10KGaming

That red button is a puzzle platformer which features quite a special mechanic. Your goal is to get to and press That red button. You do that by copying the movement of non-organic objects in your viscinity.

Picture 1: Title screen

Copying movement

The mechanic, around which the game is built. How it works? You use your mouse to locate and click on the object whose movement you want to copy and it creates a link between you and respected object, causing you to move like it does. This can get quite tricky. Especially when you want to reach rooms that are far away.

Picture 2: Copying movement

Slow cursor

It’s much different from using your mouse. The game forces you to move at a given pace, which can feel unnatural at times and way too slow, causing some levels to be more difficult, than they should have been.

Boss fights

Every few levels, there is a boss level. Basically just like any other level, just that the objective is to defeat a boss and not to exit through the door. They are well designed and quite hard to complete. And the way bosses talk with you makes them really amusing. Other than that, just look at that pixel art. It’s really nice. Big thumbs up.

Picture 3: The first boss fight

Death

This game treats death like it didn’t even happen. The only thing that changes is your position. You get to keep all screws, all levers are pressed, and the like. This gives you the option of exploiting the game quite easily.  Did you go through a really hard sequence to get to that switch? No problem. Just kill yourself and it’s still all good. 

Easter eggs

From time to time you see a person lying around.These are called “Easter eggs” and can be quite hard to collect. Besides, they really aren’t worth the hassle, since you get basically nothing from it. If they gave you any real benefit, maybe then I’d collect more than one.

Quite long

The game features 36 levels, plus 7 bonus levels. To play them all through , you need a long time and they feature little innovation, making them all feel kind of the same. I played them slow and tried to collect all of the screws and it took me about 3 hours. 

Features I would add/remove

A real death: I get the checkpoints, but they should record all game data and if the player should die, they would make everything the way it was before the player activated the check point (removes the possible exploit)

A real mute: While this is probably just a bug, the game should produce no sound when Sound and Music is turned off.

Enter door using Space: Well this is just something that bugged me. I sometimes got to the door without collecting all the screws and the level just ended. Had to do it all over again.

Easter egg rewards: Let me play as that character or something, don’t just give me it’s picture and call it an Easter egg.

Overall the game is quite solid. It has many funny moments, but some of them are dull aswell. The art looks nice. All the pixels give it a retro look (That’s so in these days). Other than the core mechanic, it brings no novelty to the table. Anyway, if you like platformers and puzzles you definitely check this one out. 

Fleo is a two player game with no option of single player. It’s set in medieval times where you control a knight in a duel with flails. The only way to win said duel is to push your opponent into the spikes behind him.

You can do that by hitting him with your flail, or by furiously mashing the “Headbutt key”. Man does that bring back memories...

Picture 1: Title screen

Combat system Combat is very simple. Change the rotational direction of your flail and try to hit your opponent, while avoiding being hit yourself. It’s this very concept that makes the game so much fun. It kinda feels like trying to dodge that fiery death in Super Mario Bros. And don’t get me started on headbutting. I mean button mashing? I haven’t done that since I was a kid. Perhaps that’s why this was entertaining.

What is that percentage though? There is absolutely no explanation. Given that you’re forced to see the tutorial every time you play, i think this could at least be explained once. After some experimenting though I found out that it’s some sort of a flail modifier. Basically the higher the percentage, the further you’ll be pushed away.

Picture 2: Rocks falling from the sky

Giant rocks from the sky I mean ... seriously? I guess the catapults must be launching them, but why are they square? And why do they only stun the character momentarily? And why would the king even order the catapults to fire rocks at the competitors? I really don’t know. I’ll leave this one for you to decide.

Art The art is quite charming. It’s minimalism really emphasises the simplicity of the game. The colors are vibrant, the music sounds happy. All in all, nice. Too bad it was too focused on the tournament screen. The main menu, for example, just looks empty.

Picture 3: Main menu

Bug count: Two.

You can’t exit the game once you press Enter in the title screen.

The game supposedly takes care of both azerty and qwerty users... and it does, just not in the character select.

The game was in Development Build when I tried it out though, so the lack of polish can be forgiven.

Features I would add/remove:

A mute button for sure: I know for a fact that many people prefer to play games muted and just listen to their own music.

Key bindings: Why make it “optimized” for azerty and qwerty only, when this allows users to create their own optimized layouts.

Lose the blood: Or at least give the player the ability to turn it off. I personally found it off putting. The game just doesn’t feel like there should be any blood involved in it.

Many extra features would ruin the game: My list of features is sparse, because any added features would probably just remove the simplicity of the game, which is what makes it so fun.

Even though the game has no context, and may be lacking in some departments, I have one thing to say: “The king may not be entertained, but I sure as hell am.”

I give it an 7/10

Codename Arrow is all about speed. Your goal is to swipe in the direction the arrow on the screen is showing. Every arrow awards you some points and extra time.

It doesn’t look like much. It’s interface is simple and truly not the prettiest, but it does the job. The game’s font used for score and text is a basic one, whereas the font on the arrows looks custom made. This causes a lot of inconsistency and it just confuses the player.

Picture 1: Start screen

Swipe down and you’re stuck with the tutorial. It’s great that it even features the tutorial, but it’s way too long and there’s no way to quit it. The game really isn’t that complicated for such a tutorial. 

Green: Do it! 

Red: Do the oposite!

That’s it.

Once you get into the game big circles start appearing. Each with it’s rule of where you must swipe. Swipe left, swipe right, swipe up and down. Game Over. Press “R”?!?  So you just played the entire game using your mouse and all of the sudden the game forces you to press R? It breaks the flow of the game and just doesn’t make sense.

I like the fact that the score gets recorded and a leaderboard is kept. It creates some sort of competition and an extra reward if you do especially well.

Features I would add/remove:

Using the same font for everything: This one isn’t that hard. You can get some great fonts for free and the game would simply look better if it used one font for everything.

Combo indicator: The game uses a hidden combo counter. The more correct swipes in a row you do, the more points each swipe awards you. It would be great if the player knew that.

Combo decay: Now you only lose combo if you fail to swipe correctly. I would make it so that you could lose it by not swiping for too long aswell.

Keyboard support: Using WASD keys instead of swiping

Overall I don’t think this game deserves more than 10K plays.  The game has some replayability, because you can strive for a better score, but after playing it a few times, it loses it’s charm.

I think it would fit mobile devices much better than it does PCs. It’s a game meant to be played if you have a few spare minutes. 

I give it a 3/10.   

Through the Woods is randomly generated platformer, where your only purpose is to travel an unspecified amount of steps forward.

You start in a forest with a fire burning along side us. No story, no explanation, no nothing. To the left you see some dotted line and a red bar. Now what? You start moving using WASD keys.

Picture 1: The starting zone

Luckily the path you’re supposed to take is indicated by the cleverly positioned trees. After exiting the spawn zone, the random generation algorithm takes place.

So forward you shall travel. Suddenly you hear a sound nearly piercing your ear drums. *BEEP*. Shrugging it off you go forward. *BEEP* there it is again and it repeats every time the game generates a new line of terrain. And now you encounter our first problem. Getting stuck. Soon you find out that backtracking is prohibited and you’re forced to bump into trees and rocks to somehow destroy them while lowering our red bar, which makes it obvious that it gauges HP.  As if that weren’t enough, the sound it makes when you bump into things makes it all the more punishing.

Picture 2: Transitioning from forest to desert

As I played the game, I failed miserably the first few times, but after some iterations I finally managed to traverse forward long enough and beat the game. And what did I get? A screen (probably congratulatory) that was cancelled by me holding down the ‘W’ key. Thanks.

The game requires no skill to play, you just need some luck so that the random terrain generator doesn’t screw you and then you’re golden. The controls are acceptable for a game of this caliber, the SFX are horrible and there is no way to mute it. The GUI is decent once you figure it out.

The game’s art, while simplistic, is quite charming. It kinda takes you back to simpler times. But that’s all this game has to offer. Some extra features would benefit this game greatly.

The bug count is minimal (I only found one where you bump into a tree and the platform it was on suddenly changes to desert), so the game can be played normaly.

Features I would add:

Terrain generating in all directions: If this were the case, the player could go left or right trying to find another way around if he were blocked by trees or rocks.

Pick-ups: something like gold to keep score. Now you either win or don’t. If you had pick ups, you could play several times, trying to get a better score

Steps lower score: Just to keep the player from exploring endlessly for those pick-ups. Also adding some minimal strategic value.

In-game tutorial: The controls and notes at the bottom of the page don’t really catch your eye

Overall, I don’t think this game deserves more than 10K plays at the moment of writing.

I give it a 2/10

Hello and welcome to my blog.

You may not know me, therefore I’ll start by introducing myself.

I am a student from Slovenia. I study computer science, but am a game developer in free time and a gamer by heart. Even thought my level in Game Development is low, I create and manage games at a garage “company” Squaredcode. And as an indie game developer I know how hard it is for your game to get “out there”, never mind raking in the big bucks.

That’s why I’ve decided to help my fellow developers out by reviewing games not seen by the eyes of the masses. I’ll only review games that have 10k downloads/plays or less though (1k for paid games). The big titles get enough attention as it is. If you want to reccommend a game for a review, feel free to contact me via this blog. I’ll accept and review games for both PC and Android devices. Other gaming platforms elude me. (Not enough gold to buy them)

Now, I do know that many of the unknown games have little downloads, because they’re simply bad or unpolished, but I’m all about finding a needle in a haystack. That one gem, among a hundred rocks, that just may revolutionize the gaming our industry.