Anemoiapolis: Chapter 1
ENCOUNTER
You have fallen into a surreal and haunted underground neighborhood. Discover its origins and escape with your life - and sanity - intact.
OBSERVE
Remember that hallway you found at your workplace or school? The one you didn’t realize was there before. Nobody ever goes there, it has no windows, and it seemingly has no purpose. The lights might be on, the floor is usually clean, but it exists for nobody.
This transitional place is the lifeblood of Anemoiapolis: a world with no sunlight and no humanity, buzzing with fluorescent apathy. It does not care about you, yet it watches intently.
SURVIVE
Experience the dungeon-like malls, pools, hallways, and basements of Anemoiapolis in first person. Utilize platforming and puzzle solving to navigate the barren commercial catacombs. If you start to feel complacent, you might not be ready for what’s around the corner.
ABOUT
Anemoiapolis reflects the experiences of a developer who grew up among empty buildings in Midwest USA, and who is currently processing our world of empty buildings brought on by COVID-19.
Expect critiques on mindless consumerism, feelings of impending doom, and eerie “mallcore” aesthetics.
Soundtrack by JORDANN and 4REST
Read More: Best Procedural Generation Psychological Horror Games.
Anomalies
SUMMARY: A graphical toy to make weird, surreal spacescapes and the oddities that inhabit them, from playing with sliders to just randomziing items. On top of that, you get odd soundscapes that play along. A way to just mess around, or a way to create relaxing - or disturbing - backgrounds on your computer or tv display.
Anomalies is a graphical toy that some may call a glorified screen saver - fortunately it’s both!
Basically you can randomize or set a bunch of parameters, that then make surreal spacescapes that you can watch while strange music plays. Depending on your choices, you might watch stars circle by as you observe a nebula, be caught among strange particles, or hover in front of a bizarre tentacular space creature. Or a combination.
– Real player with 31.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Procedural Generation Music Games.
This is a really interesting piece of software. It is good to have around to either dip into casually or have a longer session. There can be some nice surprises. I just came up with a not very spectacular creation from the visual point of view, but it has a very nice ethereal sound. Tweaking parameters and hunting and rummaging are great fun. I have got some more choices of wallpaper too.
– Real player with 26.0 hrs in game
qrth-phyl
qrth-phyl falls in the class of games like Lumines or Space Invaders Extreme that offer simple, familiar mechanics, carefully tuned and immaculately presented. It’s a love letter to snake-like arcade games, with easter-egg tributes to the genre’s innovators. You alternate between snaking around the outside of rectangles or rectangular prisms and free-movement 3D snaking inside those prisms. The idea of 3D snake worried me initially, seeming like a potential camera disaster, but the implementation is rock solid and I haven’t had a death that didn’t feel like my fault. Playing well increases “corruption,” which increases the difficulty of the proc-gen levels but offers more dots and a higher chance of encountering the treasured blue dots, which turn your tail into dots for you to consume like Pac-Man CE:DX’s satisfying ghost trains. The dynamic difficulty system persists between runs, and it feels like one of the best such systems I’ve encountered, quickly dialing in a consistently engaging level of challenge.
– Real player with 4.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Procedural Generation Abstract Games.
I absolutely love this game. The aesthetics are working great for the retro-arcade style. The controls are responsive and the game is challenging. Also the hidden sequence adds yet another dimension to the game (pun not intended).
I got this game years ago on IndieGameStand. That store doesn’t operate anymore and I had the only .exe file I managed to download before they went out of business. And here we are, qrth-phyl finally safely in my steam library.
I’m looking forward for future updates. Maybe VR support could be nice?
– Real player with 3.6 hrs in game
Planet LEV
Oh my god I love it. This is like a self contained WaveVR-esq music abstract land, and a fairly expansive one. It seems very alien, like this is where the super intelligent god beings go to hang out. I absolutely love the ability to instantly teleport from one area to the next what with the automap thing (that got stuck to my hand once and I had to restart). In this way you can really get a sense of the entire space, and there are bulidings to go into to, and alot of work is spend on the soundscapes. It’s VR, so there is a gigantic large-breasted anime lady dancing, so it checks that important box as well. Planet LEV is deliciously spacey and abstract.
! Specific areas have songs from real life artists. I saw Boris Divider on the automap. I’m not a huge fan of his work, it all sounds the same. I fell asleep to it once on a plane and woke up to it, and so his beats are endearing to me in that way. However in the current build of LEV that area is replaced with Biosphere, and I love Biosphere and overlay it on my vr videos alot. https://youtu.be/QCVLhZI43AM
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Experienced on the Oculus Quest 2
This is an interesting experimental art / music collaboration for VR. If you’re into experimental stuff, then you might enjoy this. I will say that I thought navigation was clunky and unintuitive. You have teleportation only (where you have to click in on the Oculus Quest 2) and no snap or smooth turning.
Starting the experiences is also very clumsy. You can teleport to these pyramid structures then point and click on them with the off-hand (the other hand is for locomotion). Then press trigger. Unfortunately, when I tried the LIVE experience, nothing happened. I assume it was because there was no live experience at that time. There’s also no information on when the live experience would be.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Sudoku3D
The maximum difficulty removes most numbers, but the solution can only be the one that the puzzle generated with, meaning the majority of high difficulty puzzles are impossible without significant guessing. Also there are no 3x3 subsets of numbers in this game, only the horizontal and vertical lines. Better off playing a flash game, which I should have done.
– Real player with 0.1 hrs in game
Cloud Gardens
When I first went to play Cloud Gardens, I didn’t know what to expect. Come to find out, that’s exactly how you should approach this game.
Cloud Gardens is a unique experience that’s hard to describe or compare. It’s partly a gardening simulator, partly a Dystopian landscape builder, and partly a puzzle game that is both satisfying and without frustration. Any and all preconceptions I had about the game were dashed as soon as I started playing it.
Not only is the game beautiful and unique, but it also hits all the right marks: The controls and level design are absolutely on point. It’s so much effortless fun working your way through level after level, and when you fail a level it’s no big deal to go back and try it again. As a matter of fact, you’ll look forward to it.
– Real player with 35.1 hrs in game
This game is so satisfying! At first it’s so simple you might think you’re playing a repetitive and boring experience, but it quickly gets more and more creative and captivating. Some levels are shorter and offer less room for wild creativity, which creates a good pacing considering the large amount of levels in the game (I’m not even halfway through apparently).
I almost never write a review before completing a game, but this is something else. Good vibe with simple and solid mechanics, charming pixel art, and a surprising amount of player agency: you’re growing plants, sure, but also placing (or dropping) all kinds of objects near your plants to make them grow. Those objects let you create storytelling in every scene, then make great foundations for more procedurally-creative plant growth. This is also why the initial simplicity might be misleading: at first, there’s not much room to expand, but wait until you add vehicles and buildings on larger levels to see the true potential of the game. There’s a puzzle element to it, too, for reaching 100% and completing each level.
– Real player with 19.2 hrs in game
Radiis
If you’re a fan of strategy games like Risk or Sid Meier’s Civilization series then you’ll probably enjoy this, since it somewhat falls in between the two–more complex than Risk, but much less micro-managing than the Civ games. I think Radiis is a little overpriced, but “overpriced” largely depends on how many hours of enjoyment you’ll get from it. I bought it on sale and have played more than 100hrs, so for me it was a great deal.
The missions are mostly challenging, but the AI could benefit from some tweaks. For example, the computer (NPC) players tend to focus on spamming buildings for added population growth, even when it would make more sense to expand their borders. Also NPCs never save money/tokens; if there’s enough finances to place buildings, it will place them whether they need to or not. And the NPCs boat placements are laughably inefficient.
– Real player with 317.8 hrs in game
I’ve always been into strategy games, but I don’t think I’ve ever found one that I’ve felt so compelled to write a review for.
This game is simply amazing for anyone who likes strategy games! Such a unique and different design. Gotta make sure to go through the campaign maps to learn and understand the different things available to you. There is always a viable strategy to victory in these maps, no matter how unlikely it may seem. Especially that final campaign map, you go into it thinking there’s no way this could be possible… but play it right and play smart, and it’s surprising how it really is doable!
– Real player with 92.9 hrs in game
STAY
❤ Audience ❤
☐ Beginner
☐ Casual Gamer
☑ Normal Gamer
☑ Expert
☼ Graphics ☼
☐ Bad
☐ Alright
☑ Good
☐ Beautiful
☐ Fantastic
♬ Music ♬
☐ Bad
☐ Alright
☑ Good
☐ Beautiful
☐ Fantastic
☠ Difficulty ☠
☐ Easy
☐ Average
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Hard
☐ Unfair
§ Bugs §
☐ Bugs destroy the game
☐ Lots of bugs
☐ Few Bugs
☐ You can use them for speedrun
☑ Nothing encountered
☯ Story ☯
☑ There is none
☐ Bad
☐ Alright
☐ Good
☐ Fantastic
⚔ Gameplay ⚔
☐ Frustrating
☐ Sleepy
☐ Boring
☑ Fun
☑ Challenging
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game
Really intense and fun thing, overwhelms me.
– Real player with 0.4 hrs in game
The Meldstorm?
Face the Pillar’s Trials
The Meldstorm is a fast paced action roguelite with a huge amount of weapon customization. Prove yourself and defeat the trials of the pillar, or die trying…
Items and Synergies
Combine mods with your weapons to create your own devastating attacks. Find your own synergies to build your dream weapon, millions of possibilities are waiting to be tested. The unique customization system allows for player expression and promote thought and creativity with no clear correct choices. Random mods drop throughout as you go, and are lost upon death, giving each run a fresh feel and totally new options.
Chose your Hero
Pick from a roster of characters, each with their own specific strengths and weaknesses, as well as widely different movement abilities.
The Knight is resilient and powerful at close range, his leap lets him reach the peaks of even the tallest mountains.
The Rogue is strong with all weapons, but more frail than the knight. Her smoke bomb lets her get out of a pinch or quickly reach her target.
(IN PROGRESS) The Sorcerer is more powerful when left alone, but weak when surrounded. His levitation lets him move around quickly to set up his next attack.
Deadly Enemies
Each zone features its own set of unique enemies. They grow more and more aggressive and deadly as they go, and will not hesitate to gang up on you if given the chance. Disposing of them is no easy task…
Fierce Boss Fights
Each zone is guarded by a unique and powerful boss, each of which will require strategy and skill to defeat. Make sure to save up some life before the fights begin unless you want to reach an early demise.
A Valley Without Wind
This is a strange game; an endless metroid-style game where you explore a desolate world while you build structures on the overworld map to help you do so. The graphics are bizarre, mixing realistic buildings and backgrounds with PSX era particle effects and low animation sprites. The music is NES-style chiptunes mixed with high fidelity instruments. Like I said, strange.
Much has already been said of this game’s strengths and weaknesses already. I enjoyed my time with it, but I will always remember it for a different reason, one which I will detail below.
– Real player with 40.4 hrs in game
A Valley Without Wind is a good game that suffers from obvious design mistakes that tragically prevent it from living up to its potential. So instead of a great game that can be played endlessly we get a game that’s good for a while but runs out of steam once you’ve seen everything it has to offer. The tragedy is that it was clearly aiming to be played endlessly with it’s endless ocean and bottomless caves, and people clearly put a lot of work into creating a wide variety of weapons, enemies, and mini-games, but they were putting their effort in the wrong direction.
– Real player with 20.3 hrs in game