Indie Monthly: June 2024

Summer is a notoriously slow period for video games, and June might just be the nadir. It's a busy time for previews, with a parade of showcases teasing A-tier and indie games alike, but as for the games themselves, well... there might be a reason why the biggest news this month was a couple of ports of generations-old games.

But just because things are a little slow, that doesn't mean that nothing interesting came out. In this edition, we have the first episode of a promising melee-oriented FPS, a strategy game with a really novel setting and set of mechanics, and a multi-platform launch for a game that you may recall seeing on an unusual handheld.

If you want to see these games in action, check out my review playlist.

Fallen Aces

Mike Thane is a P.I. whose latest case might just put him in the grave. It was a VIP case - dig up info on the murder of one of the founders of A.C.E.S., a famed vigilante group. Now the man who hired Mike is in the hospital and goons are knocking at his door. With the help of a mysterious pulp hero, he'll have to trail clues across a crime-ridden city and crack the case before one of his many enemies gets too close.

Fallen Aces is an FPS with graphical and design elements drawn from the 90s, with Duke Nukem 3D being a definite inspiration. You move like Duke, you fight like Duke, with one very notable exception: Mike is a born brawler. Firearms are rare and ammunition is scarce, so most of the combat is up close and personal. The player needs to acquire weapons on site, so you're more likely to head into a fight packing an empty bottle or a trash can than a gun or a blade. The resulting combat is very visceral and meaty.

There are a lot of ways to approach combat besides going in head-on (though that certainly works). Mike has a stealth takedown for dealing with unaware targets, as well as a kick that can knock an enemy into a hazard. Fallen Aces is a game with a play-it-how-you-want design philosophy, right down to its levels which are very large and feature multiple routes with lots of secrets. Brute force, stealth, spectacle, and pacifism are all viable approaches, depending on the circumstances and the player's own personality.

Ultimately, Fallen Aces strikes a very fine balance, featuring old-school design sensibilities while continuing to innovate and push the limits. It's bound to appeal to fans of early first-person shooters, but the emphasis on melee and environmental combat will also be a treat to anyone looking for something new from the genre.

Fallen Aces is available for PC via Steam.

The Ancients

Strategy games conventionally begin some point after the development of agriculture, but The Ancients goes all the way back to the Pleistocene Epoch. Beginning with a tiny band of hunter-gatherers, the player's goal is to survive the prehistoric world while expanding the tribe, making new discoveries, crafting superior weapons and gear, and developing concepts like religion and governance that would one day form the basis for civilization.

While it superficially resembles some other 4X games, the gameplay of The Ancients is very different. The player's tribe begins with no permanent settlement, putting them at risk of dying due to predators and the elements while they forage or hunt for enough food to stay alive for another turn. As the tribe advances and becomes semi-sedentary, the player can coordinate different groups for different tasks while inventing new tools, though it remains a sharp departure from most strategy games.

The need to constantly find new resources is what distinguishes The Ancients from most 4X titles. While those games are focused on steadily expanding and growing one's resources, The Ancients is about seeking out resources wherever they're available and poaching them before another tribe can. It puts a heavier focus on short-term survival and opportunism.

For strategy fans, it's going to take some effort to adjust to The Ancients. In particular, the interface isn't always intuitive, especially compared to more conventional games. Still, this could be a good game for someone looking for a new experience.

The Ancients is available for PC via Steam. A copy was provided for this review.

HexaScape: Cyber Defense

Tower defense is a storied subgenre that lends itself to genre blending. The cyberspace-themed HexaScape mixes things up by integrating elements from strategic board games, specifically the 2000 board game Carcassonne.

As stated, HexaScape is a tower defense game, meaning the core objective is to place damage-inflicting towers to prevent viruses from breaching your defenses. However, the towers aren't the only structures placed by the player - you ultimately design the entire board, placing energy pipelines that power up the towers, lanes that guide the enemies, and enemy spawners that create new viruses. The player has a randomized set of tiles to place and a very limited ability to reroll if the tiles aren't to the player's liking, with new enemy waves coming after every few tiles.

Another distinction between HexaScape and other tower defense games lies in the objectives. Most levels in HexaScape don't have the player trying to survive a set number of waves, but instead have other objectives such as building lanes to specific areas or powering up towers to a certain degree. While this does add some diversity to the gameplay, it also complicates things, especially if you're used to more conventional tower defense objectives.

The random element in HexaScape lends the game to a strategy that demands both careful planning and flexibility. It's easy to get a set of tiles that don't work with what you're trying to accomplish, so the ability to improvise and make the best of a bad situation is critical.

HexaScape: Cyber Defense is available for PC via Steam. A copy was provided for this review.

The Fall of Elena Temple

Originally designed for the Playdate, The Fall of Elena Temple continues the story of the titular protagonist that was first started in The Adventures of Elena Temple. This time, the game follows Temple as she explores a ruin as part of her ongoing quest for wealth.

The Fall of Elena Temple is a puzzle platformer in which the player must collect all of the coins on each screen and reach an exit. Temple has a very limited jump and must navigate by dropping down from higher platforms and then finding a way back to the top of the screen to do it again. There are fixed teleporters to move Temple, but the key mechanic is the quantum crystal that allows Temple to rewind her movements a certain number of drops. It's an intuitive means of movement that allows for puzzles that are challenging yet fair.

Aesthetically, The Fall of Elena Temple is meant to resemble an LCD game, something in the vein of an old Tiger Electronics handheld. It's a limited graphical style that suits the gameplay without ever getting in the way.

The Fall of Elena Temple is available for PC via Steam and Itch, Xbox, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and Playdate. A copy was provided for this review.

That wraps up our look at the games that caught our attention during June, be sure to come back each month for more indie games you want to look out for!

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