The Humble Indie Bundle

This is a great idea in my opinion, as you can get 5 games (that would normally cost around £30-£40 if bought otherwise) for whatever price you chose, AND you can choose how that money is distributed, so you can give it all to charity if you want to, or give half to the developers and half to the Humble Bundle team. The charities participating are EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and Child's Play, both of which are really good causes in my opinion.

You can get the 5 following fantastic Indie games for the low price of whatever you like!

Crayon Physics Deluxe
Cogs
VVVVVV
Hammerfight
And Yet It Moves

You can find out more here.

Till Next Time,
Have Fun

Chantelise: A Tale of Two Sisters - First Impressions

Chantelise is a game that has had me interested for quite some time, after I heard about it's translation and eventual release some months ago. It's made by Carpe Fulgur and EasyGameStation, the same people that made Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, and that immediately got my excited, seeing as that game is perhaps one of my favorite RPGs in the recent years. When i heard that the demo was available on Steam i jumped at the chance, downloading it immediately. Here are my thoughts on the first half an hour or so (seeing as its only a demo, i don't want to get too into it).

So the initial interface remains the same, same font, same options layout. I love the art style of these games,especially all  of the hand drawn characters and backdrops. The game starts with a little backstory, and unlike the story in Recettear, this one seems to be fairly coherent. (come on, trying to pay off a fathers debt being the objective? Not exactly canon :P) There was an old story about how, on a red moon night, a witch would come out and curse anybody outside, and it turned out to be true, and from what I gather, the objective of this story is to find the witch and reverse the curse that your sister is inflicted with (she was turned into a Fairy). So to that end, you're adventuring from town to town seeking information about the witch and where to find her, and that's where we join the story.

After the backstory, you get thrown right into the tutorial, which is pretty simple, and you can redo it when you please if you forget anything. One of the first things I notice is how awkward the camera is. you press 'V' to lock onto an enemy, and hold it to unlock, and the 'A' and 'S' keys rotate the camera either left or right. I'd imagine the game would be simpler to play on a Gamepad, but i don't have one around at the moment.

The combat in the game is fairly fun and simple, but very fast paced. You have your normal attack and combo, and a jumping attack, a dodge and magic. The magic system in this game works from picking up gems and combining them (at the start, only 2 gems can be used at once) and then unleashing them as spells.

You can also combine two different coloured gems, but I think all that does is use one right after another. You get gems  from hitting and killing enemies, and scenery such as trees and grass patches, barrels and other things. The magic seems initially very powerful, but you have to aim it right by locking onto enemies, which I kept forgetting. To move on from an area you have to clear all of the enemies in that area, but only once, which is good because I quickly found out that it is really quite easy to die in this game, but all that does is return you to town with items intact, which aids to the game because you don't have to keep failing at one part, you can upgrade whilst you're back at town and go back to kick some ass.

Items increase in price as you buy them, and decrease as you sell them, which adds a nice feel, like its almost a real economy, and if I'm honest, I don't actually know if it -is-, having only played the demo. Upgrading your equipment in this game really is essential. I bought a set of Leather Gloves and a shield to put in my equipment slots (you start with 2, but I believe you get more) and straight away noticed that my attack damage was doubled and the damage I was taking was halved. I also gained 20 more health, which made a huge difference as a few of the enemies were able to take my measly 30 health away from me in mere seconds.

The art is really awesome, I love the anime styling of it, and the voices are kept Japanese, but the text is in English, which makes it nice and different. The only thing I can say is that it does look a bit odd with hand drawn models on a computer graphics background, but I can live with that. We'll call it a mark toward uniqueness.

I hope that I will be able to bring you more on this game when it is fully released on July 29th on Steam, but for now this is pretty much all I have for you. Go check out the Demo on Steam, it promises to be a really fun and generally awesome game!

Till Next Time,
Have Fun

Chantelise : A Tale of Two Sisters on Steam!

Chantelise : A Tale of Two Sisters hits steam on the 29th of this month and i have to say I'm pretty Psyched. You can definitely expect a First Impressions when I get my hands on it. Chantelise comes from the makers of Recettear : An Item Shop's Tale, and that alone in my eyes makes it worth a play. Chantelise and Recettear were made by EasyGameStation and adapted and translated to English by Carpe Fulgur LLC.

Recettear was truly a unique game where you played a shopkeeper trying to pay off her fathers debts. This was aided by going into dungeons as other characters and gathering rare and valuable items to sell in your store. The game was very, VERY addictive to say the least, and I think that was aided by the uniqueness of the game as a whole.

Chantelise promises to be as good as its predecessor, and at the time of writing i am currently downloading the Demo that I did not realise was there. Silly me. I'll have a First Impressions later today.

Till Next Time,
Have Fun