Okay… It’s been a long time coming, but there was one more “Banner Drawing” entrant called EUO and was created by a Mr. Max Breedon.  Basically it’s “a retro multiplayer online RPG inspired by the early Ultimas, Nethack, Diablo, gold-box AD&D, Magic Candle, etc.”  At least that’s what the website says.  Since I haven’t really played those games much I’ll just have to take it’s word for it.  For what knows better what a game is, than it’s website, unless maybe it’s creator.  Here’s a cool video someone made showing some of the game :

Game is fairly fun, if you like multi-player online rpgs.  You can see the old-school vibe coming from the video.  Best of all it’s free.  There are some things you can buy in the real world that give you some help in the game world.  Buying stuff in the real world for the game does not give you more of an advantage over free players, but it does help you out when you play.   You aren’t required to buy anything to play the game though, because it’s free.  It’s just good manners to help indies when you enjoy their game.  More after the break.

Okay so let’s start with the easy stuff, you can see from the screenshots (below) and the video (above) that the graphics are very old school.  Some of the graphics were created as replacement tile sets for Ultima 4, so it has a similar look.  Granted the graphics don’t look that great, but that’s mainly because they’re supposed to look like older graphics of games EUO is supposed to emulate.  The sound is sort of lacking, but really you’re not playing this for sound or graphics really, but to get a fun old-style experience.

Alright so before playing I would suggest you start with the manual.  The user interface is also fairly old school with many commands coming from the keyboard. (There are also some mouse stuff, but really the mouse is not that helpful, at least in my opinion.)  There are like a TON of commands.  That’s right, not a little, not a lot, but a TON!  Well a virtual ton at any rate.  In any case once you get the basic controls down, it’s not that hard to pull up the command screen or read the manual.  Trust me, you’re going to want to read the manual (or at least skim it) if you are going to have any fun in this game.

Before getting into how to play the game I want to mention the three servers with different types of games.  First is the regular game, this you fight monsters, level up, add your stats, etc.  Next is the “No Grind” server, this means you don’t level up and you can actually get your character stats up because the experience will be pretty high.  Finally there’s a “Permanent Death” server, which means your character dies permanently.  A note about the PD server.  Basically in the regular game you can resurrect yourself by going to a shrine to meditate, however, the PD one doesn’t let you do that.  (There are ways of resurrecting your character in PD I think, like some sort of magical items, but other than that, the character dies there, it dies forever.)

This is not a browser game, so you start by creating a free account on the website, and then downloading the game.  Then when you get in the game you create a new character.  You can create multiple characters, but you can only have one account per person.  I’ll try to give you a brief rundown about how the game works, but seriously you can write a book about it (in fact you can read a book about it, and that book is called the Manual).  Also in fact, you should just go read the Manual right now… do it… now… right now… I’ll wait, you can come back when you’re done.  Okay…

So basically you go on quests which you get from talking to various people.  Recover this, kill that, clean up some mess or some such.  Then you go and do the things.  You use your arrow keys to move.  Use the ctrl key to attack.  Alright that’s basically it.  There are a ton of things to do in it though.  You can pick up a trade (I don’t really know how to do that yet) so you can make your own weapons, clothes, or whatever.  You can go fishing if you have a raft and a fishing pole.  You talk to other people by either hitting enter, to talk to people in the immediate area, type /g and then your message to talk to everyone at once, or if you’re in a party, you can type /p.  There’s also a trade talk which goes out as green text.

Wow look at this I haven’t even gotten started on all this game has to offer and yet here I am on paragraph six.  I hope you don’t mind reading tons and tons of review.  I guess I should have made it more entertaining, but on with the show, as they say.  When you level up you must go to a shrine, there are different shrines and they give you different skill points, some will do strength and intelligence, or dexterity, or whatever.  This thing is so complete it has a day and night cycle, and you even get hungry.  In fact I hate getting hungry.  I don’t mean in real life, I mean in the game.  It’s annoying.  You can die of starvation.  So stock up on food.  When you go into dungeons or caves you will need some torches.  You have a variety of weapons to choose from, armor, etc.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help, just don’t be a jerk.  In most cases you can read it in the manual, but if you don’t want to jump out of the game just to look in the manual, ask nicely.  They don’t tend to jump on you if you don’t have a bad attitude.  Most of the people on the game are pretty nice.  There’s tons more I could put into this review, and I’ve really only touched on a small part of the game, but this should give you an idea.  It’s a fun game BUT you’ve got to be willing to put in some time to figure it all out.

Name: EUO

Developer: Max Breedon

Platform: Windows (AFAIK)

Price: The magicalness of the magical word of FREE!

Where you can play it:  Right here!

Alrighty… Our next review is for a puzzle game called L!ght Deluxe by Nemo Games.  This is an interesting little puzzle game.  According to the web page “Your main goal is to direct light-rays from lights sources to light receivers! You are provided with tools like mirrors, light filters, prisms, etc.”  I liked this game, but there are a few issues that I think should have been addressed before I could say it was outstanding.  Here’s a video of the action:

I agree this review isn’t as snappy as my previous ones, that’s because of my statement that I didn’t think it was outstanding.  When I feel it, then my reviews are peppy, a little humorous maybe, when I don’t, I don’t.  There’s nothing really wrong with this game though, it’s pretty relaxing.  The music is nice.  Except the level win music can get annoying.  It’s got some cool sparkly effects.  Decent calming colors.  Even the graphics are adequate.  But that’s really it.  It’s not really truly amazing.

 Basically you move these different kinds of blocks around the board, and you have to direct these light rays from a sender (which is an arrow over a colored diamond shape), to a receiver (must be the same color).  You can click on the blocks to make them turn around.  Also when you drag the blocks they keep going until they hit something else.  This sort of puts a level of challenge on it.  You  know those games where you have ice blocks and you can only slide around to get to an exit or a end goal.  Sort of like that. 

This is one of the issues I have with this game.  Moving the blocks requires dragging (left-click plus moving your mouse) in the direction you want it to move.  The only problem is it doesn’t give you any immediate visual feedback, so sometimes you drag something and it doesn’t seem to move and you wonder why.  When you get it right the object slides across the screen.  Personally I would have just had you hover your mouse over the icon (object) and 4 arrows would pop up and you could click them.  But it doesn’t do that and because of that it sort of feels unresponsive.  Once you get past that though, the game is ok to play.

The only other real issue I had was at the beginning, you’re presented with these squares (which you basically have to unlock).  Now you click on the one you want to play and then click the start button located at the bottom.  At first when I looked at this I thought I just had to click the level and it would just start, but not so.  It would be nicer if you could just click on the level and it would play.  But maybe it has something to do with their easy and hard skill level, because maybe the hard button starts the game.  Also one more small thing is the text in the tutorial is a bit telling that the native language of the developers is not English.  Maybe they can get someone to smooth out some of that.  It wasn’t too difficult but at first was a bit hard to understand.  Maybe hard is too harsh of a word, I could figure it out, but it was a little tricky.

Well other than that, the game is not a bad game.  It’s a challenging puzzle game, change the mirror angles deflect the beam to the receiver (end point) and exit once you’ve completed all the light rays.  The price is only 10 bucks though, and there is 100 levels in this thing, so I think if you want a relaxing end-of-the-day, I would go ahead and fork over the money.

Name: L!ght Deluxe

Developer: Nemo Games

Platform: Windows

Price: $10.00

Where you can get it: Here!

Okay, okay, apologies if you don’t find match-3 puzzle games awesome.  I just had to put that in the title though because the title is a face full of awesome!  I could have said a fist full of awesome, but a face full seems more in your face, you know because it has face in the title.  Anyway.  Our next review is for said match-3 puzzle on Xbox Live Indie Games game called Kaotik Puzzle from Spanish developer Silvermax (That’s Spanish as in Spain, not the language, although they speak the language in Spain because it’s… well you get the idea).  Anyways if you were to play one match-three or puzzle game in your whole life time, this would be it.  The guy has pulled out all the stops!  Here’s a vid showing you what it’s all about.  I believe it’s probably the same vid that I posted in the preview, but here’s a refresher. 

Also even though it says it’s coming soon, it’s out now, at the Xbox Live Marketplace.  I really dig this game so that might be all you need to know, however if you want to know why please read after the jump.

Okay let’s go through the boring preliminaries.  Da da dah graphics, blah blah blah, sound, music.  Okay done.  Alright not quite.  Graphics are probably the best you will see for this type of game from an indie developer short of theming the whole game.  There are plenty of sparkly, fadey, stretchy, spinny, color changing effects.  It’s a slick as a bullet through slime.  Okay I’m not trying to say the graphics are the greatest, they’re nicely polished for what they are.  Everything is clearly presented and there is enough oomph to reward you visually (or anti-reward you if you’re not good enough).  The music is fairly repetitive but you probably won’t notice that if you get addicted to playing it like I did.  However it’s not particularly annoying.  The sounds are also ok.  The whole package is well presented.  I did see something about custom tracks, and although I’ve not gotten around to using that option.

Okay so how to play, well the are a few more instructions than your standard puzzler.  You have different types of cursors that do different things.  One may swap up and down and left and right, one might rotate them around, another pushes blocks off one side of the playfield and puts them on the other side.  Your goal is of course to match three or more blocks of the same color.  However if you notice in the upper and lower parts of the screen there are particular block configurations.  Now you can simply remove blocks by 3 or more, or you can do that exact configuration to get bombs and things to rain down on your opponent. 

The actual controls are fairly simple, however.  Move with the left analog or d-pad, rotate with the four buttons.  There are a bunch of different characters to choose from each with their own block configuration.  There are three modes, where each can have a different character, one where your character has to match them, or their character has to match you.  There are also five difficulty levels, Very Easy, Easy, Normal Hard, and Extreme.  You can also customize your game by choosing different cursors, characters, and so forth, that I’ve also not gotten to.  There is also multiplayer either over lan, xbox live, or just on the same machine.

If you have never played any match-three before for some strange, inexplicable reason, then this is the game to start playing them on.  It’s got a little bit of everything, Tetris, Bejeweled, and whatnot.  If you just want to relax, go with very easy, (and use any other cursor than that straight row one where the blocks go off one side of the playfield and onto another, that coupled with Extreme difficulty is practically unbeatable), if you want a challenge go up to Extreme.

I would just recommend you go get the trial and then see if you don’t want to buy the thing.  (I also recommend though, that you choose medium, hard, and extreme skill levels with the trial, because you may become bored with very easy, and we don’t want you to become bored, we want you to become payi…er…er happy customer… er players, yes we want you to become happy players so you will stay happy and be happy.)

Name: Kaotik Puzzle

Developer: Silvermax Studio

Platform: Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Indie Games)

Price: 240 MSP ($3.00 US, I mean come on who doesn’t have 3 bucks?)

Where you can get it:  Xbox Live Marketplace.

Okay, maybe some of you don’t want to do that, and that’s fine.  Here’s one way to have some fun and read your Holy Bible too, and that’s with Breakout the Bible from Divine Games.  This is Divine Games’ first outing and they want to make fun and morally sound games, at least that’s their slogan, and I can dig it.  Like I said in a preview for Tribulation Knights, I don’t much care about mixing fiction with my beliefs, but there’s no problem here with Breakout the Bible.  See it’s block-bricking game like… wait for it… Breakout!  I enjoyed it for what it was.  Here’s a video of it in action:

Details after the break. 

Like all Breakout-style games it has it’s own little quirks.  It’s Bible themed, which means some decent background artwork and a bible verse on each level.  Also each level is named after a book or two in the Bible.  Other than this fact, it’s another breakout-type game.  So if you like Breakout and all it’s play-alikes, then you’ll probably like this.  You move the paddle or “Bible” with the mouse, and left-click to launch.  There are three difficulty modes.  Beginner, normal, and insane.  Beginner’s ball goes faster each level, Normal’s ball goes faster for every brick broken and every level, and Insane’s ball goes faster for every hit.  You also get power ups. 

Before I get to those, however, I need to point out, that you seem to get 3 “balls” per paddle (or in this case per Bible), that’s where the health power-up comes in.  There’s an extra ball power-up, and a “big ball” power-up.  However, you don’t get these by catching them with the paddle, instead you hit them with your main ball.  You can get a lot of extra balls on the screen as your ball will bounce off of them.  Or a lot of big balls, or a lot of health.  One interesting note about the extra balls and the big ball is that they will drop down after hitting a brick kind of slowly, this means you want to get those balls on top of some bricks so they continue breaking them all the way down.  It’s pretty fun once you get the hang of it.   

There are some little quirky physics going on, as sometimes a ball can get stuck going straight up and down, but eventually it will split off into another angle so it can never truly get stuck.  There was also an issue where it spawned a big ball in the middle of a brick that couldn’t be broken and just stood there making the bouncing sound, and apparently it can happen on any of the extra balls.  Other than that everything seemed to be cool.  There are 5 levels in the Demo version, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the full version has all 66 books of the bible, however a few are consolidated such as First and Second Samuel, and First and Second Kings.  The graphics are ok, there are plenty of sparklies and glowies, and the background artwork is not distracting.  The music is fairly nice, and the sounds are not too bad.  There are options for changing the volumes of each and also to adjust mouse sensitivity.  Overall this game is not a bad way to spend the afternoon.

Name: Breakout the Bible

Developer: Divine Games

Platforms: Window (and Mac although it only works in windowed mode on the Mac).

Price: $3.99 (pretty dang low, if you ask me)

Where you can get it: Here!

1.) A visit to a “Steampunked” home via The Steampunk Workshop.

2.) A picture of my dream-girl via the Telegraph.

3.) A Youtube video of hot babes doing a “unique” cover of Toxicity.

4.) A scale that could possibly help you lose weight on Just a Guy Thing.

5.) Tom Scott’s Star Wars Weather Forecast.

6.) The most awesome person via MakeMyMood.com.

7.) Cats for gold. –’nuff said.

8.) 101 NEW uses for everyday things on RealSimple.com.

9.) Why men shouldn’t write advice columns on picshag.

10.) Apparently the long arm of the law can reach into online games!

Our next preview is for the game Tribulation Knights that’s expected sometime this year (2010) by Atomic Design Laboratory.  It’s set in the future and based on interpretations of the book of Revelation in the Bible.  Personally I’m a little wary of Christian or Bible-based games, as a Christian, because I feel that my faith and my entertainment should be separate as my belief in God is not fictional.  Still Tribulation Knights is an interesting concept if not for just the interpretation of Revelation.  This game has to do with the future where a new government arises and “chips” it’s people to track them 24/7.  Anyone who doesn’t give in is marked as a rebel, and supposedly in the game you’re fighting this government that controls people’s very lives.  Here’s a WIP video, and it doesn’t look that bad:

Screenshots after the break:

Name: Tribulation Knights

Developer: Atomic Design Laboratory

Platform: Windows

Price: Unsure yet

Where you can get it: You can’t yet but here’s the homepage.

Our next banner entrant is Bantam City Games with Invadazoid.  It’s like Space Invaders meets Arkanoid.  Actually it’s more like Space Invaders and Arkanoid.  Well it’s mostly Space Invaders with one mode that allows you to use the ship as a paddle with ball, and another mode that’s all Space Invaders.  Okay I give this two thumbs up (I guess I just started to do the thumbs thing lately, I figure it’s easier for you to figure out how I feel about a certain game, thumbs up is good, thumbs down is bad, and one thumb up and one thumb down is like in the middle).  The game makes the progression interesting enough you want to keep playing, however focus is always on keeping your ball in play or not getting hit by rockets, so the high-scores don’t really figure into it.  Anyways want to know more about why I like it, continue reading after the break.

I love simple, you love simple, we all screen for ice cream!  This is no exception.  Just play this like you would any other.  Move the paddle with the mouse, fire weapon or shoot ball with a mouse button.  That’s it.  Your mission, Jim, should you choose to accept it, is to knock out all the aliens before they knock you out.  I’m gonna knock you out, Invadazoid knock you out… I’m… umm nevermind.  Anyways.  Be careful, some of them fire rockets at you, but you can either hit them with the ball or shoot them too.  Every so often is the proverbial cup of sugar, I mean flying saucer overhead for bonus points.

Invasion mode, where a flying saucer goes to major cities of the world and attacks them!  Survival mode, just see how many invadazoids you can hit before they get you!  Boss mode, which I don’t know what it is since it’s locked in the trial version, but I’m assuming you fight boss invadazoids in that mode.  Finally there’s Classic mode which is just space invaders.  You get to shoot, and only have one shot on screen at once.  You simply clear the screen of invaders until you get to the next wave.  All right, I found this highly addicting because you feel it’s really easy but you play and die and want to keep playing because you think you can do better.  This is a good thing.

If I have to fault the game other than the fairly typical gameplay is the graphics.  Now the invaders are cute, and have nice colors and what not.  But the backgrounds and such feel like they’re 256 color and dithered.  It doesn’t exactly date it, but it sort of does.  Back when “super vga” resolution was actually getting some play, there were usually 256 colors but they had to dither it because higher res pictures meant  they could put in more detail.  So there was this transition period just before we got into 3d and out of 2d, and that’s what the graphics sort of look like.  Like I said good, but dated.  I suppose this means it runs well on older/slower machines which is probably a good thing.  In any case dithering looks worse on my lcd monitor than it does on a regular crt one, especially at the resolution (looks to be about 640×480).  Other than that I can’t really fault it.  The sound and music is appropriate if not a little annoying but that’s ok it makes the experience much more urgent.

So if you want some retro-styled gaming action, then this game is for you.  If you want yet-another-space-invaders-game, then this game is also for you.  If you want massively-multiplayer online persistent worlds, then this game is not for you (shame on you for reading this, actually thanks for reading but still :-) )!

Name: Invadazoid

Developer: Bantam City Games

Platform: Windows

Price: $12 USD

Where you can get it: Download the demo Here!

The title says it all.  Well it doesn’t have the words “it all” in the title, but you know what I mean.  This time since the Banner Entrant entered two games I decided to put them together in this one review.  Awesome Tank is a Tank game reminiscent of Combat for the Atari 2600 (or Atari VCS if you prefer).  A Game Of Tennis is reminiscent of, well, a game of Tennis.   Actually it’s reminiscent of Pong that’s reminiscent of Tennis.  Well actually it’s reminiscent of Pong which is reminiscent of Tennis for Two which was reminiscent of Tennis.  Wow.  That’s a lot of reminiscing.  Enjoy that trip down memory lane?  Good.  In any case…  I’ll have to say thumbs up to Awesome Tank (and no it’s not the same people that made Awesome Soccer), and thumbs down to A Game of Tennis.  The rest of the review after the jump.

Okay so Awesome Tank.  Is simply a tank game where you shoot the other tanks.  You can also collect green pellets to get to the next level.  The instructions are extremely simple, shoot with the ‘A’ button and move with the left thumbstick.  Well actually you can only direct it when it comes to intersections, remember Pac-Man, it’s sort of like that.  I have to say the music and sound are rather mediocre, and although this is my first Xbox Live Indie game that does 3D, the 3D is somewhat mediocre too.  But that’s not unexpected given the fact most of these independent developers are small start-ups.  So why did I give the thumbs up to this game.  Simply because it’s addicting.  I mean, you shoot tanks or collect pellets (shooting tanks is more fun), but each time you die you figure, hey that was my fault, I *could* do better next time!  So you want to try again.  And you try again, and you still die.  I couldn’t get past level two.  But I want to try again.  That’s the important part.  The game does have multiplayer but I don’t have anyone to play with nor do I have Xbox live gold.

Okay as far as A Game Of Tennis.  It’s simply Pong.  But not even a very good pong.  I mean the graphics are black and white, but the resolution is high (720p or whatever) widescreen.  The sounds are clicks and stuff, they don’t sound like the old beeps and boops of the original game.  Really the only reason you want to play a game like this, is for nostalgia, but there’s no nostalgia because it doesn’t try to emulate anything like the faded, ghosting, CRT units these things were played on.  Also there is no real goodies in the way of graphics.  Like they didn’t try to do the opposite either and make it all flashy and new.  There is multiplayer online and on your console but it’s not that fun.  Also my paddle tended to be too slow especially when the ball seemed to speed up.  Being an analog stick they should have it increase speed depending how far up you push the thing but they didn’t.  Maybe next time.  I would say simply save your money unless you like to collect anything even remotely similar to Pong.

They also have a non-game called Game Finder.  I didn’t look at this simply because A) it wasn’t a game, and B) I don’t need a game finder.  (It’s cheap about 80 Microsoft Points which is about a buck I think.)

Name(s): Awesome Tank, and a Game of Tennis

Developer: Ubergeek Games

Price(s): Awsome Tank – 400 MSP (5 USD), “Tennis” – 80 MSP

Platform: Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Indie Games)

Where you can get it: Xbox Live Marketplace: Awesome Tank, Tennis

Our next banner entrant is Ergod with Entropy Poker A.I.  I’m not really sure how to classify this.  It’s not strictly a game.  Sure Poker is a game, and sure you can play against the computer.  In fact as far as I can tell you don’t play against humans at all (Of course the only way you could do that is over the internet, but I digress).  Generally speaking this is a simulation designed to help you get good at poker by offering AI in the form of simulated neural nets.  Well if you don’t know what all that means, it simply means it tries to copy brain processes to provide it’s artificial intelligence.  Firstly I don’t think that much of this, not because it isn’t useful or what it’s for, but mostly because it’s not really set up as a game.  I wouldn’t run this software if I wanted to relax from a day of hard work.  I would, however, end up using it so I could up my game when I play poker with real people, which is precisely what it’s made for. 

Okay so basically when you start it goes to a small menu which allows you to set the A.I.’s thinking time in either seconds or minutes, I’m not sure which because the game doesn’t really have any help set up.  There’s also number of opponents to choose.  Up to nine A.I.’s can be chosen.  There’s also a menu in the upper left hand corner of the screen.  You’ve got “Show Console” which shows a log of moves you’ve made, an About button, Hand History, and a tooltips on/off button.  None of this really shows you how to use the program really.  There are 3 “buttons” on the main screen for fold, call, and bet.  Then there’s 3 buttons on the lower left hand of the screen called Check/Fold, Call Any, Raise Any.  These are actually toggles but I can’t for the life of me figure out what they do.  Granted this program is for experienced Poker Players but it should at least give you some basic instructions on the version of Poker it’s playing, and what all the buttons mean.  There’s an auto-play button as well, so you can just watch the program play itself. 

There’s no real graphics to speak of, other than card graphics, which I could forgive if they had some sort of music or sound effects or something.  I think it would have been better if he had made a simplified Poker game with advanced features, such as the A.I. Behavior and so forth.  That is all these “features” but in a more user friendly fashion.  The trial gives you 24 hours to play with it, but it’s 24 hours from the first time you play, rather than 24 hours of actual time spent in the game.  But I guess that’s ok considering most games only give you about a 60 minute demo.  My final thoughts on this are if you’re really good at poker and want to be great go ahead and download this program, otherwise don’t bother.

Name: Entropy Poker A.I.

Developer: Ergod

Platform: Windows

Price: €19.99 (almost 30 U.S. Dollars)

Where you can get it: Here.

Edit: Reposting this because the developer of The Cherokee Indian (Jr Jellybeans) actually entered the drawing. I know nothing about American Indians.  And yes I call them American Indians because Columbus thought he was sailing to the West Indies, as opposed to Indian Americans those that actually come from India and become legal citizens of the US.  As far as Wikipedia says, they are a “Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States.  In the 19th century, the Cherokees were known as one of the "Five Civilized Tribes", because they had assimilated numerous cultural and technological practices of their European-American neighbors. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, they are the largest of the 563 federally recognized Native American tribes in the United States.  Of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians have headquarters in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is located in Cherokee, North Carolina.”  Okay so basically I just filled some space with copy and paste from Wikipedia.  I did this because I don’t think any jokes concerning the Cherokee would be appropriate.  Plus I don’t know any jokes concerning them or any American Indians, and it would probably just be in bad taste if I did.  So now on with the game yeah!

I’m sorry but the game needs a little work, it’s ok, but it’s not great.  See more, next.

Okay so basically The Cherokee Indian by Jr. Jellybeans is a platform game where you “will hunt and capture animals, discover secrets, and work to pass a set of trials to become a man.”  Sounds like animal cruelty to me.  No really I’m kidding, I have nothing against hunting it’s just way it’s said “you will hunt and capture animals” woohoo!  To tell you the truth, I couldn’t really understand what you were supposed to do.  Like what the goal is and stuff.  I know you have to become a man but it doesn’t really tell you how.  When you start up the game the title screen comes on and you basically click on start, continue, delete, or quit.  When you click on start three “spots” come up and you must click on one, I assume these are save games.  Now you get into the game where you’re taken to a cut scene.  It simply goes through and shows the main character Bena going to different people and them telling him to go be a man.  The bad part is you can’t get out of it.  Next you’re presented with a level or room or whatever.

The controls are really simply, this is really the main good thing about this game.  You use your mouse to move and direct Bena’s aim, left mouse button attacks or interacts, right mouse button jumps or cancels interaction.  It does take a bit of practice to get used to moving a character in a platform game with only the mouse but it does seem to be fairly intuitive.  Okay so here’s where it gets difficult.  What the heck am I supposed to do?  There’s a thing though, an icon or set of icons on the left that give you some idea of the goal for that level.  In one there were like I don’t know wooden planks, like I was supposed to collect 24 two-by-fours.  You get to chop trees down, so I guess that’s a plus.  You can chop trees with berries, and kill animals with your axe.  So the chopping thing is kind of fun, but I still don’t know what I’m doing.  I think the game needs some text at the start of each level explaining what you’re supposed to do, as well as what all the icons and things mean.  They have a little readme.txt file in the folder you install to, but nothing really telling you the menus and screen items and stuff.

As far as the music goes, that’s ok, the sound effects are sometimes a bit annoying (especially the bird sounds, because it’s like completely quiet and then you heard the bird sound effect that’s like loud and then abrupt nothing).  The graphics leave something to be desired.  The animations are pretty good but that’s about the only thing.  In fact most of the sprite graphics are decent, but the background level graphics need some work.

In the end it’s just not that great of a game, mostly because of not knowing what to do.  And then partly also because the background art needs to be a bit more polished.  On a side note, one time I tried to exit to the menu and I got some sort of error “ERROR in action number 1 of Alarm Event for alarm 1for object sprite_controller: Trying to delete non-existing sound.”  So that means it’s a little bit buggy as well.

Name: The Cherokee Indian

Developer: Jr. Jellybeans

Price: $11.30

Where you can get it: Here!