Jenka's Nightmare

Jenka's Nightmare, a prominent Cave Story mod by Mark "Shmitz" Major was updated a few months back, marking the first release since the original one about a year ago. According to the author, this new version contains about 75 to 85% of the mod's full content.

The mod follows on from the "Sacred Grounds" ending from the original game. A short time after leaving the island, Quote is teleported back by a distraught Jenka to a familar looking cave - however, it seems to have gotten a lot bigger since he was last there.

Jenka's Nightmare is a good deal harder than Cave Story - but it's not the frustrating kind of hard - it's the good kind of hard. The kinda hard where everytime you die, you just want to retry and take one more shot at whatever killed you. But don't worry - if you managed to take Ballos out in the original Cave Story, it "shouldn't be anything you can't handle", as Kanpachi puts it!



Of all the Cave Story mods I've played, Jenka's Nightmare is easily my favourite. It's clever and inventive, it gets the character's personalities right, and best of all, it's fun. And right now, it's the closest thing out there to a Cave Story sequel. Highly recommended to anyone who likes challenging platformers - or to anyone who just misses Cave Story.

Name: Jenka's Nightmare
Developer: Shmitz
Category: Platformer
Type: Mod, Cave Story
Direct Download (Note: The mod requires a copy of Cave Story to run.)

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Protoganda (Preview)

According to his site, cactus will releasing a new 3D shmup within a week or two. He describes it as "a bossrush game with gameplay mechanics inspired by Warning Forever."







He has also posted a gameplay video that shows off the gameplay mechanics and the stylish graphics. Check it out here. Apparently, a donation of at least a dollar will let you get to play the game in it's current beta state.

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IGF Entrants Announced

The full list of entrants (173 in total) for this year's IGF main competition is now available to view from the IGF main site.

Simon had posted a selection of entries on GameSetWatch, but here are more games to keep an eye on (plus downloads whenever available):


PAGE 1

3D Logic
Cube-based puzzler, playable through browser.

Ablation X (nenad)
Vertical shooter by the developer of Counterclockwise and Ablation. No download links yet.

Audiosurf
Rez-type game. No download links yet.

Castlewars
Ants remake. Turn-based card game, playable through browser.

Clean Asia (cactus)
Download available. [direct download link]

Crashblock
PGD compo version available for download. [direct download link]

Crayon Physics Deluxe (Kloonigames)
Original version available for download.

Dino Run (Pixeljam Games)
Dino-run is a free web-based game from Pixeljam. Full version to be released end of 2007. (description from IGF main site)

DROD: The City Beneath


PAGE 2

Empyreal Nocturne
Aerial action game. Download available. [direct download link]

Gish 2
Sequel to the IGF 2005 Grand Prize Winner. No download links yet.

Hammerfall
Demo available for download, 60 minutes of playtime per save file. [direct download link]

Harmotion
Free online-only shmup game. [direct download link]

Immortal Defense
Tower defense game. Demo available for download. [direct download link]

Invader (dessgeega)
Download available. [direct download link]

LexVenture
Word game. Beta test version available for download.

Masq
A mix of adventure and interactive fiction. Full version available for download. [direct download link]

Noitu Love 2: Devolution (Joakim Sandberg)
Action game from the developer of Chalk. No download links yet. [Noitu Love]

OokiBloks (Hermit Games)
Puzzler by Matt Verran, developer of Fren-ze. No download links yet.


PAGE 3

A lot of stuff on page 3 are playable in one form or the other, so I'm going to skip it unless someone requests otherwise.


PAGE 4

The Last Stand
Action game, with zombies. Playable through browser.

The Night Journey
An experimental game created in collaboration with Bill Viola. [watch trailer]

The Path (Tale of Tales)
Horror game by the developers of The Endless Forest. Due out in early 2009 for the Windows platform. [watch trailer]

Understanding Games: Episode 1 - 4
Playable through browser.

UNDERTOW
Geometry Wars with an underwater setting. Due out for the Xbox Live Arcade in October 2007. [gameplay video, watch at YouTube]

World of Goo (Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel, 2D Boy)
Sequel to Tower of Goo. Last in the list, but it just might come first next year. No download links yet. [watch trailer]

Visit the IGF main site for a complete list of entrants.

Update: Brian Crescente (one of the IGF judges) had posted a list of games assigned to him for scoring purposes, which reads like this:

Invader, GYM!, Supernova Shootout, Discs of Mayhem, Artisan, Venture Arctic, Regnum Online, Polychromatic Funk Monkey and Gate.

If your game is in that list, better start scoring some points with him pronto!

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Everyday Shooter Out Thursday

According to IGN, Jonathan Mak's Everyday Shooter will be released this Thursday (11th of October 2007). PS3 owners can find out what the fuss is all about in two days' time! [thanks to J. Blow]

- Queasy Games
- PSN info page
- trailers, gameplay videos
- information thread

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MSOIDS

What do you get if you combine a MS Paint doodle with a nifty vector engine and throw on a mouse controlled Asteroids variation? Something wonderful, for sure. Add online highscores and you've got a charming little game.

Use space to generate new colours, move with WASD and shoot with the mouse. Simple as that. Make sure to extract the game to a separate folder!

Name: MSOIDS
Developer: cactus
Category: Arcade
Type: Freeware
Click here to download

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News

Releases

JelloCar: JelloCar (physics game) version 1.0 released.

HOST: Diverge Creations has a new online multiplayer game up, called HOST. Also playable at XGen Studios.

Jet Dunk: GamePure released a new BreakOut clone named Jet Dunk.

Platformers

Knytt Stories: Knytt Stories updated to version 1.1.0. [change list]

Starquake Remake: Evert van Oosten has released a Starquake remake. Download link available from Retro Remakes.

Space Barnacle: Doomlaser is the official site for all things related to Space Barnacle.

Shooters

MFOR: Information about Oddbob's upcoming vertical shooter titled MFOR posted at the Mersey Remakes forums.

TWilight refrAIN: Eikyuu Loop announces a new shooter entitled TWilight refrAIN.

Nameless Shmup: Lazrael had posted a gameplay video for the currently untitled project. Don't expect a release though.

DroneSwarm: The new web site for DroneSwarm is up.

Miscellaneous

Tale of Tales: I was planning to mention a recent article posted on the Tale of Tales' blog (entitled 'IGF has too few female judges'), but it seems to have been removed...

Novint Falcon: Here's an interesting gaming peripheral named the Novint Falcon, also reviewed by Popular Mechanics back in May.

Bullet Clock: Bullet Clock is a nifty little Flash application which displays the current time using a combination of bullet patterns. A screensaver version is also available. Embedding instructions can be found on the same page. [source: Danmaku Gata]

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Hotlinking

Hi guys, just wanted to mention something before I start posting again. I've been adding more games to the review archives, and noticed that a lot of people have been hotlinking to the screenshots posted there - which is perfectly fine, because the default images for each game are hosted on Flickr anyway so it doesn't use up any bandwidth. I encourage it even, especially if you're using the screenshots to start your own freeware games thread or get others to play indie games. (no backlinks necessary)

Normally I wouldn't mind if people are direct linking to any of the screenshots, but lately it's using up quite a bit of bandwidth (several gigs of it), and I have only a little over 5 GB of bandwidth every month. So I'm down to two options - purchase extra bandwidth, or enable hotlinking protection. I'm not fond of doing hotlinking protection at all, but it's the only choice I can take at the moment. I'll put up a PayPal donation button in case anyone wants to donate for bandwidth purchase. If I get enough to purchase additional bandwidth for the next few months then I'll allow hotlinking again. (sorry...)

An example is this Kongregate forum thread. If you're hotlinking to the default screenshots (anything that starts with http://farmx.static.flickr.com/ is fine) then there's no change. Images will still work as usual. They won't be deleted unless Flickr decides to suspend the free account.

The freeware archives is free to use, has no ads and costs nothing - but try not to abuse it too much... I need all the bandwidth I can get my hands on to make a mirror for this year's best of lists.

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