Derek Yu from TIGSource posted about a game recently called William and Sly by a developer named Lucas Paakh. I played through it on Sunday and really enjoyed how it was put together.

It’s a platformer in which you play a fox, romping through a magical forest to reignite a series of portals for your master. Along the way you must collect “fairyflies” to enable the portal stones, and there are underground beasts you must avoid, each looking to rob you of your magical tinkerbells.

It feels like a world out of a Miyazaki film, the mood of the forest feels sleepy and ethereal, even inside a Flash player. I loved the music and sound design. For a little while, I had the game paused and the thunder sounds in the game had us thinking that the picnic we were about to go on (in real life) would be a waste. It’s a short game, but worth playing to explore the environment and have fun with the platforming controls.

Crayon Physics Deluxe is finished. I played through the demo, which includes the first two “islands” of levels. The art is gorgeous, with its Dr. Katz-ish squigglevision animation. There’re many similarities to World of Goo, but its got such unique character that it still feels like a completely different type of game. It feels like what Fantastic Contraption could be if it 1) was not a Flash game and 2) had its own unique design (FC feels like it’s set in the HomeStarRunner universe).

I played through Gravity Bone earlier tonight. It’s a first-person mission based game, similar to the Hitman series, but without most of the murder. Give this game 20 minutes of your life and you’ll be glad you did. Things aren’t what they seem. I found the music in this game fantastic, as well as the muffled, gibberish voices.

Derek Yu’s Spelunky is another one I tried. You play a cave explorer trying to get deeper and deeper into a procedurally generated cave system. It’s a roguelike that will pretty much kick your ass beyond the second or third cave.

Left 4k Dead is a browser-based Java implementation of Left 4 Dead in 4 kilobytes of code. It’s got WASD/mouse controls and dynamic lighting, too. It was developed by Marcus Persson for the 2009 Java 4k Competition.

Speaking of L4D, Randy Lundeen from the team at Valve has written a blog post about the use of “stylized darkness” in L4D’s design.

Well here’s an interesting one. Swarm Racer is a racing game by Lexaloffle where you race the clock to collect all of the gems on a maze-like map. Simple sounding game, but the interesting thing is that you control a whole swarm of bees, rather than a single space ship or something. The Z and X keys expand and contract your swarm, so in order to finish with Gold on each map, you have to use these skills to your advantage. I tried a few of the maps, but it seems I’m too inept to get anything better than Bronze medals. The levels look a hell of a lot like Bangai-O, one of the most fun, Japanesest shooters I’ve ever played. But here you’re racing instead of doing battle with a Robot controlled by a baby dinosaur.

This picture sums up Bangai-O’s story nicely:

Indie games have been getting a decent amount of press these days. I guess ever since Portal’s success last year, games like Audiosurf being distributed through Steam, and the hype surrounding games like Fez at the IGF festival, indie games are a lot easier to find and play through the interwebs. I just grabbed the demo of Noitu Love 2 earlier today and started kickin’ some ass.

Noitu Love 2 is developed in its entirety by Joakim Sandberg. A single person did all of the programming, level design, art, music, everything. This is exactly the kind of game that makes me look forward to everything the future could hold for the gaming industry. The fact that in this day and age, one young person can develop a game that’s better than games made by teams of dozens. NL2 is a side-scrolling action “platformer” that actually uses the mouse and keyboard to control your character. You use the WASD keys to move around, and to attack you just point and click. And it’s got an incredibly fun zoom-to-enemy-and-whoop-ass feature. When you point and click on any enemy, you fly over to them instantly and start pummeling them. The mechanics of NL2 also seem ripe for a Wii-Ware title. Sandberg also loves him some boss battles. Every level has at least 1 or 2 minibosses and a regular boss. Go buy this game and get ready to click really, really fast.

Here’s a little taste of the insanity:

In case you haven’t played it yet, Aegis Wing on Xbox Live Arcade is possibly the best game out yet on that platform.  And guess what: it’s free.  Me and a couple of friends played on Live for a few hours and had a blast.  The game has enough complex elements to make it interesting, and the biggest gameplay dynamic is all about multiplayer.  If you’ve got multiple people up in your game, you can join your ships up and play as a real team.  When you’re linked, your special weapons are more powerful and all of the non-drivers can aim their shots 360 degrees around the ship (the person first linked to gets to drive).  It has great achievements, too; a good mix of multiplayer- and single player-related ones.  Bottom line: awesome game.  All the more awesome considering the Live Arcade intern team cranked this one out.