Titan Studios’ Fat Princess certainly has a hysterical premise. It’s a team-deathmatch game that features cartoonish visuals, tons of gore, multiple classes and upgrades. Did I mention the whole feeding the princess cake makes her enormous and hard to move? The game’s concept, visuals, and overall feel are instantly appealing, but Fat Princesses tend to stumble due to their weight and there are certainly some stumbling blocks that the game must overcome.

When the game first came out it was utterly unplayable online. It had horrendous lag and matches were incredibly unstable resulting in constant restarts, searches, and utter frustration. The game has a single player game, but it is basically just a quick intro to the multiplayer modes with a nice storybook presentation to tie it all together. Fat Princess is all about 32 player strategic deathmatch action and it stumbled out of the gate with a terrible online experience. It’s slowly improved, but is still a blemish.

The gameplay of Fat Princess is sort of like the Legend of Zelda; you control a medieval type hero in a cartoon world from a top-down perspective. Like Zelda, tapping the attack button will quickly slash your sword while holding and releasing will unleash a stronger spinning attack – that is of course if you are playing as the warrior. Princess has 5 upgradeable classes which is what really contributes to the game’s addiction since you can swap hats at any time during a match and start playing the game from a different angle. Tired of walking around slashing at enemies? Simply, grab a worker’s hat and start chopping down trees and collecting resources. If you get bored of that, grab an archers hat and start shooting at enemies from a distance. Upgrading these classes gives the player even more options. Archers become Rangers and gain musket-type shotguns, but Fat Princess is all about player choices. When you upgrade a class, you can switch between the two weapons/abilities at your own leisure. It’s almost like each class becomes a 2-in-1 deal.

The class system is by far the most interesting thing about Fat Princess, but the visual style and Fat Princesses themselves are certainly delightful as well. The cartoon characters and over the top gore all contribute to the game’s uniqueness, but nothing quite tops a cutesy princess exclaiming, “More cakey please.” The contrast between the cutesy presentation and over the top violence certainly kept me smiling and slashing away.

For the most part, each map in FP offers a different experience, but ultimately I could’ve used a few more levels and a little more variety – perhaps with ongoing support, FP can get some new maps and play mechanics that keep the cake coming. There’s a good amount of game modes and it’s nice that defensive and offensive players are equally rewarded with points. It’s a shame that Playstation owners aren’t as talkative as Xbox owners, since a coordinated team can dominate in FP. That fact speaks to this game’s relatively deep strategy and team-dependent gameplay. Fat Princess consistently delivers on its comical juxtapositions, but it’s solid core gameplay is plagued by some glitches and lag. With some ongoing support and a little more variety, Fat Princess could be one of the best multiplayer games on PSN.

Colt: 8
Boy this is fun. Tower Defense with some rad inclusions, like a user controlled camera and first-person mode. Even though a single tower, and a player with steady aim, can handle the first few waves solo, when the difficulty ramps up FP is a lifesaver. Awesome animation, inventive towers, great sound effects, a staggering number of user-made and downloadable content; Widget exceeded my first thought of another entry in a tired genre. Woohoo.

Ben: 7
Widget TD is a standard tower defense game, save for one brilliant innovation: any of the units placed on the map can be commandeered and completely controlled by the player, often giving the unit augmented abilities. The enemies and units are pretty standard in their variety (the enemies have different speeds and HP, the units have different ranges and a couple of debuffs), but the unit-piloting hook is game-changing, and a lot of extra innovation is necessary. Both the visuals and the audio are completely unimpressive, though.

Peter: 7
WidgetTD is a simple tower defense game with one map that’s playable in the demo. Like any other tower defense game you build and upgrade defensive structures and hope they’re enough to keep wave after wave of attackers under control. The only mechanic WidgetTD adds to the mix is the ability to take control of any one tower. This brings up a first person cockpit view, and you can aim for the enemies you want. For some towers, this isn’t much use, but from the cockpit, your basic gun tower can hit anything on the map. The difficulty seems a bit out of whack though; creeps’ hit points ramp up far faster than you can upgrade your towers. Otherwise it’s a strong entry for the genre.

Andrew: 6
WidgetTD is a surprisingly difficult tower defense game that in most ways blends into the gigantic pack of me-too tower defense games that have flooded the market in the past few years. However, Widget stands out by allowing you to get into the turrets and fire them manually. While the strategic benefit of doing this is debatable, this polygonal strategy game earns points for originality, and yet loses points for unoriginality. One innovation is not enough when you’re competing in a genre of games so incredibly identical. It’s certainly not bad, but this is mostly stuff you’ve already seen before.

TRAUMA tells a story of a young woman, who survives a car accident. Recovering at the hospital, she has dreams that shed light on different aspects of her identity – such as the way she deals with the loss of her parents. TRAUMA lets you experience those dreams in an interactive way, reminiscent of Point-and-Click Adventure Games. It builds upon this established formula by introducing a gesture-based interface, real-time 3D technology for dynamic level layouts, unique photographic visuals and a level design philosophy that focuses on creating a rich experience rather than an elaborate puzzle challenge. Combined with the unconventional story, it is aimed to be a compact and deep game for a literate and mature audience.

TRAUMA will be released by the end of 2009. For more details, visit http://gamedesignreviews.com/trauma/

Check out More Indie Games on our YouTube Channel

Zak: 10
Machinarium by Amanita Design is a perfect 10 in my book. This puzzle game features perfect graphics and great sounds effect. The game ran smooth with no technical issues and is reminiscent of Amanita’s previous Samorost games, but set in a raw steampunk world. As for the story, the player begins with a robot which has to solve puzzles and sneak back into the city from whence he came. The puzzles vary in difficultly, but there are a few clues to help the player along. You just need to know where to look. The game features some beautiful and quality hand-drawn artwork and I must say the whole package won me over. Go get it!

Peter: 8
Machinarium is a hand-drawn point-and-click adventure about a small robot’s journey. Nobody talks, but the visuals and sound effects give you a pretty good sense of what’s going on. The little guy reacts slowly to your controls, but that could just be because the demo is played in a browser. The three rooms presented in the demo are from the prologue, and you have to help the robot put himself together, fool a guard and sneak into a city. The puzzles are pretty clever, and each puzzle serves to advance the plot, which isn’t always the case in adventure games. If I were a fan of this kind of game, I would probably own this now.

Colt: 10
It has sentiment without being sentimental. It’s Fantastic Planet, Dystopian, Orwellian. It begins where Samorost left off. It oozes emotion and mood from simple gestures and thought bubbles, our hero and his woman holding hands. Its puzzles are clever and rewarding, even after a half-hour of thinking. It has heart, under the alienating and amazing music, the industrial prison; it’s a loyal dog laying at your feet, the warm feeling after slugging back bourbon. It’s name is Machinarium. Pleased to meet you.

Andrew: 9
The unique visual appeal of this game is practically undeniable. This dystopian junkyard adventure game has tons of appeal, and a great grasp on the aspects of the genre that make it great. Beyond just the visuals though, the sound design in this game is incredible. The soundtrack is eerie and atmospheric, and the minimal sound effects bring creatures to life like you wouldn’t think possible. All of this works together to bring to life a world that is at once bleak and grim, and yet interesting and brimming with robotic life. Plus the demo doesn’t even require a download so there’s no excuse not to give it a try.

Love is in the air and we here at the Indie Game Mag heart Indie Games.  To Celebrate our indie love and Valentine’s day, we are having special promotional sale for our digital subscriptions.  Starting today through Valentines Day (Sale Ends 2/14/2010), You can purchase a non-renewing premiere digital subscription for any price you want! You can pay as low as $1, the usual $25, or more.  You’ll get a year of the magazine, 6 downloadable issues,  and exclusive access online to love and support the indie game community!  What are you waiting for? Click the Button Below and Support Indie Games and the Geeks who write about them!

Please share the love with all your friends about this offer; on twitter, facebook, any forums you go on, or anywhere else you think appropriate!

Mike: 7
Eufloria’s ambient gameplay, artsy visual style and unique setting of fighting seedlings on asteroids are all positives. Unfortunately, this unique spin on Real Time Strategy never really came together for me gameplay wise. The ambient world is very enjoyable, but simplistic gameplay plagues this game’s potential. It uniqueness certainly warrants a try, but at $20 this isn’t for everyone.

Andrew: 8
Eufloria wins big points with me for being not just a unique (finally) take on the RTS genre, but also for having a gorgeous visual style that sets it apart from every other game on the market. The unique RTS style is interesting, but not entirely successful. The demo doesn’t show any need for much strategy other than attacking en-masse, although the last level hints that may change later in the game. The final product has the potential to turn out utterly brilliant, but as of now I remain a bit skeptical.

Peter: 8
Fighting flora is at the center of Eufloria. A race of grey seedlings competes with your seedlings to colonize habitable asteroids. The game is sparse and laid back, with uncomplicated space battles you can control with one hand. Your seedlings turn into trees that defend the asteroids or produce more seedlings, which then travel to other asteroids to battle bad seeds or populate. The demo is fun, but doesn’t offer much of a challenge. Just wait and build up an army of seedlings because the grey seeds don’t seem to fight back. If they did, Eufloria could be very interesting.

Lunnye Devitsy finds both its strengths and weaknesses in its simplicity. The entire game consists of running and jumping through an non-linear open world to find six hidden ways to return a lost extraterrestrial to his home on the moon. You’ll find a couple of the methods easily, but some of them are hidden away in some far-off corner or lurking behind a doozy of a puzzle. This wouldn’t be frustrating if it weren’t for a baffling lack of any kind of save feature (or installer, for that matter. It‘s a .zip file), making it impossible to walk away from the game to recharge your interest. The game also takes hours to complete, and it seems unlikely that many players will stick it out to the end.

Meander around long enough, and some luck will bring you to a sprint and double-jump ability, both of which should have been available from the start, as it is far too easy to get stuck without them. By the way, pressing F1brings you back to the moon without losing progress, a detail the developers left out of the way-too-vague instructions.
Wandering the landscape takes up far too much of players’ time. There are way too many red herrings scattered around the map–spaces on the map that took a good deal of effort to complete, only to be found pointless and empty. Rewarding players for completing challenges is the cornerstone of all game design, and shouldn’t be ignored even in experimental games.

Perhaps this review has been too harsh, though; it’s not like Lunnye doesn’t have merits. The explore-the-garden gameplay is fun and even exciting for the first couple of hours, and the dynamic music is phenomenal, changing seamlessly as one region of the map melts into the next. Even though it hindered the instruction manual, the minimalist explanation gives the game a spooky sense of mystery. The background artwork is wonderfully whimsical at times, and is strangely reminiscent of storybook-like games, like Yoshi’s Island. Conversely, though, most of the running and jumping is done on boring black geometric shapes.

Lunnye is mechanically sound and excellently coded, a feature not always seen in low-budget indie games. The central running and jumping mechanics feel organic, and the aforementioned music is creatively programmed. The simple pixilated graphics are highlighted by some impressive particle physics-infused set pieces. I encountered one game-breaking glitch, but it was probably a fluke.

Although it’s a platformer, there are no enemies, traps, pitfalls, or any danger whatsoever (aside from the initial few jams you’ll get into before finding the running and jumping icons), which can get boring. There’s something to be said for relaxing gameplay, but the marathon length of the game will eventually have your leg bouncing up and down in boredom, wishing for an enemy’s head to bop on. There are, however, a couple of clever platforming challenges (be sure to check out a particularly creative one spanning the bottom of the world).

Even with it’s faults, Lunnye is genuinely something that’s never been seen before. Experimental games, by their very nature, often have flaws, but also have that little pearl of inspiration in them; Lunnye has such a pearl. It would be fun to see some of these ideas make it into the mainstream game market. It’s easy to imagine a handheld title with the side scrolling sandbox gameplay of Lunnye Devitsy, perhaps even on a larger scale. If developer Boss Baddie! studies its notes carefully for its next project, they might be able to make something great.

the Official preview trailer for Super Meat Boy

Check out More Indie Games on our YouTube Channel

Ben: 8
Little Space Duo is visually stunning, with some great in-game artwork, a teasingly short opening cinematic, and some great sprite animation. The environment detail is particularly nice, with some great detail (although if it doesn’t change up later in the game, it’s going to get old). Some of the puzzles in the demos are real head-scratchers, and give the player those great “ah-ha!” moments that quality logical puzzle games can provide. The pacing can be frustratingly slow, though, and a couple of design decisions are questionable; Rewarding players with extra score for skipping mid-level checkpoints might seem like a good way to add thrill, but it usually just ends up being frustrating.

Zak: 7
Little Space Duo, available from Jugilus, is an interesting addition to the platform puzzle genre. A little girl wakes up on a troubled spaceship and with a robot helper, has to avoid enemies (as they can’t really be defeated) to solve puzzles and save the ship. It’s up to the player to solve the puzzles by taking turns playing as the little girl and the robot helper, each has their own capabilities. The game seemed geared for the more-than-casual crowd, as the puzzles can be complex and sometimes leave the player cursing the cargo-bots. I have to say the graphics show a lot of time and consideration. The animations and backgrounds are quality, almost flawless. The music can be a little humdrum at times, but it didn’t drive me nuts. Little Space Duo was a little slow for my taste, but if you like this type of game, pick it up.

Peter: 4
A little girl has been abducted by someone on a space ship, and it’s up to her and a plucky robo-sidekick to save the spaceship where she’s been stored. In order to repair the ship, she and the robot have to move about the ship without being mistaken as cargo by the other robots on the ship. But movement with the mouse is bad, and the keyboard commands don’t all work, so playing requires an awkward combination of mouse and keyboard. Add that to clunky dialogue and uninspired puzzles and you’ve got a skippable game.

Andrew: 5
The appeal of this game relies heavily on the likability of its characters, and therefore it’s a shame that both of the characters are pretty unlikeable. Which is quite a feat considering one of the characters is a lost little girl. Why do I care about helping this snotty little girl get off the ship? I didn’t really, and thus much of Little Space Duo’s appeal was lost on me. The premise of the story could be interesting though, and there’s some decent puzzle solving. All told, it’s not a complete loss, but it would have helped if I didn’t actively dislike the person I’m supposed to help.

Click to Download the FREE PC Demo

Colt: 3
I never got into the RPGMaker niche. While the games look neat in the vintage sense, gameplay is ancient. I think the biggest progression is the automatic battle, which is broken in this case. No map, no autosave, confusing level design with all sorts of bushes and plants and rocks to hinder exploration. Millennium looks nice enough, and it may feature lush environments and a stirring story or whatever, but I’ll never know. After I inadvertently spent all my money upgrading Speed of all things, and my fairy sidekick, the one living in my earring, started talking, I was done.

Zak: 6
Millennium: A New Hope, available through Big Fish Games, follows the typical path of a run of the mill role playing game. The gameplay is reminiscent of traditional 16-Bit Final Fantasy-type RPG. The player collects a team and defeats enemies as they wander through towns, forests, dungeons, etc. Where the game deviates from the run of the mill, is in the challenge and artistry. Most of the enemies in the demo were pretty easy to defeat, but don’t take on more than you can handle – you have to manually save your progress. A lot also rides on remembering dialogue, so grab a notepad (maybe). The cut-to and battle scenes exhibit some great artwork, coupled with the 16-bit over-world art, I actually felt like I was back playing my old SNES.

Ben: 5
Although it’s got some nice hand-drawn artwork and is fine from a technical standpoint, Millenium suffers from being painfully generic. Although it is probably meant to be homage to the isometric-view console RPG’s of yesteryear, it doesn’t have any new ideas of its own, and even takes a few steps back in some areas. Both the keyboard and mouse control schemes are awkward feeling, and playability really suffers from the lack of gamepad support. Plus, the small sampling of music in the demo is really weak.

Andrew: 7
Millennium is practically worth playing just for its soundtrack alone. Though it can be said that some of the tracks don’t exactly fit with the tone, the soundtrack includes smooth jazz, snappy pop, and heavy drum jams. The JRPG turn-based gameplay is relatively standard, though, and the story gets in the way far too often. At first the story seems pretty interesting, but conversations between characters tend to go on far longer than they have to, and soon any interest in the story gives way to a desire stop all the yapping and get to the point.