New Release: Cannon Dancer - Osman

An enhanced edition of a bombastic arcade actioner, from Mitchell Corporation and ININ Games

New Release: Hazard Saviour

An open world platformer inspired by Crazy Taxi, from Sinclair Strange

New Release: Ginsha

An open world action-adventure that takes place across multiple planets, from PolarityFlow

New Release: Haunted Lands: Burial Grounds

A tough and bloody DOS-style shooter, from Alexey Goryachev

New Release: Curse of the Sea Rats

An open world action-adventure featuring 2D animation and 3D environments, from Petoons Studio

January 29, 2019

New Blip: Inmost

Inmost, from Hidden Layer Games, stars three playable characters, each with different abilities, and it is set in two different worlds, both of which are dark and foreboding, and both are narratively connected. While one character may be able to rely on his combat abilities, others must use their wits and agility to survive puzzle platforming challenges and escape the dark forces that rise up around them. A portion of the game takes place in an abandoned castle and sees you sneaking about, exploring rooms, discovering secret passages, and springing the occasional trap. In other areas, you must escape rampaging monsters... or fight them head-on, ultimately attempting to defeat a terrible creature that feeds upon human suffering.

The game is coming to PC and Switch later this year.




To find more promising 2D games currently under development, be sure to check out our Master List.

January 27, 2019

Target Acquired: Sun Wukong vs Robot

Sun Wukong vs Robot (a.k.a. 孙悟空大战机器金刚), from Bitca Games, is an open world action-platformer starring Sun Wukong, the legendary Monkey King from the Chinese novel Journey to the West... but instead of 16th century China, the game is set in a sci-fi world filled with killer robots. Fortunately, Wukong carries his famed staff and is able to crush robots to bits, and little by little, he unlocks new abilities and magical powers that eventually allow him to overthrow four evil robots who defeated and imprisoned him 500 years ago. Players are free to travel in any direction they like and unlock new abilities in any order, slowly opening up the world around them. New techniques like the cloud jump allow you to reach new areas, whereas magical powers let you defeat enemies by blasting them with lasers from your eyes, creating clones of yourself, or using the powers of a floating gourd.

The game is now available on PC and Mac via Steam. Check our coverage here.




January 20, 2019

Target Acquired: Ravva and the Cyclops Curse

Developer Galope took a break from working on Meawja to release a short and charming sidescrolling platformer called Ravva and the Cyclops Curse. The game stars a little owl girl named Ravva whose mother, a summoner, was defeated and turned to stone by the evil Cyclops Lord, Now the owl girl summons creatures of her own to defeat the villain and restore her mother's essence. Ravva is able to control four creatures, each with different abilities, allowing her to freeze enemies and objects, launch projectiles into the air, drop explosives, and find secret items like 1UPs, more powerful projectiles, a limited use shield, or caches of coins. The game can be beaten in a couple of hours, but there are a few secrets to be found, and players can make a dedicated score run.

The game is now available for PC, Mac, and Linux via Steam. Check our coverage here.




January 17, 2019

Target Acquired: Feudal Alloy

Attu Games, the developer behind Toby: The Secret Mine, returns with Feudal Alloy, a game starring a robot controlled by a fish. The robot smashes his way through a hand-drawn medieval landscape with his trusty sword, destroying mechanical creatures, fighting bosses, and interacting with robot NPC's that allow him to choose his path forward. The game features a robust upgrade tree and dozens of pieces of equipment to increase your damage output, defense, and movement abilities.

The game is now available on PC, Mac, and Linux via Steam, GOG, and Humble Store, as well as Switch via eShop. The game is also planned for PS4 and Xbox One.




January 15, 2019

New Blip: Pepper Grinder

Pepper Grinder is a game about a girl and her drill... which you don't get a lot of in video games. Basically, we have Anna Hottenmeyer in the Mr. Driller series and Jill Dozer in Drill Dozer... but developer Ahr Ech is changing all that. Pepper Grinder stars a girl named Pepper and her drill named Grinder, as she sets out across a fantasy world filled with drillable and non-drillable materials. When drilling through the ground, Pepper moves quickly, and the player can steer her around to avoid obstacles, eject Pepper from the ground to fling her into the air, and even drill up under shelled enemies that are invincible from above. Things get crazier when the grappling hook is introduced, which allows Pepper to shoot out of the ground, swing quickly around a grapple point, and go flying over obstacles and ramming herself back into the dirt at high speeds. The drill can also be used to manipulate machinations that affect the environment, such as turning wheels to open the path forward, or launching Pepper high into the air to reach distant areas.

The game is coming to PC, but does not yet have an announced release date.




To find more promising 2D games currently under development, be sure to check out our Master List.

January 10, 2019

New Blip: Gravity Circuit

Do you like gravity? Do you like circuits? Then you might like Gravity Circuit, from Domesticated Ants. OK, so the game definitely has gravity, and you fight robots, so there's definitely circuits, but really it's a game about smashing your way through the robotic Virus Army to prevent them from taking over the world. You take on the role of Kai who smashes bots with his fists, dive bombs them, boots around projectiles, knocks robots into each other, and uses a grappling hook to move quickly from enemy to enemy. The game features 12 stages of 1P action where the player unlocks new abilities as he rescues civilians, along with special challenge levels, time trials, and a level editor.

The game is coming to PC, Mac, and Linux later this year.




To find more promising 2D games currently under development, be sure to check out our Master List.

January 8, 2019

New Blip: Gato Roboto

Proving once again that anything can happen in indie game development, we have somehow seen a resurgence in super lo-fi and 1-bit action games, with titles like Downwell and Minit standing as some of the finest examples, both of which were published by Devolver Digital... and Devolver is publishing Gato Roboto as well. Gato Roboto, from Doinksoft, features an adorable kitty in a metroidvania adventure. The kitty is on a spaceship and steps on the pilot's keyboard (as kitties do), leading to a crash landing on an alien world, where the kitty hops out and get to platforming. The game takes place in a black and white world inspired by classic Metroid games, with obvious nods offered in its environmental tilesets and bulbous doorways... but the cat is pretty fast compared to Samus Aran. Pretty soon, the cat finds a mech suit and hops inside, using its powers to take down enemies with blaster shots and missiles, destroy bosses, and rocket jump... and the cat can even eject from the suit to run around, swim(!), and climb walls to reach new areas.

The game is coming to PC and Switch later this year.




To find more promising 2D games currently under development, be sure to check out our Master List.

January 1, 2019

Signals Lost: Promising Games You'll Never Play

New Year, New Game... or not. With the dawn of a brand new year, we took a look through our Master List to update release dates and check to see whether these games are actually still in active development. We do our best to cover announced cancellations, as we just did this week with Skytorn and Nightkeep, but more often than not, we find that developers simply go silent as the development process stalls out.

Below is a list of games that will most likely never see the light of day, along with our original comments and links to Twitter or (sometimes nonexistent) home pages and devlogs. In each instance, there have been no new updates from the developer for more than a year. In some cases, the games were successfully Kickstarted and backers have been offered refunds. There is still some small hope that these games will one day return, but for now, they have dropped off our radar.


CoinOp Story
Developer KaMiZoTo harnesses his nostalgia for classic arcade cabinets to create CoinOp Story, the tale of an old arcade cabinet who must collect Jamma cards to save the world. In the not-so-distant future, all of the world’s arcade cabinets have been tossed into a garbage heap, but a generic cabinet gets struck by lightning and comes to life. With the help of his friend, a floating calculator named Professor Delta, he must seek out various arcade cabinets – designed after their real-world counterparts – and collect their Jamma cards. Each card he collects grants him new abilities, allowing him to reach previously inaccessible areas in an open Metroidvania world. For instance, the game begins with his discovery of the Donkey Kong cabinet, which gives him legs and the ability to jump. Later, after defeating a boss, he finds an Operation Wolf cabinet and gains the ability to shoot. The villain of the tale is another generic cabinet who has been loaded with illegal bootleg cards, which drove him mad. The developer plans to have around 30 arcade cabinets to unlock, along with their associated abilities.



Copy Girl
Copy Girl, from Henrique "7Soul" Lazarini and Matt "Tokinsom" Gruber, is an action-platformer in the style of the Mega Man series. Copy Girl starts out with a basic pellet-shooter, but she is able to acquire eight more weapon types - complete with a palette swap for her outfit - and each weapon has unique properties that help her to strategically deal with her enemies and several boss creatures. The art is done in an 8-bit NES style with a reduced color palette, and features a number of classic 2D gaming environments, including factories with conveyor belts, underwater areas, and lands of floating platforms.




Delver’s Drop
Developer Pixelscopic is creating a game that combines the dungeon-based stylings of A Link to the Past with roguelike permadeath, loot hunting, and randomized environments. Delver’s Drop features a poor fellow named Delver who must descend into “The Drop” to secure his freedom… or fail and become one of the monstrous Undelver Wights. These Undelver Wights become your enemies the next time you enter The Drop, possessing the items and skills you had at the time of your death. The game features physics-based logic puzzles, boss battles, and cooperative play, and allows the player to grow his character and upgrade character classes, which include fighters, magic users, and rogues.



The End of the World
Developer Izanami GameWorks brings you The End of the World, an overhead car combat game that is less Bump 'n' Jump and more Bump 'n' Murder. In this game, your spend your time ramming other vehicles into oblivion, as well as firing machine guns with wild abandon, and taking on huge shmup-style bosses in the form of limo-riding jerks and huge mutant beasts made of eyeballs and tentacles that chase you through the streets. Smash through ambulances to get more health, cut a swath through busloads of baddies, and even blow off your enemies' heads, all the while racking up a huge combo of endless wreckage.




Infernax
Berzerk Studio wants to take you back to the 80's with Infernax, a retro metroidvania with horrific enemies that are far more gruesome than anything that would have actually been released on the NES. Players must trek across an open world, fighting monsters, gaining experience points to increase their stats, and acquiring new weapons, spells, and abilities. Players also earn money that they can use to buy better armor, as well as health and magic restoratives.




Jack the Reaper
Jack the Reaper (devlog), from developer Dream’s Bell, begins when the moon crashes into the earth. As it turns out, the moon is where all of the world’s souls go when they die, and this recent event has caused them to return to life on Earth. It is up to Jack to restore order by re-killing these creatures and returning their souls to the Afterworld. This action-platformer is inspired by the Kirby series, wherein enemies’ abilities can be used against them – and even combined ala Kirby 64 and Gunstar Heroes – for a number of interesting possibilities. By killing enemies and absorbing their souls, you gain their abilities, including a number of different projectile types, like boomerangs and energy shots, as well as other powerups like increased speed and a shield.



Legend of Iya
Developer Andrew Bado is an industry veteran, having worked on numerous major studio releases, including a number of cult favorites like Phantom Dust, Raze’s Hell, and Psychonauts, as well as several 2D titles including Blowout, Shantae: Risky’s Revenge, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Monster Tale, and NG:Dev Team’s Turrican-esque actioner, Gunlord. Legend of Iya is a Metroidvania title set in a lush, detailed world, featuring gorgeous sprite art and loads of animations. The game centers on the exploits of a 12 year old girl who finds herself transported to a magical fantasy world populated with strange creatures, bio-mechanical beasts, and huge bosses. The game offers melee based combat, as well as numerous upgrades and new abilities which will help her defeat enemies and reach new areas.



Luminesca
Luminesca is an underwater exploration game from developer Matt Glanville. The player controls a small creature called Lum through various dark and shadowy environments, using light to solve puzzles and open up new pathways.



Midora
Midora, from developer Epic Minds, stars a young white-haired girl named Snow who – per fantasy game conventions – sets out on a simple errand and finds herself embroiled in a conflict that spans the world. This is a top-down action adventure title inspired by the likes of The Legend of Zelda and Secret of Mana, featuring sword-based combat, as well as shields and bombs. The player adventures across a colorful world map and into the depths of a dozen dungeons to solve puzzles and fight large boss creatures, with over 200 items to discover along the way, as well as a crafting and enchantment system.



ReVen
ReVen, from Varia Games, is heavily inspired by Metroid (as is the name of the studio), featuring a lone android who sets down on the surface of a colorful world whose depths hold mysterious alien ruins and terrifying creatures. As an android, the player is able to divert energy to his various functions, enhancing weapon power, armor, sensors, and movement in real time. This can be used to take down powerful enemies, navigate the game world, or search for secrets and hidden upgrades. New skills can be added to your repertoire by mining for resources on the planet and choosing new traits to construct based on your play style, allowing to hone your skills more toward heavy firepower, exploration, or a mix of both.



Temporus
Temporus is being developed by Firebelly Studios, which promises to deliver a healthy dose of shmuppery and on-foot platforming action in a time travelling sci-fi adventure. In addition to blasting away enemies, you must also research new technologies and manage your resources as you set out to find fuel for your ship and food for your body. You are able to land your ship at various docking points and exit your ship to explore. You can even walk around the interior of your own ship to change weapon settings and make repairs. The developer compares the gameplay to that of Air Fortress and Blaster Master, both of which featured on-foot and in-vehicle segments.



Waldir’s Inferno
Waldir’s Inferno, under development by Jani Peltonen (a.k.a. Argamix) , promises top-down beat ‘em up action with procedurally generated levels and RPG elements. The game stars a sword-wielding badass who hacks and slashes his way through numerous chunky and spritely foes, leaving sprays of pixelated blood in his wake. You can also grab a number of subweapons to up your carnage per second and dodge enemy attacks to keep yourself around a bit longer. Rather than simply increasing your stats, new items grant you new abilities (a similar method was used in Risk of Rain), which adds gameplay variety as players attempt to fight their way through a 30-60 minute dungeon slashing experience… or die trying.


Signal Lost: Nightkeep

RPG2 Heaven announced via Twitter today that development on Nightkeep has ceased. The alpha demo will remain available via GameJolt. The developer has moved on to a smaller project entitled Amortale.

Here's what we originally had to say about the game:
Do you like killing skeletons and seeing red numbers appear over their heads while they crumble into a pile of bones? Do you like maps made of blue rooms, red highlights, and white outlines that show interconnected areas? Do you like ascending clock towers? Then Nightkeep, from RPG2 Heaven, should be right up your vania. The game is an action adventure starring a young woman named Arietta who is armed with a magical sword that she uses to slash through hordes of monstrous creatures, and she also has access to a variety of throwing weapons straight outta the Belmont playbook, including knives and axes. Along the way, she discovers helpful items and relics that can boost her stats, as well as earning traditional metroidvania moves like a slide, double jump, and back dash that aid her in combat and allow her to reach new areas.