Love Me

And Hell Followed is a top-down, survival horror game where players navigate through several levels crawling with the undead.  You start the game by waking up in a hospital, not remembering who you are or how you got there, only to find the world infested with zombies. You use your flashlight to light the way, exploring the creepy and shadowy corridors.  Along the way, you pick up weapons such as the pistol and shotgun. Various enemies lurk around seeking to devour you. You must ration your ammunition and power-ups, creeping by some monsters or blasting away others. Hopefully, you can reach a safe haven in this apocalypse and get to the bottom of the mysterious zombie invasion. 

In Brother, players guide a spirit wolf on a search for its lost brother, kidnapped long ago by the Shades. Use Wolf’s power to command a swarm of Wisps to light the way as you explore two beautifully detailed environments. When encountering the forces of darkness, keep the wisps close to protect Wolf from harm or command them to engage the Shades in combat from a distance. Use wisps also to interact with objects in the world to solve puzzles. Traverse the enchanted forest and seek out The Old One to enlist his help in reaching the underworld. Pierce the darkness of the Shades’ underworld stronghold to find your brother and fight the final battle of light versus darkness.

The art style of Brother conveys the overarching emotional theme of the game, namely the unending struggle of light versus darkness. The dark and foreboding environments stand in stark contrast to the ethereal light of Wolf and his aura of wisps, which illuminate the environment as he explores. The deep, sad and brooding emotional tone of Wolf’s story, presented throughout the game, informs not only the visual style of Brother but also the soundtrack and pacing of gameplay.

The gameplay in Crissaegrim focuses on non-stop shooting and dodging bullets.  Adapting the Japanese term Danmaku which translates into “Bullet Hell,” the enemies of Crissaegrim shoot waves of bullets at the player, who must alter their position to constantly weave through bullets. The thematic style and tone is a futuristic world with a medieval flourish. The alien creatures, the Zelrakis, take a variety of forms. The player must destroy enemies while carefully weaving between different patterns of bullets. The player receives a multitude of upgrades to destroy of the enemy. The player avoids environmental obstacles while fighting intense aerial battles.

The year is 2097. A few months ago, countries in Eastern Europe reported isolated attacks on rural villages. Investigative teams revealed the attacks by robotic drones. The U.N. scrambled to find the source of the technology. Eventually, scouts and Intel teams discovered the base isolated in the Caucasus Mountains bordering Russia.

After extensive trials, interviews, and performance reviews, the U.N. selected agent Sarah Dane to infiltrate the base and gather intelligence. Athletic, adaptive, and dedicated, Agent Dane will sneak into the base to while monitoring any new technology, taking weapon prototypes and downloading Intel data. Once she has acquired the necessary information, she is to leave the facility and reach a retrieval point. After briefly introducing the player to the two unique weapons in the game, the player faces waves of enemies in the form of stationary turrets and mobile spider robots.  During these encounters, the player advances his use of the special gravity volume that enhances world navigation and fine-tunes his skills with the laser by learning the best methods of bouncing projectiles off walls and objects to hit and destroy enemies.

In the military testing facility, players discover alternate routes, distinct vantage points and enjoyable choices of progression in the game and battles.  The game takes a step away from the typical first person shooter genre, encouraging players to think first before shooting and alters their perception of viewing the world.  A large, three-stage robot boss fight tests the player’s mastery of the weapons in an epic final encounter.

Lollypop is a 2D top-down puzzle game where the player controls a group of elementary school students with ADHD that have been given a prescription drug called Zombax. To everyone’s horror, the drug turns the children into zombies. The children soon discover that the creator of Zombax, the evil Dr. Hahn, has hatched an evil conspiracy to turn all children into zombies, and they vow to get revenge.

Mostly Harmless is a 2D side-scrolling puzzle platformer in which players attempt to move a horde of Spawnling eggs toward the safety of caves while cleverly utilizing puzzle pieces called Bloxes.  The game is set in a cartoony alien world that has its own rules. The Spawnlings are naïve, innocent, but deeply loyal, and the lurking monsters are quirky, funny, and hungry for spawnlings. The player plays as a powerful sentient being and only gets more powerful as the game progresses. However, the Spawnlings are so weak that even with all the powers, creativity is required to get them back to their mother ship.

 The player chooses and drops special bloxes that help the Spawnlings reach the safety of the caves.  In each of the eleven episodes of the journey, the player must get a certain number of Spawnlings to the exit.  The Spawnlings can die in numerous ways including being poisoned, falling from high ledges, drowning in water, being crushed, being eaten, and melting in hot lava, and the player must use a combination of precision, timing, and cleverness in order to win.  Treacherous monsters such as the Yap Trap, Neila Nuisance, Ferry Fiend, Stomper Monster, Poison Plant, and Trippin’ Tree threaten to annihilate any Spawnlings that venture too close.