EG Expo 2009: Indie Games Arcade
Is art games?
Squid Yes! Not So Octopus 2: Squid Harder
You could call Bagfull of Wrong's reactionary shmup with the silly name (apparently a Half Man Half Biscuit reference) a twin-stick shooter - if you needed more than one stick to play it. It's Geometry Wars without the restraint or the airs and graces. Your squid fires a broad arc of lasers whichever way it's facing, so you're always heading straight into danger rather than trailing it behind you, and the four levels simply require you to survive the aneurysm-inducing graphics and ZX Spectrum chiptunes for one to four minutes. Special props for the text sound effects: [Loud Missile In Flight] [Bleepy Warning Sound] Download it for free this instant.
Tumbledrop
And when you've done that, go and play Hayden Scott-Baron's Tumbledrop in your browser. A beautifully simple physics puzzler made out of Early Learning Centre sticker art, the aim is to click away the smiling shapes so the smiling star lands on the ground, and doesn't fall in the sea. It's nice to play a game like this where timing and momentum matter as much as planning and thought.
Cletus Clay
A side-scrolling action game in the classic 16-bit mould aiming for the console download services, Cletus Clay is all about its visual treatment. Developer Tuna Snax has gone to the trouble of modelling and photographing every object, character and frame of animation in actual clay, giving it the warm and tactile look of a Wallace & Gromit cartoon. The resulting tale of hillbilly-versus-alien-invasion is unlike any videogame you've ever seen. It has to be said that the control precision and collision detection suffer a bit, or feel like they do, and the rate of weapon drops needs tuning, but there's time to fix these things.
Time Kufc
And now on to the indie scene's favourite genre: the pixellated puzzle-platformer with a twisted disregard for the works of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. There were two such specimens at the Indie Arcade: the first, Edmund McMillen's Time Kufc, makes Braid look like Wonder Boy. It's a matter of re-ordering gravity, the planes of existence and the letters in a naughty word until you can solve block-and-key puzzles to pass to the next phase of your existential journey through monochrome misery and dislocation. Time Kufc's angsty style is a bit sixth-form ("He's flipping me off through the dimensional rift!"), but in puzzle terms it's a very solid slice of head-messing. Those who like their wits re-ordered should try it at Kongregate.