AntVentor
Short version: 71%
AntVentor is a short, cute, and nice-looking adventure, following the Anamita school of wordless storytelling and handcrafted abstract visuals, with an enthusiastic team behind it.
Long version:
AntVentor cannot deny that it took a massive dose of inspiration from Anamita’s Botanicula, down to the same theme of following the life of a very humanlike bug (an ant, in this case), who tries to escape his role in society to follow his dreams. Similarly, it relies entirely on visual storytelling, even including the hint system.
– Real player with 5.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best 2.5D Cute Games.
I want to like this point-and-click adventure/puzzle game, but it sure makes it hard. First, the positives: It looks great, with crisp and detailed imagery, and cute ant characters. It reminds me of the excellent style achieved for the game Samorost 3.
Here’s what I DON’T like:
(1) The point-and-click mechanics are clunky. The pointer hand changes when you can do certain things, but often the hand only changes if you’re on the exact spot where you can do something. It leads you to miss puzzle solutions even when you’re on the right track and trying to click the thing that would give you the solution. It also shows you a “walking” hand (fingers moving) for areas where you can’t actually walk.
– Real player with 4.0 hrs in game
Venice 2089
“It’s hard to forget a city like this”
The city of Venice, once a significant tourism destination but now almost uninhabited, is struggling with the unpredictable behaviour of tides. Some of the most important monuments are being taken away, among the complaints of the citizens, and the lower part of the city becomes inaccessible more often than not. In Venice 2089, you’ll explore the city through the eyes of Nova, a bored teenager who has no clue about what to do in life and just wants to relax from the stress of their usual routine. Yet tides change for everyone without exception…
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Venice: Use your hoverboard to chill out and navigate the streets of the city in a unique 2.5D artstyle. Perform tricks and match your mood with the right vibes.
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Characters: Meet diverse characters scattered throughout the city. Know their personalities, learn their points of view and help them in different quests.
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Drone: Interact with the world using your drone. Collect objects out of your reach and hack into corporation billboards.
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Memories: Fill your house-boat with important objects, and remember the experiences you made.
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Tides: Tides are unpredictable and will change the way you travel. Learn new routes and explore newfound places.
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Soundtrack: Enjoy a dynamic soundtrack, combining the vibes you pick up on your hoverboard.
**WARNING:
THE DEMO CURRENTLY AVAILABLE DOES NOT REPRESENT THE FINAL STATE OF THE GAME.
IT MAY BE SUBJECT TO CHANGE DURING PRODUCTION.
BUGS AND OPTIMIZATION ISSUES MAY APPEAR DURING YOUR GAME.
THIS DEMO DOES NOT CURRENTLY SUPPORT WIDESCREEN RESOLUTIONS, WE ARE SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.**
Read More: Best 2.5D Singleplayer Games.
My Father My Son
Only cooperation can save them
Together with two lost castaways, a father, and son, experience a thrilling journey through a dark, uninhabited island that isn’t on the map. Overcome a path full of logic puzzles and hidden dangers and help the family get closer to each other. Escape from this mysterious place and discover together with the characters what’s hidden here.
Control two characters alone or in co-op (1 player - 1 character), using either a pad or the keyboard. You can change the control method at any time. Move along 2 paths, changing them freely as needed. Take wise advantage of the differences between the father (strong and high) and the son (small and agile), which will make it easier for the characters to work together on co-op puzzles.
MAIN FEATURES OF THE GAME:
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Play alone, controlling two characters or in co-op (local on one screen or online)
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Choose any method to control both characters: using pads or the keyboard
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Solve environmental puzzles based on the co-operation of two characters with different abilities: a father and son
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Fight for survival in thrilling arcade sequences
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Two characters and two tracks that you can change at any time
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Low-poly 2.5D side view game
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An engaging story about a father’s relationship with his son in a thriller atmosphere
Read More: Best 2.5D Thriller Games.
No One’s Earth
No One’s Earth is a 2.5D action/adventure Metroidvania set in a post-post-apocalyptic Earth, which had been dominated by two alien races and are now at war.
Play as Harlie Jamoor, a member of the team responsible for evaluate the habitability conditions of the Earth, coming from the space colony that shelters the human refugees from the climatic catastrophes that occurred on Earth. Harlie must rescue team members who have entered the Earth and mysteriously lost contact with the ship.
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Explore the abandoned CCTA (Climatic Control Testing Area), looking for the plants to complete the mission to help the Nularis so they can help to rescue your team.am.
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Watch closely and shoot anything that looks suspicious, dangerous enemies, or secret places.
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With just a visual reference and a brief description, venture through all of CCTA’s natural and artificial alien environments to find the plants almost hidden across the map that can save the Nularis from extinction.
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Acquire new abilities that need to be well managed by the consumption of the two types of energy that circulate through your suit, which can be expanded and also affect map progression.
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Survive the dangerous animals and security systems, which will try to stop you at all costs to prevent you from causing damage to the valuable species preserved in CCTA.
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Be careful with the movement of the Ceresti, responsible for creating the virus that puts the existence of Nularis at risk. Avoid getting their attention, run away, or fight them if you are capable.
Sputnik
Sputnik is an indie arcade space game where player needs to repair old Soviet Union space settlements. It’s a single player game with cyberpunk style graphics and real retro feel. Gameplay is based on old school games from 1980’s and 1990’s with lives and permadeath.
Player needs to explore abandon settlement in space and fix electricity, oxygen and water generators and make the settlement inhabitable. Explore the settlement and find materials to fix generators and upgrade your space ship to face the challenge!
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Explore and survive: Explore the settlements and find pickups, repair the generators and try to survive.
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Upgrade your ship: Player can upgrade his ship on the start of each level. Ship is being upgraded with scraps left from previous level.
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Upgrade your weapon: Weapon can be upgraded as well. Increase fire rate and ammo capacity with scraps.
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Use mods for better gaming experience: Game supports mods. Player can set default values from simple text file.
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Exceptional Soundtrack: Music and sounds are influenced by classic 8-bit, synth wave and ambience music.
There are multiple levels and each level is generated semi-procedurally to give a bit different experience on each gameplay. It is also possible to mod different properties of player and game.
Darkest Valley
CASUAL, CHALLENGING, OR IMPOSSIBLE?
However you want to play, choose your difficulty and hack and slash through 4 story acts. Each playthrough contains pseudo-randomly generated maps, ensuring that every playthrough is different. Hidden challenge bosses, extra magical loot, and comedic stories can be found for those looking!
UNCOVER THE MYSTERY
Journey through a dark fantasy world, as you uncover the strange happenings in the valley. Help your new friends and a town of misfits face off against the looming threat that has followed you from your past.
EMBRACE THE CLASSIC
Darkest Valley is an homage to the many great 2D action RPGs from the last twenty years. The original soundtrack, the visual style, and the story is a meld of our favorite elements from the classic and unforgettable titles in this genre. Relive those experiences in this modern indie creation.
HIGHLY STRATEGIC, POWERFUL BUILDS
Wield customizable weapons and armor with 8 item types and a wide variety of potions. Skills apply weapon hits to enemies with interesting effects, combining with crafted attributes to allow huge customization in the way you attack and defend. Coordinate with your skill tree selections, stat points, and the items you salvage for crafting materials to find the perfect build for your play style.
MANY VERY DIFFERENT WAYS TO PLAY
Choose to be an agile melee fighter, a point and click ranged tank, or a strategic summoner. Build your way across an interconnected skill tree with 5 starting points: Melee, Ranged, Summoning, Defensive, and Passives. Leverage your fast reflexes, careful positioning, or thoughtful planning to defeat the hordes you will encounter.
GROW YOUR POWER WITH MAGICAL SHARDS
There is no grind-based experience system in Darkest Valley. Increase your level and grow your strength by seeking out and finding otherworldly crystals shards that bestow great power upon those who wield them.
FACE MONSTROUS CREATURES
Throughout your journey you will fight against an array of creatures, from at first seemingly harmless slimes to monstrous trees that can walk, to horrors that come from the darkest depths. Dodge traps and find unexpected allies, where danger lurks around every corner.
FAST TRAVEL THROUGH THE MUSHROOM TUNNELS
In Darkest Valley there is little need to backtrack. Each area contains a mysterious enoki-like waypoint that acts as a portal and can be used to instantly teleport you from one area to another. If you die, you can simply teleport back to the latest waypoint and continue on your journey.
Heaven’s Hope - Special Edition
Good, not great.
It’s specifics:
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Visually superb.
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Fully voiced, perfectly subtitled.
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Verbose, yet not annoying; instead it’s rather charming.
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The humour is German, and this game is the historical source of this horrible stereotype, i.e., it’s not funny.
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The story is interesting enough. It’s about a bunch of angels (from the Christu mythos) being mean to everyone and to each other, one of them relentlessly using a mouse as a slave.
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The puzzles are often rather weak and abstruse. Sometimes things that cannot possibly work actually work, while things that would make sense fail with no explanation, a pitfall that better games avoid.
– Real player with 13.1 hrs in game
TL:DR
A fun but linear point and click game with charicaturized characters and medium production values. Play this if you are interested in the story and can tolerate the lack of freedom/emergent gameplay.
Audio
Atmospheric effects are ok to good.
Music is quite enjoyable and seems fitting to the themes, think Sleepy Hollow with a little angelic choir sprinkled in.
Voices are mostly good, but they are poorly timed. Considering the gold rule of comedy, the game suffers a lot from empty space in between lines of speech. It was very noticeable at the beginning but became less noticeable as the game progressed.
– Real player with 10.9 hrs in game
Stela
First impression: It has flesh-eating bugs (instead of rats like in Plague Tale) to oversized Gollum and a pyramid-shaped Tet that zaps you into “Oblivion” (movie with the same name)
Well, I’m kinda fond of the atmospheric, minimalistic game that’s has a puzzle/maze element and this one makes no exception. However, this particular puzzle-platformer has a lot to desire compared with other similar games I played before. Visually, Stela is a striking atmospheric game in a side-scrolling format but technically it’s low-poly though enough care has been put into the visuals and environments where they all feel alive.
– Real player with 3.6 hrs in game
B-E-A-UTIFUL! That was the first thing that sprang to mind when I delved into STELA.
From the barren wastelands of fields to the cold and desolate snow-swept landscapes, STELA is absolutely caked in artistic imagery. Everything is designed with a keen eye and attention to detail.
This is particularly important as, much like games such as Limbo and Inside (which this game will no doubt draw comparisons to) there is no dialogue to tell the story. Much of what you gleam of this tale is from the images presented to you. Without spoiling anything, much of what this story entails is told from pillars found throughout the game.
– Real player with 3.4 hrs in game
Another Sight - Hodge’s Journey
This was fun! The graphics were pleasing on Ultra. Not sure why my frames were capped at 62 FPS? V-Sync on or off did nothing, changing graphics from Ultra to Low did no difference, so that’s a bit odd. I found a glitch that allowed me to get outside of the map, sometimes exploring even more, it varies. You could only get to the edge of the map in spots and then fall off so nothing too over powered. Other than that, it was fun, very short but that’s the point. I’d recommend giving it a shot, fun little adventure overall. Played almost 2 hours just to speed run it once I beat it the first time.
– Real player with 1.7 hrs in game
Pros:
~Lovely menu UI;
~Nice background setting;
~Cute cat, reminds me of Garfield;
~It’s free.
Cons:
~Limited video & audio settings;
~Game automatically sets the video settings on “Epic”;
~Clunky controls;
~No way to turn off blur;
~In the second level (basement/lab) I couln’t even get on the higher ground (on the pipes that are at the beggining of the level).
That was the point where that was enough for me.
If you are going to design a platforming game or a game with platforming levels at least be sure that the platforms are actually reachable.
– Real player with 0.9 hrs in game
Harlow
You’re lightyears off-course, low on power, and have one critical goal: throw an epic surprise party so the colonists don’t freak out when they defrost. Harlow is an atmospheric 2.5D platformer where you’ll use physics to evade the dangers of an ancient planet, gather materials, and plan a party in space.
Meet Harlow, a compact robot aboard the R1-Humanity. Along with Manifesto, the ship’s logistics A.I., you’ll stockpile supplies and transform the ship from a cold wayward vessel into a stellar celebration to cheer up the cryogenically frozen crew onboard.
Jump, Roll, and Evade! Harlow’s physics-based controls will have you navigating oceans of acid, dodging ancient machinery, and traversing lavafalls!
Plan a Surprise Party: Decorate the R1-Humanity with 3D printed party supplies. Unlock different endings based on how you transform the ship!