JUEGOS RANCHEROS’ FISTFUL OF INDIES: JANUARY 2014
Every month, as part of the regular monthly meetings of the Austin, TX independent game community JUEGOS RANCHEROS, we do a very casual & chatty rundown of the ten or so games from the previous month for the audience, to give people — especially those curious onlookers from outside the indie community itself — a look at what they may have missed. The featured games are both local and global, and both indie and, on occasion, a bit-bigger-budget — what binds them together is simply that they’re all amazing.
In keeping with the tongue-in-tobacco-packed-cheek tone, we call these run-downs A Fistful of Indies, which are presented here on Venus Patrol for your reference, each fully-annotated, -linked, and off-the-cuff blurbed, in addition to their home on the JUEGOS RANCHEROS site.
See more posts about: A Fistful of Indies, Adam Saltsman, Andi Mcc, Andrew Brophy, Andrew Gleeson, Become A Great Artist In Just 10 Seconds, Captain Games, Connor Sherlock, Cubic Space, Daniel Benmergui, David Fenn, Dose One, Ernesto, Fireproof Games, Go Long, Infinite Ammo, JUEGOS RANCHEROS, Longest Night, Mark Foster, Michael Brough, No Brakes Valet, Samurai Gunn, Scott Benson, Teknopants, The Room Two, Titan Souls, TRIHAYWBFRFYH
VENUS PATROL PRESENTS: 10 MINUTES MORE OF TEKNOPANTS’ SAMURAI GUNN
My original writeup on Teknopants’ brilliant upcoming brawler Samurai Gunn managed to drum up quite a bit of the attention it so richly deserves, with a number of people commenting that they very much wanted more video. And so, presented here is ten-ish more minutes of the other matches held at the game’s first ever official tournament at this year’s Fantastic Arcade.
Above you can see how the action expands as the number of players increases to three, with some more 2-4 player matches included below the fold. As before, click the ‘gear’ at the bottom of the player to up the resolution to 720 or 1080p for the best pixel clarity, and enjoy the ongoing commentary by Karakasa Games‘ Wiley Wiggins & Vlambeer‘s Rami Ismail.
For more information on the game itself, browse through the original post about the game.
See more posts about: Fantastic Arcade, Samurai Gunn, Teknopants, Venus Patrol Presents
KUROSAWA’S DREAM: THE BRILLIANT BUSHIDO OF TEKNOPANTS’ SAMURAI GUNN
I’m not one given easily to bold hyperbole, but I’m about to let loose here: Samurai Gunn, the latest game from Beau ‘Teknopants‘ Blyth, is easily the best local-multiplayer game I’ve played since those halcyon days of our youth huddled around a Nintendo 64.
Like Fernando Ramallo and David Kanaga’s Panoramical, Gunn became an instant, unofficial favorite at this year’s Fantastic Arcade, brought to town and urgently pressed upon us by JW & Rami of Vlambeer, who ended up convincing Arcade coordinators to host the world’s first official tournament of the game.
0Space, Blyth’s freeware arena shooter (still available for download & purchase here) was met with similar high praise from most indie devs I came across in 2011, but it’d never fully clicked with me — something about its plodding zero-grav pace (admittedly key to keeping its battles more cerebral) left me slightly too impatient.
All that’s gone with Gunn, whose 2-4 player matches are as quick, clean and concise as the centuries of sword-play mastery that inspired it, as you can see for yourself in video of the tournament winning match below, between indie devs Evan Balster and Terry Cavanagh (be sure to switch to 720 or 1080p mode to better pick out pixel precision).
The gist is simply this: each player has a sword and (as you might’ve guessed) a gun, loaded with only three bullets per life. Bullets can be deflected with well-timed swings of the sword, and sword-strikes themselves can be parried, suddenly (and deeply satisfyingly) throwing both players quickly backwards. The rounds are battles to 10 kills, and any non-winning players who have a kill-count near 10 will trigger a lightning-round-type & gloriously-staged swords-only sunset showdown to determine the true victor.
Stages range from thick bamboo forests, all of which can be chopped down to reveal the rocky outcropping beneath and provide platforms for attack, to pure, barren, vertically-looping chasms of stone, all that of which can be sharpened with sword strikes to create sharp traps to catch and wound careless players.
And careful play is Samurai Gunn at its best: unlike Smash Bros‘ frenzied free-for-all brawls, the most memorable matches in Gunn are the ones where players more or less role-play as the Kurosawa characters that have defined what we think of as samurai — still, silent, allowing opponents to move in for the kill before throwing perfectly timed, razor-sharp moves that slice them down before they know what hit them.
Gunn is still a good distance out from final release, and thus far has only been publicly shown a very small handful of times, but keep a keen lookout for it as it draws nearer — it’s perfectly placed to go down as one of indie games’ greatest.
See more posts about: Beau Blyth, Samurai Gunn, Teknopants