Posts tagged with “plumbers”

What we played in 2010

List of games I still need to play from 2010: Limbo, Starcraft 2, Red Dead Redemption, Rock Band 3 with a Keytar, Kirby's Epic Yarn, and Minecraft just to name a few. Time to get cracking!

It’s time for our annual “we’re too lazy to put up new content so here is a rehashed post” list of all the games we played this past year. Sweet! Here’s what we played in 2010.

Our year started off with one of the best games to come out of the Boston Global Game Jam, a highly descriptive and amusing platformer called RunRunRunJump that has one of the best soundtracks you’ve ever heard. After that we played Robot Unicorn Attack which since our post has become one of the best selling games on the iPhone (coincidence? I think not! Of course not all games on our blog get quite as much attention, and Paul Sztajer’s Particulars seems to be somewhat abandoned nowadays judging from the leaderboards. But hey, if you ever wanted to be #1 on some boards now is your chance! I’m personally at #2 of all time with 325K.

We laughed a ton playing Sydney Shark, one of the most hilarious games we’ve seen since Robot Dinosaurs that Roar. Where else can you chomp horse heads, killer whales, and nuclear missiles as a shark? Jay Pavlina’s Super Mario Bros. Crossover got a ton of well deserved internet attention, and since the initial release Jay’s been hard at work adding special new features for each character. We then looked at an artier game called Every Day the Same Dream, which still has a terrific ending if you haven’t tried it yet. I find it interesting that since that game came out a similar title called One Chance was released, which while somewhat derivative is also excellent with a fantastic ending(s?).

Of course if you aren’t feeling especially artistic and just want a fun platformer then Enough Plumbers was probably right up your alley. Any game where you kill clones of Mario and light yourself on fire with jalapeno peppers has to be fun. If you’re more of an RPG or educational gaming fan you’ll probably like CellCraft, a game which not only has “craft” in the title but teaches about both cellular microbiology and platypuses. And if you’re the type of gamer who care for roguelikes and has several days of free time then Desktop Dungeons is the game for you – I think I almost burned a week on that one before deciding I had gone “far enough”. I hope QCF design brings it to consoles!

At the end of the year we wrapped up the demo of the still-in-development indie game Planck by Shadegrown Games, a neat experimental music game with some fun shooting bits. We also played the phenomenal tower defense game Ghost Hacker by Core Sector, and then finally wrapped up the year with the engaging short interactive fiction title The Warbler’s Nest by Jason McIntosh. It was a good year!

If you haven’t played any of these games yet be sure to take a look at them over break, they’re a ton of fun and every single one of them is free to play!I can’t wait for the awesome games we’ll wind up playing in 2011.

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What We’re Playing: Enough Plumbers

One can never have enough plumbers

A lot of times flash games have some sort of innovative, but ultimately gimmicky, central mechanic that doesn’t get used especially well. At it’s surface, Enough Plumbers would seem to be one of these games. You star as an overall wearing plumber trying to complete several levels by reaching the flag. The fun twist is that when you get a coin a clone spawns, which functions with the same keyboard controls as all the other plumbers (it feels a bit like Ninja Bros).

What’s impressive about this game is that there is actually a good level progression where the mechanic is explored nicely over 25 levels, and some of the later challenges are pretty damn difficult. It’s also got a lot of nice touches, including fun sound effects and music, cool power ups, and a terrific final boss battle. Oh, and in case it’s not obvious, the entire game is a homage to Mario, which is especially apparent in that boss battle (Miyamoto-Bowser!) Why are you still reading this? Go play it!

Incidentally, one of the guys that made this is Glen Forrester, the nut behind Gnilley.

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