Durandal

Part tower defense, part RISK style strategy, all mixed into a great retro 40's / 50's style package set during the zombie apocalypse. Graphics are minimalistic but well presented and effective. The feeling is more of a 50's sci-fi monster movie with a WW2 style backdrop. Wherever you classify it, it works very well and has a pleasing aesthetic. Gameplay is polished and smooth. You spend most of your time playing, and not wading through extra bs. Cutscenes are done as a kind of moving comic vignette, which you can watch as it progresses or skip through at your own pace. There are lots of options for how you play the game as well. You can choose just how hard the game is with lots of items rather than the traditional "easy, medium, uberdeathhard" choices. You can turn on and off upgrades, or speed of zombies, or environmental factors like daylight length that affect gameplay. Let's you really customize your game experience, which really lets you have fun. Another thing that adds to this is that you aren't needlessly punished for a slip up. Levels are each pretty bite sized, so if you fail a mission you know quickly. Not only does it let you keep playing if you want (but flashes a restart button for convenience), but when you restart, you can have it maintain your placement of resources so you don't have to do it again or choose to redo it. No loading screens, no extra information if you don't want... just right back into the action. The way this is done is, I would say, nearly perfect. The only drawback, I would say, is that the game can be slightly repetitive. You are basically always on an overhead map... and maps are fairly similar. The great pacing makes up for this though. This game is about having fun. The developers obviously had that in mind when they made the game... push the fun and everything else will follow. I might have overlooked this if not for the humblebundle, which included it, which would have been a shame. This is definitely a niche style game; you have to be a fan of tower defense or RTS style games, and this is definitely a casual experience. I consider that a plus here though. The game is easily picked up without any prior instruction and is fun in bite sized pieces. Great way to pass the time while waiting for your pizza to arrive or the rest of your carpool to show up. Lots of short levels with saved campaign progress means you can start and stop playing whenever you feel like it. Low system requirements and price mixed with high aesthetic and fun factor make this a hidden gem that is worth the price ( $9.99 USD at time of review).

If you like puzzle games, you will probably love Cogs. It's a mixture of classic sliding puzzle mechanics and spacial awareness... all tied up in a nice steampunk package. Puzzles are generally accomplished by normal sliding block mechanics.. trading pieces around to put the correct ones in the correct space. The real trick comes as you progress through the levels... the puzzles become 3D... rotated around a cube, or placed back to back... where sliding one piece changes both puzzles' layouts... or having to connect various pieces to make different parts of a machine work on different sides of a cube. The graphics and sound effects are spot on (although I would have liked widescreen support, I didn't notice after a while). Graphics are smooth and well done... sound effects are minimal and subtle so as not to get annoying... while still adding to the atmosphere. Even the menus are fun. Not the most original puzzle game I've ever played, but presentation and fun factor are top notch.

Retro feel, especially if you've ever owned a Commodore 64... to the point where it probably could have been done ON a C64. Controls are decent... level design is decent... gameplay is frustrating and repetitive. It's a one trick pony. If you like repeatedly bashing your head against a finicky jump over and over trying to reach a checkpoint... you'll love vvvvvv. There is some sort of semblance of a story they're trying to push in the little dialog boxes... but honestly it never grabbed My attention and I started just clicking to skip them after a while until I got bored with being frustrated by a couple jumps. I don't know if it gets more interesting later... I only completed a couple of the levels before I got sick of the tedium. If you're into old skool, reflex-driven, platformers... you will probably like this. It is presented fairly well for what it is supposed to be. It is just very niche.

The graphics are ugly to the point of being slightly unsettling. The controls are slow and awkward. The levels are tedious and frustrating while being boring. It's a gimmicky game that you can play better versions of for free elsewhere... it's like a lame version of Shift ... ****/play/751/shift Got this as part of a bundle... glad I didn't pay anything for it.