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Cipher Prime, the musically-inclined two-man indie studio that last producted the gloriously elegant and lovely Auditorium, is back today with Fractal, another ethereal puzzler with roots of Tetris, Bejeweled, Peggle, beepy music, clean art direction, and a steadily ramping difficulty curve that quickly turns ferocious. Check out the demo here.

I miss things sometimes, and I’m definitely guilty here – a new indie from UK-based Mode 7 Games called Frozen Synapse has, despite being in the works for some time, just recently crossed my radar screen. A tactical, simultaneous, turn-based PBEM infiltration and ass-kicking game, its simplistically lush visuals and haunting score so far remind …

It’s been awfully… quiet… around here, something I know is unrelated to my own (temporary) inability to speak, and something I choose not to attribute to my recent injury-addled adjustment (now undone) to the top banner so thoughtfully provided for us by our own Gregg B. Instead I choose to believe that everyone is just… busy, and my frantic attempts to have someone, anyone, look at the GOD DAMNED PHP IT WILL TAKE YOU LIKE NINE SECONDS TO FIX I HAVE BEEN FIGHTING WITH IT FOR FIVE DAYS help me out with some tech stuff are not so much my mute voice falling on cruelly deaf ears, but on ears carrying out their own appointed duties.

I had kinda thought the aforementioned Gregg, being our great lover of and expert in indies, might have mentioned this one – plus I’m honestly not sure what to make of it. Independent developer Jason Rohrer found (indie) fame for his simple, haunting game The Passage, one which (for obvious reasons) reminded me of and disturbed me as much as the once-more aforementioned Gregg’s find Every Day the Same Dream. Rohrer’s newest work, Sleep is Death… well, as I said, I don’t know what to make of it. I do know that it has a chance to be the start of something big.

A couple of days ago I posted up a link to Life is Hard, a short satirical flash platformer that had me chuckling away for a good few minutes. My girlfriend was at work when I spotted it so she didn’t get a chance to give it a whirl. Anyway, yesterday while I was at …

I was going to save my first post for something more substantial, something epic but spotted this over at RPS and couldn’t resist sharing it. As Jim Rossignol mentioned it’s not worth explaining simply because it takes less than a minute from start to finish unless you’ve got a crap connection like me in which …

T-R Regular and all-around-good-guy Igor Hardy of A Hardy Developer’s Workshop is pleased and proud to announce the demo release of his own game, Frantic Franko: A Bergzwerg Gone Berserk. As crazed and campy as the title makes it out to be, FF is sure to charm slightly off-kilter adventure lovers with its clever conversation …

Noitu Love 2: Devolution essentially bursts with quality. It’s just a highly professional piece of work, from the actual design of the stages and action down to the quality testing. It feels like a proper commercial product despite the low resolution, occasional screen-tear and the campy old-skool aesthetic. It’s a pick-up and play kind of game that anyone can play but that anyone will almost certainly be someone already considered a (dare I say it – hardcore) gamer.

Review by Mike “Scout” Gust The Path Developer Tale of Tales Publisher Tale of Tales Released March 18, 2009 Available for PC (version reviewed)/MAC Verdict: 4/5 Thumbs Up “I soon came to realize that this was not your typical video game. In fact, it can reasonably be argued that it’s not a video game at …

This must be Steerpike’s Week of Obscure and Creepy Games, since I’ve gotten roped into playing another one as well, that I’ll be writing about later. Anyway. Tale of Tales is a Belgian studio with the pretty-much-explicitly-stated goal of making games that aren’t fun. What can I say, they’re Belgian. The Path has been on …

How to explain World of Goo, an utterly charming PC game? It’s basically sticky blobs that when connected have the ability to bridge gaps, curve around odd contraptions and create pathways for other gooey blobs to get sucked into a giant vacuum-like pipe. Oh, and there’s physics involved. Um, what? I truly don’t have the …