Deep Under the Sky
In the undiscovered recesses of a faraway planet, beautiful and strange organisms live and breathe in a psychedelic Venusian world of dancing lights and metroid-like organisms. Similarly psychedelic to the visual style of the game is the soundtrack, with its equally as trippy and ambient qualities that build up and evolve with each successful move you make.
Deep Under the Sky uses a one-button control system that while incredibly easy to use is surprisingly deep in execution. The objective of each gorgeously organic stage is to fertilize each glowing plant with the debris from the exploded amoeba-like jellyfish that release from the base you control. As simple as that sounds reaching each carefully placed plant and spreading your pieces far enough to fertilize them will be a matter of careful aiming and finesse as you surpass each obstacle and navigate each twist and turn of the maze-like passageways.
– Real player with 12.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Arcade Relaxing Games.
The only reason I am not recommending Deep Under the Sky on Steam is due to how poorly it was ported over from a mobile system. It can be played with a single finger on a single button and, when it’s cooperating, the uncomplicated play style is suited to that equally simplistic control scheme. The trajectory of the jellyfish-spore creature is locked from the start of the level and the tools used to alter its path, as well as the order they can be used, are predetermined as well. Despite a small difficulty spike at the end, even getting the optional hidden stars isn’t made to be a challenge. Everything’s so relaxed and smooth that I was inclined to play through the entire game in a single sitting. Furthermore the visual style, though not quite stunning, isn’t as cluttered as some screenshots make it look.
– Real player with 5.7 hrs in game
Flowing Lights
Introduction
Flowing Lights is a puzzle shmup or shooter with a ton of zones you’re encouraged to speed run one at a time. I was given a free copy for betatesting and have played through the whole game. For each zone you have to figure out the best way to clear it, then use your shmup skills to get past the bullets and take out the enemies.
Gameplay
There are 10 levels with each 17 to 26 short zones. The first two levels act as tutorial. Your weapons are regular fire and a slingshot with a slow laser guide. You can also use boosts with a time interval. You start each level with 1 live and you can earn more for clearing a zone without getting hit. In some zones you can earn weapon upgrades for getting combos. You earn a C rank for just finishing a zone but if you’re fast enough you can get Bs, As and Ss.
– Real player with 45.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Arcade Top-Down Shooter Games.
A great puzzle shooter game
– Real player with 9.1 hrs in game
Shape Cascade
Fun, short game. I cant seem to gat any achievements though.
– Real player with 3.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Arcade Score Attack Games.
shape cascade can be likened to tetris in a roundabout way, because they both have falling shapes to deal with in the nick of time, but in this game you’re controlling a paddle, trying to push or hit each shape where they belong.
– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game
Crashed Lander
Hey guys,
I found this game some time ago cause it was on PayWhatYouWant. When the trailer started to play a “wow this is cool!!' came out of me. Now with the global-leaderboard update I got the chance to do a restart of the game. (trying to beat the Dev Don for the highscore (-: ) Make sure to read the instructions and tips, e.g. update to Beta via the shortcut in your steamlist and extra keys for you to look around and play the game in first person view. I don’t have a VRset but this might be the reason to look into it… I hope it comes with anti-gravity pills tho… LOL
– Real player with 53.5 hrs in game
For anyone who likes the idea of a 3D Lunar Lander, I can recommend this game. The objective is to pilot your small spacecraft / drone through different environments and land it on all of the landing pads of each level as quickly as possible. The challenge is that you have to deal with gravity, environmental hazards, and landing pads that are sometimes camouflaged or obscured. Similar to the original Atari Lunar Lander, there isn’t any combat and you don’t ferry any cargo. The environments you pilot your ship through are varied and imaginative, and you can further challenge your flying skills by flying through rings in a type of challenge mode. There is also a ‘hard’ mode that basically makes flying your ship a much more manual and hands-on process, as well as hidden objects to find throughout the game. For the modest asking price, there is a good amount of content. It doesn’t take too long to see everything, but a lot of the fun comes from the challenge of completing levels as quickly and as recklessly as possible. I feel this type of game appeals mainly to a niche audience, and if you fall into that niche this game is worth checking out.
– Real player with 26.6 hrs in game
Crushing Blow
Why am I playing this!?!
It manages to be engrossing despite it’s simplistic, casual gameplay. Smash, saw, and recycle refuse with mouse clicks and movements. The repetitive gameplay stays interesting by slowly introducing more and more new objects to destroy, and giving you specific objectives to complete in order to maximize your score. You will find yourself coming back, time after time, trying to beat your own high scores
Unfortunately, the game is not optimized very well, and playing it requires a better computer than you’d expect for a game like this. I prchased the game immediately upon release, and it ran perfectly for me on the highest settings. Subsequent updates have made the game slow-down to a crawl only moments after starting a game. I can remedy this by reducing the ‘physics quality’ in the settings menu, but my system exceeds the recommended requirements so I don’t think I should have to reduce the quality in order to play.
– Real player with 10.0 hrs in game
I played this for longer than I thought I would! There’s a lot of satisfaction in wanton destruction and the goals are challenging and interesting, at least in regards to the items you are disposing of. The one thing that I found more frustrating than it should be was the saw. It never felt like I was cutting what I wanted to and that becomes increasingly frustrating when some challenges required me to cut only specific objects. Frustrating, yes, but it was a good time up until that point. There’s a lot more to it, it seems, than what the asking price suggests.
– Real player with 2.3 hrs in game
Gaggle Brains!
Gaggle Brains! is the first Steam release by brother and sister team Birdmask Studio. The aim is a quick-fire puzzle game, with 16 levels and simple controls. Steer the gaggle of procedurally animated, physics-driven humans past multiple hordes of zombies.
At Birdmask Studio we aim to produce short, experimental games. Our current focus is on procedural animation and active ragdoll mechanics. We hope you have fun with this one and welcome your feedback.
Features;
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In depth colour and settings options
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16 Levels
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Physics Driven and procedurally animated characters!
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Multiple Physical environmental obstacles and props
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Destructible Elements and levels with wrecking balls!
Controls;
Joystick or WASD (For the best experience play with Gamepad)
To see more on this and our other games in development, check out our social medias for behind the scenes on our active ragdolls, game dev and more!
Grilled
Grilled is an action game where the player has the goal of eliminating all characters in order to successfully complete a level.
Grilled offers two modes: Campaign and Carnage. In Campaign mode, the player will go through a series of levels of increasing difficulty where he/she will have to eliminate all characters to complete the level and unlock the following one. In Carnage mode, the player will have the freedom to eliminate a horde of characters which continue to spawn indefinitely.
Lasertron
Arkanoid with optic styled physics and different bonuses.
Lasertrons can be reflected, refracted, decompose into a spectrum of lasertrons, change their colors. The white lasertrons can destroy blocks of any color, while the color lasertrons can only destroy blocks of the same color. Deactivated lasertrons can’t destroy any blocks. Clean the playing field by lasertrons!
There are 3 difficulty levels: Easy, Medium, Hard.
The game supports two save modes by checkpoints or passed levels.
The complete game distribution includes 60 levels.
holedown
The concept and core gameplay of this game is fantastic and the presentation is super smooth. That said, the lack of content is really fatal for any hope that I could recommend this. You get to the final level really quickly. Another review said 5 hours but I’m pretty sure it took me much less than that. After that all you have to do is to try and get a high score on a very boring endless mode. I stuck with it for a long time but that was mostly because of how easy it was to pick up and the fact that I had very little else to play at the time. It’s kind of felt like drawing blood from a stone ever since I beat the final level. For this price point there’s loads of other puzzle games you can get that have far more content in them. Albeit none of them scratch the same itch this game does, which is why I’m honestly more disappointed than I ordinarily would be. If they released a substantial expansion to this game to add extra content it might be worth it, but as it stands you’ll get bored pretty quickly.
– Real player with 179.4 hrs in game
This game is very similar to a free mobile game called Ballz (I don’t know which came first or if Ballz was an original idea anyway, but whichever of the two came second was either drawing direct inspiration from the other or they are both drawing from an earlier inspiration), but I think it justifies its cost because just about every difference between it and Ballz is an improvement. The rounded corners allow for some level of strategic skill shots while still being pretty chaotic, and the way that some pieces will fall if the piece below them is removed adds a layer of strategy as well. It doesn’t take very long to buy out all the upgrades and reach the endless level, and the upgrades aren’t wildly interesting; I think the simple gameplay is sufficient, but it almost makes me feel like the game should’ve skipped the whole phase before you have all the upgrades. The one quality of life improvement I wish the game had is a faster restart after you lose (or even win), since all the ui animations etc. you see (and especially watching your collected gems move to your wallet) feel like they detract from the pick-up-and-play, arcadey immediacy of the game for me.
– Real player with 22.6 hrs in game
Rolling Arcade
Very simple and clean design compared to One Bit Studio’s previous games. Even though it may seem as a simple game, there is a great challenge can be found here for those who like these kind of arcade games - also, the game supports 2 player setup (or you can play an online game with your buddy through steam invite) which is always nice.
Even tough the game is super cheap, there are hundreds of similar games - even more complex - like this for free, basically. But again, at this price (even with its DLC - yes, there are more levels!), this is no barrier a for those who would like more arcade challenge to spend some time with. Although it is not my type of game, I bought the game to support the developer.
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game
Let’s get this out of the way, this game if tough as nails, at least until you get the feel of the ball moving thingy. Once you got that, it gets easier, but it can still be challenging. It needs a few easier levels in the beginning, to ease the player into the game.
But it is only a dollar, so if you are into arcade games like this, you can’t really go wrong with it. It has a decent amount of levels and you can buy a DLC with even more levels. It’s a fun game for short sessions.
I also like the simple aesthetics and the music.
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game