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Developer: Teyon
Publisher: Legacy Games
Platform: Mobile – iOS PC – Big Fish Games, Steam
Paranormal State is apparently a TV show about paranormal investigators that has been running since 2007. Having cut cable some point around there, I’d actually never heard of it before. In any case, the game focuses on the team as they’ve been called onto a new case in Poison Springs. A museum built near a historic Civil War battle is experiencing a haunting that only they can solve.
Many TV shows get the hidden object treatment. Paranormal State: Poison Springs attempts to bring its ghost hunting style into the game with an assortment of ghost-sensing tech. Alongside hidden object segments are special puzzles involved in sensing spirits. These end up as fairly simple minigames. I seriously appreciated that the sliding tile puzzles simply let you pick up segments and place them elsewhere. Actually having to slide picture pieces around has always been my biggest gaming weakness.
Hidden object sequences themselves are mostly standard. Some objects are out in the open while others require a multi-step procedure to show up. This is kind of annoying at times where the solution seems obvious but doesn’t work out. Of course, hints make this an easier task by casting blue bubbles around what you need most. Hints extend across the entire game. In fact, Paranormal State includes a built-in walkthrough in case you’re ever completely stuck.
There are some great conveniences in this game but it still drags on. Story pacing seems a bit off, with ghosts posing a serious threat one moment to wandering around without much pressure the next. I don’t know how the story compares to ones in an average episode, but it was alright, if hokey at times. It was pretty cool to see that most of lead characters were women and that the player character is never gendered. As for the character art, it didn’t seem the best digital paint work out there but is definitely good enough. The landscapes fare far better.
Paranormal State: Poison Springs brings a serviceable story with four to six hours of gameplay. With a handful of accessible Achievements, handy walkthrough, and additional unlockable chapter, it’s a neat modern hidden object game.
3 out of 5 alpacas
Developer: Navel
Publisher: MangaGamer
Platform: PC – MangaGamer*
Rin is just your average high school student. He’s no sport star nor is he a straight A student. Despite having nothing special to his name, he finds his world shaken up as two new transfer students appear in his class. According to them, they both met Rin as children and fell in love with him. This love has remained strong all those years so they finally decided to seek him out. Oh, and by the way, they just so happen to be daughters of the Gods of Heaven and Hell.
The contest has concluded! The winners are: Cael, Empathenosis, Liztress, TKtheknight, and Ninjapresident!
Hello and welcome to our latest contest on Pixel Pacas! Today we’re doing something a little different. Thanks to MangaGamer, we are offering free downloadable copies of Really? Really! to five lucky readers. This uniquely-named visual novel is a sequel to Shuffle! which is quite well known. Please be aware that Really? Really! is intended for adult players due to sexual content and that MangaGamer’s website is very NSFW.
Because this is a special giveaway the rules are a bit different this time around.
How to enter:
1. Leave a comment on this post which includes your MangaGamer.com user ID and e-mail address. In the event that you win, the email address listed will be where instructions on how to redeem your free game shall be sent.
Note that this giveaway does not distinguish between new and old MangaGamer shoppers. Feel free to create an account and then enter this giveaway!
Our Really? Really! giveaway ends on Friday – June 6th. Good luck!
If you’d like to stay in the loop about our contests and content our Twitter is always kept up to date. But if you don’t use Twitter, we also have a Steam Group that updates whenever a new giveaway goes live.
Developer: Phosfiend Systems
Publisher: Phosfiend Systems
Platform: PC – GOG*, Humble Store, Steam
FRACT OSC is an interesting experience. It is part game and part musical plaything which for some reason is not common in the rhythm/music game genre. Some may not enjoy that, but for me, it was a great way to feel and see music in a fictional space.
Players begin by being unceremoniously dropped into a polygonal 3D world. When I say that I mean that the entire landscape is large, rough cut polygons. Everything is big, blocky, and angular but not in an unattractive way. The alien landscape is beautiful thanks to simple but effective architecture and a great color scheme. Purple, pink, red, and blue/green hues saturate the landscape with a digital glow.
Gameplay is revealed through a gentle series of tutorials. After meandering a bit to places that seem important, you learn how to manipulate various objects. Upon doing so, machines and buildings become active. Sometimes this creates musical cues and usually involves lights strobing or changing. Solving puzzles and exploring are the main brunt of FRACT OSC unless you enter the Studio.
The Studio starts with all featured locked. Progressing through puzzles unlocks things although you can choose to unlock everything if you just want to mess around immediately. Players can interact with an unexpectedly proficient synthesizer and related musical tools to create their own music. There’s even a button to export your new masterpieces to Youtube. The original soundtrack by Mogi Grumbles is already awesome, but it’s wonderful to see a game based around music giving players the tools to create their own stuff.
It was hard not to fall desperately in love with the unique landscape of FRACT OSC. The way the music and world mix is incredible, as are the included musical tools. It’s a shame the entire experience weren’t longer, or perhaps made it easier to sidestep some tough puzzles. Still, many players should be able to experience all that this game has to offer.
4 out of 5 alpacas
Review code provided
About our rating system – *Affiliate Link
Developer: Beyond Games
Publisher: Accolade, Tommo
Platform: PC – GOG*
Were you looking for a hyper violent, ridiculously bloody shooter in the 90s? The market was simply saturated with this stuff! As such, it took GOG’s recent release of Redline for me to even realize this game existed. It appears Redline slipped between the cracks for many players out there. It’s a bit of a shame because the game is actually pretty fun as far as FPSes are concerned.
You start off in the dystopian future of 2066. At this point the world is completely destroyed leaving various factions to fight for supremacy. Without much rhyme or reason, you seek to join one specific gang to help them achieve victory. Doing so involves a ton of firefights over the course of 12 levels.
Stages are pretty large and often this is to grant access for car use. Aside from running around on your feet as per FPS conventions you can also hop into empty vehicles and drive around. Crushing enemies with your car or utilizing its various weapons add some much-needed uniqueness to Redline. Weapons themselves are not the most creative on the block but do burst enemies into bloody bits.
There’s a bit of story between stages but nothing very enthralling. Visuals are also par for the course of late 90s video games. Controls also fit in with that time period which means they are imperfect. You can rebind them, but that didn’t fix my issue with mouse control. It seemed to not offer complete freedom of aiming which I had to get used to. Perhaps that was just a personal setup issue, though.
Redline will last you at least 3 hours with FPS and vehicular combat fun. It is not the best of its class, but certainly better than some of its bargain bin peers.
2 out of 5 alpacas
Review code provided
About our rating system – *Affiliate Link
Developer: Nik Sudan
Platform: PC – Game Jolt
This post is part of a series on The Pirate Bay Bundle.
Ahriman’s Treasure was made for the Indie Speed Run 2013. In it, players jump on a magic carpet and fly left, avoiding any obstacles in their path. This is a task much easier said than done.
Along your seemingly never-ending path there are columns with gaps in the middle. Surviving these is just a manner of lining up the carpet to get through. Other issues include bats and boulders that spontaneously fall from the ceiling. You can move up, down, left, and right although heading backwards is really slow.
The game has a pixel art aesthetic but manages to look strangely distinct. Perhaps it has to do with the lighting around the main character, or the appearance of depth thanks to two layers on screen. Who knows? All I can say is I was quite enchanted by the visuals. In particular, the magic purple carpet is really cute thanks to little sparks and stars that trail behind it.
There’s not much to Ahriman’s Treasure but it excels thanks to simplicity and infinite replayability. If you play it on Game Jolt your scores are also saved on the leaderboard. I’m not about to inject my name because I’m frankly terrible at the game.
Developer: White Paper Games
Publisher: White Paper Games
Platform: PC – GOG*, Humble Store, Steam
Are you someone who enjoyed the exploration of Gone Home but isn’t interested in puzzles that are typically aplenty in adventure games? Are you an adventure gamer who thoroughly enjoys wracking their brains on puzzles? Somehow, White Paper Games managed to make a game for both crowds with Ether One.
Ether One places players in the shoes of a “Restorer”. According to an omnipresent voice, you’re told that this means you enter into the mind of a dementia patient and try to restore their memories. Looking through memories not your own is an interesting concept and manages to overcome the sci-fi technology of it all. The story slowly unfolds and has a pretty heart-wrenching conclusion if you see it through the 3 to 7 hour playtime.
The most mechanically interesting aspect is that players can simply explore and uncover memory tidbits or they can solve puzzles to proceed. Since these are not required, you can simply ignore the ones you come across and enjoy the story that way. Of course, solving puzzles does appear to give you a deeper understanding of the storyline. Choosing to mess with the puzzles, most seemed simple enough, although I didn’t enjoy how a few seemed to require careful backtracking.
What ended up being the biggest issue for me was the fact that your player held inventory can only consist of one item. Players bring extra items to home base (accessible with a button press) and place them on shelves. This completely messed with my adventure game instincts of picking everything up because not every object in Ether One is required. All the same, I took everything back home and ended up with very cluttered shelves by the end.
My favorite feature was not the storyline, as it seemed kind of sparse early on. Instead, I was simply awed by the visuals. The 3D world is all hand drawn/painted style textures. It looks gorgeous and will definitely keep the game from looking “dated” for quite some time.
This may not be the best new adventure game of the year, but Ether One is still an admirable attempt. Players of different skillsets should all be able to make their way through the storyline and enjoy it. I just do not understand why they cluttered the world with objects (some unnecessary) and don’t let you keep multiple easily accessible. Still, what an interesting game.
3 1/2 out of 5 alpacas
Review code provided
About our rating system – *Affiliate Link
Developer: Whole Hog Games
Publisher: Nkidu Games
Platform: PC – Steam
Full Bore is a game about an adorable little boar who digs underground searching for gems. And no, it’s not boring as the name may suggest to some. To bore is to dig by twisting or turning, and that’s exactly what the in-game boar does. It also happily bashes its head on the walls or floor when objects aren’t breakable and somehow that still looks incredibly adorable.
Once one gets past the “aww” factor, is Full Bore an entertaining game? That depends on your interpretation of entertaining, as the digger/puzzler hybrid is quite challenging. There are a wide variety of areas in the mine shafts to explore and each contains its own host of puzzles. Basically, you’ve got to figure out how to get from point A to point B by boring through blocks or pushing things around. This is so you can reach gems, characters, or new areas. Some puzzles are quite simple but other times it takes a good deal of consideration.
Some of the most challenging aspects are when Full Bore asks the player to solve a puzzle quickly. While playing with an Xbox 360 controller I found them especially tough because my boar would run off further than I commanded. The last thing anyone wants when trying to execute a precise, quick puzzle solution is to have the character lack precision. There is a saving grace to this issue though and it is a rewind function.
At any point you can choose to rewind your moves up to the last save point. This could be just a few steps or a ton and there’s no other restrictions placed on it. The feature is cool, if overwhelmingly overpowered, and saved my hide on many occasions. Still, it would be nice if the boar could have tighter control. Unfair failures are always a tad annoying in games.
Enjoyment of Full Bore is fully dependent on the player digging, exploring, and solving puzzles. Because boar control can be a bit spotty, at least some of this is less fun than it could be. Of course, getting stuck is never any fun either but that is true of all puzzlers. It just seemed that I got into tight situations more often than in other similar games which inhibited the fun of digging around. Thankfully, the silly cast of characters and cute boar kept me engaged. Full Bore is a cute new game that puzzle enthusiasts should look into.
3 out of 5 alpacas
Review code provided
About our rating system
Developer: William Dyce
Platform: PC – IndieDB
This post is part of a series on The Pirate Bay Bundle.
Platformers are all over the place in the indie community which often makes it hard for any to stand out. Abomination is one title that easily rises above the rest for me. Featuring a strange purple and black “abomination”, your goal is simply to retrieve a teddy bear placed somewhere on each stage. However, getting there proves to be quite the challenge across 25 levels.
One of the things that struck me most was simply that there is no obvious tutorial. Instead, players are quickly taught the mechanics simply by exploring the initial stages. By doing so you realize that the character can climb up walls and what sort of hindrances there are to that. For example, some walls are easy to climb while others leave you sliding down fast.
The art was simplistic enough to get the point across, but still included some flourishes. As you scramble to stay on a wall, pixel sparks fly out in response. When the character gets going too fast they end up bumping into a wall and falling down. Even the skirt that they wear flows as they run and jump from platform to platform.
There aren’t many mechanics to these puzzling platforming stages but the last few were still very difficult! With that said, because there are under 30 stages in all it took maybe half an hour to beat Abomination. It was quite an enjoyable period of time, though. No narrative ever had to explain why the abomination was so invested in teddy bears but I was more than happy to keep collecting them to completion.
Developer’s comment: Abomination was my second Game Maker 7 game. The protagonist is a Frankenstein’s monster meets Edward Scissor-hands: I had a lot of quite ambitious ideas where the theme is concerned, I wanted the game to talk about dealing with rejection and disgust. Basically if your appearance is monstrous is there any reason not to act like a monster? After all people will treat you like a monster no matter what you do. Of course the project never got quite that far, even if the core gameplay is pretty strong.
I made it a point of honour not to include any textual tutorials, so the levels are designed to very gradually teach you new things. This is a big improvement on Supersoldat, my first game, which had tutorial messages on every single level and a huge number of button combinations to remember.
Everything is made by me, William ‘wilbefast’ Dyce except the music, which was created by Henrik Roslund.
I hope you enjoy the game, please let me know what you think!
Developer: Veewo Studio
Publisher: Veewo Studio
Platform: Android, iOS
If you’re at all interested in smartphone games then you’ve likely played Threes! or one of the many, many copycats available for download. Although I now own Threes!, my first experience with the card pushing puzzler concept was 1024, hence this review is for it. As it turns out, the games are practically identical except 1024 is free.
1024 is a simple puzzle game that takes place on a 4 x 4 grid. You start with a couple rectangular pieces that have numbers on them such as 2 or 4. Your goal is to slide like tiles together, adding them together. For example, two 8 blocks become one 16 block. Skilled players can make increasingly massive blocks but it is tough!
The hard part is that every time you slide tiles up, down, left, or right it affects everything on the screen. Unless they can’t slide, everything moves in the chosen direction. Also, a new number block is laid after every turn, cluttering the screen further. Although it is possible to just randomly slide things around it is most satisfying to come up with strategies.
Right now 1024 is something I have to play at least once a day. The simplistic gameplay encourages a “one more game” mentality. Despite the possibility of being a strategic game, it can also just help relax your mind in between tasks. Pick it up to see if the gameplay is to your liking, and if so, consider purchasing the original game Threes! by Sirvo.
June 5th, 2014 
