#sage2023

I was immediately interested in B.U.D.D. for it's art and references to games like wonder boy, what really surprised me about it was the humor as it's actually funny in a cute way.

If you like wonder boy or classic sega adventure games I can't recommenced B.U.D.D. enough.

@cyanroxanne pitched this to me as a SHMUP for people that have trouble getting into SHMUP games, after playing the demo and taking a minute to figure out how the game works I actually had a lot of fun with it. I could definitely recommend this to people who wanna get started with the genre, really amazing art too feels like it's a treat just seeing what the next area looks like.

RPG games can be really hard to push on SAGE because of how many games there are to go through and how long they can take to complete, a lot of streamers tend to pass over them for the sake of time so they can cover more games.

So here's my RPG recomendation, Cubenen Gardens is a game being made by @thegamedawg who actually got me to play test his game months ago, the game's still in development but what I've got to mess with so far the game's strongest aspect is it's characters and world building as you help Micheal (the saddest sopping wet creature on the planet) navigate a mall trying to find a rare monster but gets wrapped in more and more conflict.

David gets keen is really short but it has a really strong gameflow to it, my only gripes with it is that the ability HUD could be given more clear graphics as your moves are represented by circles which can make it hard to figure out what they belong to without pressing their corresponding buttons.

Beyond that the grass stage is amazing, playing the level normally gives you a pretty average platformign game but when you start building up speed using your spin move on slopes you can get to insane speeds and just fly through the level skipping puzzles and enemies and clearing the level in seconds, it's really fun when you get the hang of it.

@wootinaboot

Meander land is a really small game by @whiskerfjords game's really fun to play casually, I thought the story and characters were really cute and I'm actually really excited to see what Whisker makes next.

Out-class Hunter from @7hrone returns again with a brand new level to check out, it's a return to Doom style third persons games, specifically SRB2, it's been fun following the development of this game and watching it improve each demo.

Lemme know if you can find the cool cactus, you'll know which one I'm talking about if you follow my games ;)

Prototype N is just a really really solid action platformer game from @arriettylunaris each level has a lot of thought put into it's design and the weapon combinations can be a lot of fun to mess with, I really can't recomend Prototype N enough.

I can't get over how much character personality this game oozes, feels like around every door I'm going to run into something new I like either being a character or a game mechanic that's just fun to mess with, each character brings their own moves and their levels take advantage of a lot of their movements.

I'd compare this to those old 90's Disney game adaptations but this game easily out does them in terms of design as the designs look like they were ripped right out of an old 1940's cartoon shorts.

Peak meme aside, I actually had a lot of fun playing this, Super Freaks is a fun lil platformer game with references to a tonne of other works, you probably saw this game referenced countless times this Sage but it is just really goofy fun, tho I would really recommend playing this with friends if you can, game feels like it was designed around the kind of multiplayer chaos, if you saw the stream I was part of you can see why.

Sorry to all my friends who have heard me talking about this game all week non stop and seeing me reverse engineer SMBX 2 to [redacted] but this was easily my favorite game this SAGE if not the most replay-able, I keep booting this up just to try and make it thought the level as quick as I can.

So if you're like me you've probably been seeing @punkitt-is-here s pony comics or more specifically, the Susan Tax payer comic and the charm, humor and personalities of all of them absolutely coats this game.

It requires a bit of set up, you have to download SMBX2.0 separately in order to play this and SMBX has it's own set of issues that kinda bleed over into some of the issues in the game that need to be ironed out but beyond that this is a really fun demo to play and I absolutely can't wait to see where this goes.

Techpack currently is one Namco inspired arcade game, Tech has put a tonne of time and research into how to nail the old arcade style. The only thing holding it back right now is that the only game available is really simple and short, but man I'd be kicking myself if I didn't mention the presentation on it alone is enough for me to recommend checking this out, really reminds me of the old Namco collection games on playstation.

Now put my rabbit in as one of the cameos :gun_emoji:

Ok that's all the indies I could cover, some honerable mentions that I've been wanting to check out include

kid bubblegame JLFJ 2 Veggocalypse Mekanikko

As for the fangames I've played

Here's a game I wasn't expecting I'd be recommending, Mushroom Kingdom Fusion has been in development for over 15 years and always felt to me about quantity over quality but this new demo really impressed me.

The game is starting to take shape and there's actual structure to everything where as before it was just an open sand pit for them to figure out what to do with.

There's still a lot to be done but what's here is just a blast to mess around with. something really satisfying about struggling with a level, switching over to Samus and just blasting all the enemies and bosses away, tho I assume these characters will be unlocked in the final game as most of them are completely over powered.

This does bring me to one complaint though, Mario needs a buff. Mario is by far the hardest as he has few defense options and a lack of a health bar that almost everyone else have a huge advantage over him, and Mario having a health bar isn't too far removed from games like SMB2 and the modern 3D games.

But regardless I never thought I'd play this game and actually try to beat levels so I could see more, secret hunting is finally rewarding and expanding and finding more of the world is really fun. The game's length is absolutely HUGE, one world is about the size of an average Mario game which is insane.

And I'm really happy to see that loading has been optimized tho I don't know if that's because I'm running a machine that's not made 15 years ago.

@velacosmos has been working hard on creating a new Demo for SAGE and this one actually surprised me.

Taking influence from mario maker 2, Shang Mu Architect is a Freedom planet challenge level maker. which is quite impressive on it's own but has a tonne of extras.

Namely now there's actually a story mode to go along with the game, truth be told I'm not too big into freedom planet's cast to really know how well this game captures their personality but I still think it's really cool to actually have something that doubles as a proper freedom planet fangame since as far as I'm aware we're yet to see an actual game that actually follows the original games style.

Your mileage is definitely going to depend on how much you enjoyed the original freedom planet but I definitely think this is worth checking out.

Of the top of my head way back when stealth was pitching a mobile port of sonic 3, I swear I remember one of the ideas was expanding the match stages into full fledged level.

Sonic 3 Chronicles is an interesting "what if" scenerio where after angel island instead of falling into Hydrocity Sonic and co continue past the cutscene area and into the endless mine from match making.

I never really thought of those match stages as being connected to the main stages but this does a rpetty decent job of introducing new gimmicks and mechanics to go along with those stages.

The game is definitely rough around the edges and needs a lot of tightening up but what's here is a cute game that does it's best to follow sonic 3.

Also Mighty is here... I don't know why but thank you.

Gatoslip is a hack of Sonic the hedgehog created by @vadapega a very small demo with a tonne of personality put into it.

Yes, this is a hack, you're going to need an emulator in order to play it. Now which emulator do I recommend?

Probably the steam workshop if you still have your copy of sonic 1 before SEGA took it off the store page.

Vada's always been an inspiration for my art and it's great to see him finally go for something that really expresses his personality. The writing's great, the battles are really cute and I love the strategies for defeating enemies. Game's filled to the brim with visual gags with one gag in particular giving a lot of "replay value" (you'll know what I mean when you beat it)

can't wait to see where this ends up.

Again check out