introduces a bunch of different types of objectives, such as “break all the ice blocks,” but only has ONE level with ice blocks where you don’t have to do that (and it’s in late-game, too). I spent way too long trying to figure out how I was supposed to break them all before I happened to glance at the HUD and noticed it wasn’t among the list of required objectives. Still, the game is overall pretty good, especially for a free game, so I definitely recommend trying it out.

The original Orbox is just okay, though it also has plenty of tricky puzzles, and I’m yet to play Orbox B. Both are also free on Flashpoint, by the way.

JACK THE REAPER DEMO: Platformer, and this is the main reason I decided to come back and make another post. See, when I went to check if the full game came out (it didn’t and never will, unfortunately), I happened to notice the demo’s original download link on TIGSource Forums had died and that at least one person was asking for it, so I decided to reupload it for that user and anyone else who was interested. Problem is, when I tried to play it again afterward, the game started crashing each time it loaded a level, which didn’t happen before. I tried a bunch of stuff (starting a new game, not skipping cutscenes, etc.), but the only thing that finally got it somewhat working was re-extracting the exact same files I had zipped and uploaded, unmodified, into a different folder, but even then: it wouldn’t load music or my save data, so I had to beat the whole game in one sitting (additional re-extraction attempts of THE EXACT SAME FILES resulted in the earlier crashing happening again). I’m hoping whatever the problem is, it’s on my end and the game still works for you, because this game doesn’t deserve to become lost media. Do let me know if you can start playing a level without the game crashing, because this has been eating me up inside for the past couple days.

Anyway, standard left/right movement and jump, and you attack with a short-range scythe that has a brief-but-noticeable delay between attacks (which is especially irritating during bosses that make you wait for their weak point to be revealed). However, some enemies drop bubbles that you can collect to change your attack (many of which let you attack much more rapidly, thankfully). It’s not unlike Kirby’s copy abilities, and in fact, one of the upgrades you unlock lets you equip two powers at once for a new combined power, similar to Kirby 64. The soundtrack–which you can listen to externally with PXTone–is also reminiscent of Kirby and is pretty good (only a few duds in the mix despite 53 unique tracks). You also have a dodge button (for around half a second, you’re locked in place and become invincible), which the dev pleads with you not to forget about…because its rarely useful. There are a few times (mostly boss fights) where you HAVE to use the dodge move to avoid damage, but each instance where dodging is required is separated by about a dozen levels where dodging isn’t remotely worthwhile, so yeah, you WILL forget about it and wonder what you’re expected to do.

Level design is generally pretty good and varied, but there are some moments where the quality dips. Notably, there are a few places that are just flat stretches with enemies, and when an enemy explodes on death, they can briefly obscure other enemies. Not too hard if you happen to have the shield power, but it’s a mess without it. On that note, it feels like a lot of the game just wasn’t designed around NOT having a power and needing to rely on your default scythe. For the most part, it doesn’t take long until you kill an enemy that gives you another power, but it can be quite hard to figure out how to avoid enemy attacks while you get there. For example, it’s one thing to have that early level where you need to use the speed-up power to get over those first few walls; that part’s fine, but some levels have short hallways where you can’t jump over the enemies’ projectiles, so there’s no way to avoid getting hit if you don’t happen to have the shield ability–oh wait, I forgot about the dodge move again; nevermind. That said, there’s one part where fireballs descend from above every so often, and you have to wait under yellow platforms to avoid them (you might also be able to use the dodge move, IDK)…but on top of said yellow platforms not exactly standing out too well, there are also flame maidens that pop out of pipes to block you for a second or two, and if they desync with the sky fireballs, you might be forced to take a hit to progress. There’s also one brief vertical shaft where you have to use your hover power to stay on an upward-moving gust-orb-platform thing, but the hazards in the shaft seem placed haphazardly, and their movements can easily result in patterns you can’t avoid (and I don’t know if you can dodge past them, either, due to hovering being required).

Oh, and the underwater level could’ve been clearer on the fact that you have to collect a few things before it’ll let you progress, or even attack again (not to mention what exactly you need to look for since the tiny sparkle effect looks more like visual flair than a clue).

The game opens with a message talking about how it’s hard, but as stated before: as long as you keep a power or two with you, the levels aren’t too difficult and are pretty fun for the most part. Even if you die and lose your powers against a kinda-cheap boss, you can always go back to a shop and spend very little in-game currency to get a power or two back, and that’s not counting other items like revive-on-death and heal-yourself-five-times items, which are more expensive but still cost way less than how much money you’ll have (the actually-expensive scythe-upgrades aren’t worth it because they’re also temporary). Instead, you’ll find out that the game’s opening message is referring to artificial difficulty: you have a set number of lives and can only get more by collecting enough of the gems that drop from defeated enemies; if you run out of lives, you’re sent back to the previous auto-save point, which can sometimes be one or two levels before the one you died at! I only got Game Over once, but having to redo the motorcycle level and the first ruins level just to get back to the chase segment where I had fallen into an instant-death pit four times…wasn’t very fun. Plus, levels themselves can be a touch on the long side, and they only have one checkpoint at best (many have zero checkpoints).

…Okay, so I’m still not great at illustrating a game’s positive aspects, and I’ll admit I’d be more hesitant to recommend this game if it cost money, but still: the amount of content you get in what was originally a free demo is unparalleled, and while there are a bunch of problems, the game is also very polished (albeit unstable) and has plenty of good levels as well. If you like platformers and can get the game working, I definitely say give it a try.