The Pirate Bay Bundle: Free ice cream, Frog Force, Fugitive X, Future-bike and Get Closer

All these games are free and can be downloaded as a part of moshboy's The Pirate Bay Bundle, watch the trailer and download it here:

You thought I had given up didn't you? Well, you were wrong, I'm back to writing about these games, here's the next five.

Free ice cream

This game; "Free ice cream" isn't as lovely as it sounds, it was a trick I tell you! You play a little girl you gets kidnapped after being offered some free ice cream, by a not-so-nice looking fellow. It's a very simple point and click adventure game. All the puzzles are nice and simple to work out while remaining rather satisfying. A few areas left me a little stumped but for no longer than a minute or two.

The game also manages to walk a fine line of being amusing and cute while also very dark and creepy. Your kidnapper doesn't intend you or your friend to have a comfortable stay, let's say. I would go into greater detail but I don't want to spoil anything. Definitely recommended, even if you've never really touched adventure games, like myself.

Frog Force

In Frog Force you command a squad of green frogs to rid the world of evil red frogs. You command your frog with the arrow keys and move your other three frogs like an RTS. The controls are slick; issuing commands aren't clunky and you can drag a box around your frogs to select more than one. However I can't help but think it would be better to control all four frogs like this and have the arrow keys move the camera. It's not an annoying control scheme, just a bit weird. It's a bit like tapping your head and rubbing your stomach, but not in a fun way, just an awkward one.

Frogs automatically attack when they are near an enemy and you can also bump to attack. Killed enemies and looted chests grant you flies. These can be used to either level up yourself or your other friendly frogs or at a cost of 10 flies you can cast an area-of-effect heal.  A rather interesting trade to make between power and survivability, unfortunately though leveling up is very limited. When you finish an area you keep the same number of flies you acquired but every frog is reset back to level 1. You never really get given enough flies to experiment, especially since a fair amount will be used to heal.

Perhaps worth a look but unfortunately it feels unfinished, it was made in a 7 day RTS jam so I guess that's expected.

Fugitive X

Fugitive X is a turn based, top-down, puzzle game, with a nifty art style and simple soundtrack to match. It tells you upon starting that you murdered the chancellor and you must escape the city. Each square you move enemy drones walk towards you. Their movements are predictable so it's a matter of planning out the best route through brains or brawn (trial and error). The drones kill you in one hit if you stay in their line of sight for more than 1 turn, this give you a bit of flexibility.

It's a fun little game but I didn't have the patience to complete it. If I put my mind to it some more I would have completed it, but a few frustrating levels got to me.

Future-bike

Don't let the default GameMaker loading and icon screen put you off this one. Future-bike gets almost everything right. It's hard as nails, but the controls are fluid and satisfying. Some fancy but not intrusive visual effects make basic movements fun and a great feeling of speed. There are only around 6 levels but each are granted with something new. For instance bad guys are introduced which will shoot you if you don't run them down in time. None of the levels are complicated but you will need a level head to get through them. There is a slight contradiction here unfortunately, future-bike is most fun when you're going at maximum speed but later levels are so hard you often find yourself edging through them.

Your bike has a good feeling of momentum but you will instantly stop if you press the arrow key opposite to the direction you're traveling. This increased level of control is probably a good thing, but it's jarring none the less. This isn't an issue though in comparison with one other problem I have. There is no instant restart. Each time you die you have. to wait for a 3 second countdown. A ridiculous notion when you can die so quickly. The game is still very much worth playing though, I would buy a version of this with leaderboards and a few dozen more levels, no mistake.

Get Closer

Simple, quick and complete are three words I would describe this game. It's not in the least bit difficult however the way it presents a narrative is rather adoring. Each level is presented with a line of next and the level design somewhat represents that line of text. It somewhat reminded me of Thomas Was Alone, there's no voice over but you get given a simple reward of more information/narrative with each level.

Only took me about 2 minutes to complete, so it's definitely worth your time.

My thunks: Sir, you are being Hunted

Many stealth games are somewhat of an illusion. Behind the rock throwing, sneaking and stealth assassinations there is essentially a puzzle game, designed to have a few specific solutions. This is where Sir, you are being Hunted differs, the procedural nature of the game gives you a number of situations without an obvious solution. A patrol of 4 guards doesn't necessarily have a blind spot, so completing the game without ever being seen becomes near impossible. This might frustrate some die-hard stealth fans for obvious reasons, but it feels different and somewhat realistic.

The premise is as so, you're stuck on an island with the task of retrieving 17 MacGuffins from 5 different islands. You must take the 17 items to the standing-stones in the center island to repair the "device". You really don't know anything else except you're being hunted by angry English robots.

The English robots match the theme of the environment; the fens, countryside, industrial areas, castles and forests that you stroll through will be familiar to anyone who lives in or has visited the UK. This may not sound exciting in words, but it really is, no other video-game has done anything in this setting. It's dank, dreary, usually raining and very atmospheric coupled with the ambient music. The industrial area in particular has a certain uniqueness about it, the landscape is littered with abandoned towns, villages, churches, factories and ruins. Something very awful happened in this place, and it's never clear exactly what that may have been. The robots speak a number of stereotypical English phrases even talking about their wives. It's as if the personality of the once residents of these islands has been transferred into each robot.

Unfortunately the awful low resolution textures and procedural generation take you out of the game every so often, certain placements don't make sense with roads leading nowhere, walls connected in strange ways and docks located in very small lakes. However this wasn't a large problem for me considering the world is supposed to be in a state of extreme entropy and you don't have much time to focus on the small details anyway. Why don't you have much time? When the game says you're being hunted it doesn't mean it lightly. With sprawling robots which are around every corner don't give you much rest-bite, you're constantly looking behind your back.

This is the one thing that Sir, You Are Being Hunted absolutely nails, the feeling of being on the run. You will relish moments of silence when you can't hear the sinister "bleep-bloop" of the tweed, pipe and top-hat geared robots. Another stand-out aspect is the enemy design. The basic robots can be seen from far away by their glowing red eyes, and even when they aren't in sight each enemy makes a distinct sound. This is clever because you can often get a good idea of how many robots you're facing without even seeing them. The AI is far from intelligent but I wouldn't call it stupid. Even when it does make the odd silly decision, you aren't taken out of the experience like many other stealth games because they're robots. Maybe that's a cheap excuse, but it works. As the game continues more creative enemies are added to the mix, some which create such weird and terrifying sounds you'll never want to go near them. Robots also have a tendency to shoot pheasants and rabbits for their own entertainment and at my scared confusion, wondering what they were shooting at. This creates an unexpected side-effect, making Sir, You Are Being Hunted quite a scary game at times. Avoiding the outlandish looking robots makes it all the more exciting and horrifying when you accidentally bump into them.

The gameplay consists of finding the 17 MacGuffins by following blue will-o'-the-wisps to each location. This works quite nicely as they don't give you a direct way to the MacGuffin, often taking you a longer way around. However I think there are too many will-o'-the-wisps on the islands at a time, reducing your compulsion to explore. Along the way you will find places to loot such as houses, barrels and sheds. To the dismay of many fans it was announced early in the game's development that you won't be able to go inside houses. While this makes sense for a number of technical and economic reasons, it's an obvious shame. Buildings would add a lot to the game in terms of hiding and exploration. Towns are still interesting though, providing a lot of loot and many places to hide. Each town also has a suitably randomized English name that will probably make you chuckle.

The loot consists of random useless objects (of which there are far too many), food, drink, tools, traps, weapons (both melee and ranged) and letters (which provide a bit of context). There is a vitality meter also which you have to keep topped up by consuming food and drink. If you let it drain to 0 your health will start to deplete, in addition to this the lower your vitality is the less quickly your health regenerates. This is never anything to worry about though, in my first playthrough it never went below 20. You can also cook pheasants, rabbits and raw meat on a fire with the disadvantage of the fire attracting robots. But this never becomes a necessity because there is simply enough food that you can eat uncooked.

I did find myself lacking in bandages a few times though. Some of my most tense experiences actually came from those moments when I had no bandages left. I was a sitting duck, getting seen was much more of a consequence, I couldn't risk getting shot, even once. Interestingly enough there is also quite a big chance that robots drop bandages. Giving me a few interesting situations where I risked my bullets for the chance to get a bandage. Despite those moments however there were still far too many bandages, and far too much food for these systems to be of much of an impact. I am happy to role-play a little but some players might resort to charging around the landscape chugging whiskey and eating biscuits, using the health regeneration to tank gunfire.

That said, there is still a great deal of intensity when it comes to fighting robots. Unlike food, bullets are very rare, weapons have lengthy reload times and shooting accurately isn't easy. There was one memorable point where I managed to take out two robots with a hatchet without taking any damage, I had a gun but I wanted to save the bullets. Considering you can't save whenever you want the stakes of dying are quite large too. You can only save at the standing stones where you drop off the MacGuffins and the boats which you use to travel to the different islands. There is a big risk reward element to this system. Either I can grab a MacGuffin and head straight back to a boat to save, or I can save time and head around the island and try to get as many MacGuffins at once. Even though death is usually the players fault your patience is still tested whenever you die, as you are required to do the same thing all over again. Throughout I couldn't help thinking a different save system would work better.

When you come across a MacGuffin there are a few options to get your grubby hands on it. You can throw a bottle to distract the robots near-by, mess it up however and those robots will run to you rather than where it smashed. Alarm clocks are the most effective, hide it somewhere, set the timer and wait for it to go off. Once the guards find it they'll realize it's a trick but usually that gives you enough time. You could also wait for the opportune moment to grab the MacGuffin without any distraction. This is nearly impossible if there are more than two guards though. If you have the ammo to spare you could wait for a good time to take the robots out quick and effectively. All of these situations are fun if you have the patience. There is nothing more satisfying than perfectly executing your plan, or dealing with an unexpected situation effectively. If you don't have the patience you can tank the bullets, grab the MacGuffin and deal with the consequences by eating more food and using a bandage. This can be a big problem, and a number of players will resort to this when their patience wears thin.

Before you do grab that MacGuffin you'll need to do some organizing in your inventory, Tetris style. I'm not always sure what to think of this inventory system but it works well in this instance. With robots around every corner you rarely get a chance to properly organize yourself. Often you will find some good loot only to panic when you realize you don't have the space. A few times I completely abandoned a good item because I didn't have the time to fit it in my backpack while a robot was about to discover me.

All-in-all I've mentioned many good and bad aspects, but if one thing puts you off it's going to be the main objective. For some it's a big deal, and I don't blame them. Who really wants to collect object and object and bring them back to the same location, many times over. It gameifies an otherwise very atmospheric and absorbing world. I don't like to do backseat designing as it largely achieves nothing, but maybe just leaving the player in the world with no obvious objective may have been a better thing to do or reducing the total amount of MacGuffins. It's a huge shame, Sir, You Are Being Hunted is so very close to greatness, but this is something you are repeatedly reminded of.

While Sir, You Are Being Hunted does have some large flaws it has given me some hugely unique experiences of which I can't compare to anything else I've played. It might be relevant to mention I'm English so I found the setting and humour to be very endearing, people who aren't English or live in the UK might not find the same. It definitely isn't for everyone and my enjoyment wavered throughout the game, but at it's best the game has some unforgettable absolutely thrilling moments.

Looking to the future there is going to be a multiplayer mode in sometime to come, perhaps the increased number of players will split the resources nicely, possibly solving some of the problems? It's hard to say, but either way I hope my thoughts have given you a good idea of whether this game is for you or not.

The Pirate Bay Bundle: Dungeon Dash, Endings of the Ugly, Find me a good one, Flip and Fliptris

All these games are free and can be downloaded as a part of moshboy's The Pirate Bay Bundle, watch the trailer and download it here:

It's safe to admit I've taken a bit of a break. A four week break in fact. I said I would write about each an every game and I'm still going to do that. Initially I was worried these posts wouldn't be as relevant anymore. However I'm mainly writing these for myself, so too bad, I'm going to keep doing them. 

Dungeon Dash

Huzzah! At last I am face to face with a roguelike, quite possibly my favourite genre of game. It certainly plays and looks good too, the way you move around the dungeon is very satisfying. You're also given some pacey background music to keep the game going. 

If you're familar with roguelikes you will feel quite at home, it's turn-based, there's perma-death, there's loot and you "bump to attack". Unfortunately you won't be making any interesting situations with the gear, as they are either better or worse than what you have currently. That said Dungeon Dash isn't trying to be complex, it's essentially the roguelike genre boiled down to the basics, and I don't mean that in a bad way. While you might get bored relatively quickly if you play a lot of roguelikes, I think this could prove a good roguelike for beginners. Definitely worth a try.

Endings of the Ugly

This is another one of those games I don't want to spoil too much. It seems like a regular platformer at first but you soon realize it's unique aspects. Finishing the game is easy but this is a game you repeatedly play to find out all the endings. It's refreshing as there aren't any straight up failure conditions just 10 different endings. 

Some endings are harder to reach than others but they all gave me a good chuckle. The graphics and characters are also nice and colourful, adding to the overall charm. 

I don't want to say much more, but I really enjoyed playing this. I can assure you will have a good time.

Find me a Good One

This game is undeniably a strange one. You play a little girl who in my opinion is the toy of a sleeping boy you are introduced to at the beginning. The boy expresses his exasperation of needing to go to bed. Perhaps this exasperation is healthy, while he sleeps a collection of strange flies gather above his head. If enough gather above his head you are informed "he's gone now", possibly implying he's died. It could imply something less sinister though, such as getting older and growing out of playing with toys. Exploring the small world which I think to be boy's mind, you'll come across different puzzles. These puzzles involve controlling two characters (yourself and another) simultaneously in which you must reach a specific location for each character. Completing the puzzles leads to some of the flies getting blown away. 

These characters you interact with and control are strange and confusing almost looking like a toy or a pet with weird characteristics. For instance a dog or a puppy with wings. Perhaps a mutation created by the boy's mind?

Along these puzzles are also some sandbox areas which don't have any specific goal however interacting with them generates the flies I talked about earlier.

Nothing is crystal clear in Find me a Good One, the narrative may seem too vague for some but I really enjoyed trying to make something of the vagueness. Unfortunately the graphics for me aren't crystal clear either, perhaps it's because of my large monitor but the graphics were fuzzy in some areas and I couldn't find a windowed option. 

Some will find it weird and frustrating others will find in intriguing, I was definitely the latter person. If you're interested after reading this definitely give it a try maybe your interpretation will be different.

UPDATE - I decided to do some digging and apparently the boy is described as you brother. As quoted on the website: "Find Me A Good One is a surreal puzzle platformer in which  you are tasked to find, chat with, and navigate dream characters back to your brother in order to fend off the nightmares sneaking into his bedroom." However as this isn't mentioned in the game itself I think my interpretation is still valid, and I go by what I say.

Flip

Flip is rather simple top-down puzzle game both graphically and mechanically. But that doesn't mean it isn't clever. Clicking on the level flips the environment around within a square radius of where you clicked. This means you can get past solid brick walls and a few other obstacles. The first few levels rely on trial and error for the most part as you can find the way by more or less clicking randomly around. This gets you familiar with how the mechanics work because the levels get more clever later on. However there were parts that became frustrating due to the controls being far too sensitive. I knew exactly what I needed to do but there was such a small margin for error when it came to moving yourself in-game. I especially enjoyed the final level too.

Fliptris

Fliptris could be described as a non-linear Tetris I guess. Not only do you stack blocks upwards but pretty much any direction you want in a 2D space. This entails for a much easier but refreshing experience, than the original Tetris. If one area goes to pot you can simply rotate the game around and play on the other side. I'm sure this also makes for some interesting decisions if you're one for beating scores. It's definitely a fun gimmick but the beauty of the original Tetris is how simple it is, I've never been extremely fond of large changes to the traditional formula. It was definitely fun to mess around with initially though. 

The Pirate Bay Bundle: Cycle, Dark Tower, Death Moose, Dogfighter and Dorsaka

All these games are free and can be downloaded as a part of moshboy's The Pirate Bay Bundle, watch the trailer and download it here:

After this next 5 I will be a quarter of the way through, time to get playing.

Cycle

Cycle is immediately very appealing to me visually, I love the mix of smooth gradient backgrounds and pixel art. Possibly a reason why I think Fez is the best looking game ever made. Anyway, in addition to the pleasant graphics the music and sounds have a nice atmosphere to them also. You control your stick man with the arrow keys and attack with his glowing sword by pressing space. If you like the look of this game I would recommend you go ahead and play it now, because I spoil the cool gimmick of this game in the next paragraph. 

I didn't expect anything more than this but it gets better. Cycle takes it's name seriously, as you walk around the small planet, day changes to night and night changes today. More importantly when you walk all 360 degrees around the planet, you must kill a previous version of yourself which moves with your recorded actions of your last rotation of the planet. This makes for some really interesting situations where you try and fight the red monsters and yourself at the same time. Killing yourself restores all three hearts, so you can't avoid doing it. Beating the game took me at least 10 tries, and along the way not once did I feel my deaths were cheap.

A really great little game that looks fantastic, it was definitely worth my time and I hope you enjoy it.

Dark Tower

The gimmick of this wall jumping platformer is the randomly generated levels, which are full of crabs, bats and spiked blocks you must avoid. This was a Ludum Dare game and you can tell most of the time was spent on the randomly generated levels. Because unfortunately there isn't any music or sound effects. I'm not a professional games designer but I've made enough stuff to see how important sounds are in games. They actually make the controls feel better and more reactive, of course this is an illusion, but it makes a huge difference. If you like the sound of randomly generated levels though, why not give it a try.

Death Moose

I would be disappointed is this game wasn't nonsensical or silly. I was not disappointed. You play one hell of a bad-ass moose that can punch people in the face, eat the corpses of petty humans and summon rocks from the sky. That's right, SUMMON ROCKS FROM THE SKY. Makes perfect sense, I love it. Speaking of sound effects the ones in this game are fantastic in a lovingly stupid fashion. They were all done by a guy (supposedly the developer) making sounds through a microphone. 

The gameplay consists of you as the moose fighting wave after wave of humans. The humans come in a few different forms, knights, ninjas, marksmen and paragliding men dropping rocks, perhaps a few more. It doesn't control very well but it certainly made me chuckle and I think that's the point.

Dogfighter

Seeing this name I pictured a game where you play as a dog, but alas you play a space ship in horizontally scrolling space. In most scrolling shooters you play against many enemies at the same time, but in this case each level you fight one large ship. I guess it's like a boss fight as every level. You must try and land as many hits as possible while dodging the attacks of the big ship that come every few seconds. You can also deploy flares that attract small drones which the enemy fires at you occasionally. There are a number of power-ups that change the bullets you fire. These are temporary and only last so long, but I would personally like to see permanent upgrades too, of which there are not. Most of the skill comes from dodging the enemy attacks, which get increasingly difficult at quite a sharp rate. I found level 3 and 4 to be very hard to get past. I am pretty awful at these shooters, though. As a final note it would be nice to see a health bar of the enemy ship, since they can be quite the bullet sponges.

Dorsaka

Dorsaka is a maze game by which you are stuck in a desert. This desert isn't a friendly one either, a bar in the top left indicates how hydrated you are. You can increase this bar by walking into grass. This adds a nice strategy element considering maze games can be rather dull at times. There were many times when I was close to death, only just managing to grab some grass at the last possible second. It can get very tense at times as you rapidly try to plan an appropriate way through the maze. With trial and error however you will probably figure out the solution after a few tries. Dying also leaves a ghost of your character in the maze where you die, it doesn't change the gameplay at all, but a nice touch I thought.

Finally I really like the atmosphere of the game, it has a great feeling of mysteriousness, especially since the subtitle of the game, in the main menu is: The Lost Desert of Inter-dimensional Mazes, adding more to the intrigue. Definitely worth a try, but I think there's quite a bit more that can be done with this idea.

The Pirate Bay Bundle: Caldera, Cat Show, Connect, Cripple Apocalypse and Criss Cross

All these games are free and can be downloaded as a part of moshboy's The Pirate Bay Bundle, watch the trailer and download it here:

We have a nice variety in the next batch of 5, lets find out what they entail.

Caldera

Caldera would be the perfect game to have on your phone, and I mean that as a compliment. It's a little awkward to explain but you must press the X key in correspondence to the colour of the center square and the square that is selected. The selected square changes every split second so it becomes a matter of timing too. Whether you understand my botched explanation or not, as extra complexities are added to the game it becomes comparable to tapping your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time. The only problem I have with the game was it's length, I want to play more!

Cat Show

Uh...

Wha...? 

Speechless is a nice way to described my feelings for this game. And I mean that in a hilarious sense of the word. The humour of Cat Show is bizarre to say the least but it had me in hysterics. I don't want to spoil anything else, you will only find out what I mean if you play it yourself, go do that now.

Connect

In Connect you have to reduce all the nodes to the number zero by connecting them. Connecting them subtracts the number of each node from each other. For example connecting a "2" node to a "3" node will leave you with one node of "0" and another of "1". I hope I haven't made it sound complicated, because it isn't. This would make for quite a fun puzzle game in itself but the stroke of genius is the time limit. There is a total of 15 puzzles all of which must be done in 60 seconds. If the 60 seconds run out you have to start from the first puzzle again. This means the puzzles can't be solved by trial and error very easily.

The aesthetic is nice and simple, plus it's actually rather hard to complete, haven't finished it myself yet.

Cripple Apocalypse

The world has become infested with cripples and it's your job to, uh... Run them down with a car that also happens to have spikes attached to it's bumper. Careful though, don't crash into another car head on, or you'll burn to death.

I really don't know what else to say, the graphics are purposefully garish and I guess it's satisfying to run down numerous cripples with a nice squish sound. Of course the game isn't very deep on a skillful level, but that's not the point. The point is, you shouldn't feel guilty about running over cripples. Wait, maybe not... I don't know, maybe I should feel guilty?

Criss Cross

Criss Cross is a maze game by which you must gather 5 keys and reach the exit in the bottom left corner. The twist is, other strange creatures can pickup these keys too. Once you kill a creature holding a key by shooting it with your blaster gun, the key is randomly placed somewhere else on the level. Where it might be picked up by another creature and so fourth. The thing I really like about this game is how the different creatures interact. Pink ones are harmless, green ones can eat pink ones and orange ones can shoot. This means there's always something happening on-screen. Also, creatures spawn again if they die so you can't go around spamming the shoot button. Another reason not to spam the shoot button is that you might end up shooting yourself. If you go to the edge of the screen you appear at the opposite edge, pacman style, your bullets can also travel like this.

It becomes a game of accuracy, killing the correct creatures and memorizing the mazes. As some of them can be quite confusing, unfortunately later levels simply become too chaotic for my liking, reducing the fun. I still had a very good time with this game though.

The Pirate Bay Bundle: Blockage, Blockman gets more, bullet.collect, Bunnies back into your cage and Burgle

All these games are free and can be downloaded as a part of moshboy's The Pirate Bay Bundle, watch the trailer and download it here:

I missed 3 whole days, but I must continue; the next 5 games of the bundle!


Blockage

In one sentence I would describe Blockage as a cerebral isometric snake game. In many ways, that's exactly what it is. You move around a snake-like creature with the E, R, D and F keys. Because of it's isometric nature the controls can take a while to get your head around. But I would recommend you persist as it's certainly worth it.

To begin with you navigate your snake to the end door, unlike snake your length is infinite once you go over a square, a block of your body stays there. It doesn't require the finesse of the original snake though as you can actually back track and taking a wrong turn doesn't have major consequences as restarting is easy. The interesting part about this game is that once you complete a level your previous route becomes a part of the level. So you have to constantly think ahead.

Definitely worth a try, even if you aren't into puzzle games the difficultly curve isn't too steep so I had a great time.

Blockman gets more

This game is a twist on the game we all know, Pacman. It acts more as a puzzle game, than a game of quick thinking as you can't go back on yourself. That is unless you pickup a power-up that replaces the white dots you ate previously. It plays very well and the music is nice, especially the level select music. There are 6 worlds in total each with 3 levels. Every world has something new in it, for example in one you can break through walls, in another the controls are a bit different. I had fun but I did find my patience dwindled as some levels require you to get quite a few points before you can complete them.

bullets.collect

As you might be able to tell by the title, this game in a scrolling shooter with a programming theme. It also has a number of pretty unique mechanics that punishes you if you're too greedy. Defeating one enemy completes that level by which a few coins fall downwards which you need to collect to increase your time. The interesting thing is you don't start with any bullets yourself. Some of the bullets the enemy fires can be collected by you, the red ones in fact. Once you collect one of these bullets, of course you can fire it at the enemy and end the level. However the more bullets you collect in that level determines how many coins fall, so you don't want to end a level too quickly.

I hope you understand my explanation but really you should try it for yourself. It had me thinking in ways these shooters usually don't.

Bunnies back into your cage

An adorable little puzzle game with funky simplistic graphics where you have to guide a bunny into a cage. To do so however you will need to pickup the environment Minecraft style and replace the blocks for the bunnies and yourself to climb up. You control the bunnies with a carrot block which they lovingly follow. I really like the style of it but unfortunately puzzles can be a little boring to complete. Seeing the solution is often easy but the levels take a while to complete as you simply rearrange blocks. Maybe I just don't have the patience for it though, it might definitely appeal to you.

Burgle

In burgle you play... Yes, a burglar. You are tasked with robbing a large house of as many possessions as possible. You can snatch almost every item you can see in the house including house plants which you can use to hide behind. However the more you steal the slower you run as your swag bag gets heavier with all the stolen items. A timer is also counting down, when it reaches zero policemen start entering the house and searching for you. As you can imagine risk versus reward is a huge factor, it can be so very tempting to grab anything you see even though it makes you slower.

It's a simple concept that works very well, but I do think your character becomes too slow, too quickly. This greatly reduces my enjoyment with the game. With a bit of balancing I would love this game though. However it's still worth a try, the graphics are ace and encounters with the police can be exciting.

The Pirate Bay Bundle: Ahriman's Treasure, Akasa, Battletrack, Betasuppe, Bite Me and Block Faker

All these games are free and can be downloaded as a part of moshboy's The Pirate Bay Bundle, watch the trailer and download it here: 

I certainly enjoyed yesterday's 5 games, so today I'm going to write about the next 6. Lets do this.

Ahriman's Treasure

Ahriman's Treasure is the first "endless" game of the bundle. You play an explorer standing on a flying carpet with sword in hand ready to grab as much treasure as possible. With some well suited music playing in the background you set off on your adventure scrolling from right to left. Hopefully avoiding pillars, flame traps, bats and falling rocks. The most apparent thing is certainly the lovely glowing particle effects along with the well done pixel art. The screenshot below doesn't really do it justice, it looks much better in motion. The more the play the faster you start flying, making avoid obstacles much more tricky.

The endless temple is randomized so at times I came across frustratingly difficult situations which killed me before I knew what was going on. Maybe that's just my own incompetence though. After playing for a few minutes I got in an addictive loop of instantly restarting when I died. There's also gamejolt leader-board support, so if you're into that sort of thing you know what to do.

Akasa

Akasa, is a 3D vertical scrolling shooter, you shoot your guns with a nice "pew-pew" sound effect and drop bombs on stuff below. The sound effects are very satisfying and the destruction is fun when there are a lot of enemies on screen. The controls are also good, except for one major thing which bothers me. You can't move backwards while shooting forwards. Your whole ship turns around and you shoot behind instead.
This makes lining up shots awkward and frustrating. I've never been one for scrolling shooters though, maybe you'll enjoy it more.

Battletrack

I have always had a fondness for top-down racers since the times I used to play Micro Machines 3 over LAN at a friend's house. There are four tracks in Battletrack each is different but not very distinctive, you race around the track with 7 other AI racers. It would be cool to have local multiplayer, but I guess crowding around a keyboard to play a game like this isn't very common nowadays. You also have the ability to shoot after the first lap. This damages racers in front and sends them off course to leave small puddles of oil. The game plays just fine but unfortunately there are just too many laps required to finish a race and since you have to get a certain position to proceed to the next track it's annoying. It's a shame as I think it would be such an easy fix. Either way, you do get to play beside some rather funky background music.

Betasuppe

At a glance Betasuppe looks like a simple platformer, but actually it isn't in the slightest. It's a sort of puzzle adventure game, by which you use your keyboard to type certain commands. The main character Colin acts out these commands if he understands them. It only involves simple stuff like "Pickup X", "Walk Right" or "Look Sea" but it's rather pleasant. The puzzling involves simply trying to workout what you can do with each object or environment. Of course some problems arise where it's uncertain if you simply can't do something or you're just typing it wrong. But because it's so simple these issues aren't such a big deal. I have never played a point and click adventure game so despite it's simplicity I still enjoyed it.

I managed to complete it without any help but there's some hints in the readme file if you get stuck.

Bite me

Bite me is a question and answer tug-of-war where you try to convince a giant not to eat you. The more questions you get right the closer he gets to freeing you and the more questions you get wrong the closer you get to his mouth. Get too close to his mouth and "nomnomnom" you're dead, there's also another losing condition by which you run out of things to say. None of these questions are actually factual ones so you can win the game by trial and error after losing a few times. But that's not the point, the fun part is the amusing answers you can do, and the interesting reactions the giant replies with. It doesn't take long to complete so certainly worth a try, also who doesn't like this style of pixel art?

Blockfaker

I'm sure Blockfaker looks like a few games you've seen before, you play a character that moves from square to square with the desire of reaching the end point, a green tile. To reach the green tile you much push matching blocks into lines of three to make them disappear and therefore clear the way. It's the kind of puzzle game that requires quite a few restarts in the later levels, since you can accidentally make it unsolvable. One level in particular had me very stumped for a good 10 minutes. The interesting thing is, it's not hard in the typical sense of a puzzle game. It's difficult because there are certain parts of the puzzles which act as distractions and aren't required to get to the end. So it becomes a matter of figuring out the useful blocks to the pesky distractions. That said there might be many multiple ways to complete a single puzzle, making those blocks not distractions, just a different method of completion. It also controls very tightly, recommended for any puzzle nuts.