Weekend Download
I'm a sucker for cute, quirky games. Throw a few chunky pixels in my direction, slap on a coat of "retro, yet new" gameplay on the top, and you've got my attention. All three games this weekend have that quirky old-school charm, and all three were thoroughly played/nommed by yours truly!
Lily (Windows, 1.6MB, free) - Hey, look, it's a shmup normal-reflexed non-shmup fans can play! Two hippies in the near future want to end all war, so they invented bullets that turn things into flowers. Work your way through side-scrolling levels, transforming planes and tanks into harmless flora. Much slower-paced than most shooters out there, and there aren't nearly as many things moving on the screen at once. That's not to say there's no challenge, just that you'll actually be able to comprehend and enjoy the game from the start.
Kaiser Kitty (Windows, 1MB, free) - Why jump when you can change gravity itself? A puzzle platformer based around the concept of switching which side is "down" with the press of a button. Use the [arrow] keys to move and the [WASD] keys to change which wall the kitty stands on. Move from wall to wall, working your way through each stage collecting the glowing orbs to unlock each exit. Much more difficult than it sounds in writing, but just as satisfying, too. Direct download.
We Want YOU (Windows, 41MB, free) - Falling through enemy territory, you play the role of a "war hero" who simply works his way down the level, finding weapons and killing bad guys as you see fit. Use the [X] key to fire, [Z] to jump, and switch weapons with [A]. If you get caught in a pit (which can happen in a procedurally-generated game such as this one), set some C4 with the [C] key. It's a slightly satirical game with a lot of wartime press blurbs slapped on the screen at set intervals. Good fun for several runs in a row!
Note: All games have been confirmed to run under 32-bit Windows Vista and are virus-free. Mac users should try Boot Camp, Parallels, or CrossOver Games to play Windows titles, Linux users can use Wine. If you know of a great game we should feature, use the Submit link above to send it in!
Hi guys, I'm one of the developers of We Want YOU. I'd like to point out there is much more to the game than might be apparent at first, please don't just give up after dying once or twice. The game was in part an experiment in implied storytelling, similiar to Small Worlds.
Also, sorry to casual gamers for the large file size!
In we want you I have found a few things. to get new wepons you need to go to one of the tent thinks and press the up arrow. You then have the weapon you get till you run out of amunition.
I also found a
prisoner that you are able to free who will follow you arround
Hey, I am trying to play Lily...
(you have to scroll down within the frame to find the download link)
Once the title opens up with intro music, it seems that no keys respond to being the game, and I see no apparent clickable start button.
I'm running WindowsXP on a fully operational system that can handle just about any downloadable or in-browser game I have come across.
Any suggestions?
Ok, so I restarted and tried Lily again. I think 'shift' is how to get past the title screen. Being that there is no note on how to start, it would be nice if 'any key' did the trick. And being that I had hit shift several times it somehow skipped the intro so I didn't get the first part of the storyline. Cut scenes are a little too slow, and the game too short for me to wait through it again. Maybe I'm just impatient...
Once into the game, even the training area doesn't tell you how to shoot! So I am mashing keys again, and figure it must be 'ctrl' key to shoot.
The play is fun, actually pretty challenging considering the obstacles, but it really should have been several levels longer or incorporated longer levels.
I know it was developed a couple years back and probably not being revamped at all to reflect any critique we give... but anyway it was obvious a lot of work went into the graphics, sound, play and level design. For all of that effort and polish for the final product, it really should have left us hanging in there a bit longer. Great effort, regardless. Thanks!
-Runy
To start Lily, press Shift on the title screen. In the game, use Ctrl to fire.
I've played all three now.
We Want You is an amazing piece of work. I would agree with the developer's statement that this gets deeper as you get deeper. The portrayal of a sick and shallow 24-hour media just gets thicker and thicker as you go. I'm not sure how many years you have to survive to get to any more 'meat' (NPI) but after 4 years I just started to feel sick of the guns, the fire, the blood, the clear lack of a tangible mission, the isolation, the endless propaganda, the meaningless gibberish news coverage. If the point of the game is to be utterly pointless, it is a very well-crafted paradox and a brilliant success!
Wow. We Want YOU really took my breath away.
I just made it through year five. I think it never ends (although the website says 'make it back to camp alive'). Does it ever end?
Best weapon, imho:
the shotgun
although in general I'm in the
less killing, more running and jumping
school of WWY philosophy.
For anyone wondering if We Want YOU is endless:
You can make it back to friendly territory eventually, but thats not necessarily the end of the game, or the war...
If you want to make it up to us, let us know some codes! D:
After 6 years I made it back to friendly territory. But as Quicksand-T pointed out the game doesn't end there.
after reporting in some sort of disintegration ray starts firing - similar to the bombs that drop on earlier levels but much faster so nearly impossible to avoid. Once you are hit you fall, and a cutscene asks if this is the end? Then you reappear as a cyborg hero in a power wheelchair, keeping the parachute upgrade. The levels continue to get harder, I only made it two years as a robo-hero.
I like WWY, but after playing through 4 years easily then falling into a random missile it kind of discouraged me to keep playing.
Pant, pant. Seventeen years. It doesn't get considerably harder after a certain point, so the trick is just to avoid insta-kill stuff like missiles and that blue destructo-ray (which is what got me in the end).
No idea if there's another change in technology -- I like the gameplay (some of my favorite games are Spelunky, Tower of Greed, Transcendence) but I wish there was some sort of super-structure like achievements or a goal after the 'return home' goal. I know that war is a grinding circular punishment, and without a certain amount of hand-holding, it starts to feel like my willingness to play the game is part of the punishment, and that the joke's on me.
Which maybe is the point, now that I think about it. As a wise mainframe once said, the only way to win...
Ah, two more things:
There are only two big stages. No more hidden weapons: the AK47 that shoots through walls is the top of the line.
I know this because the 'checkpoint.sav' file is a hidden list of cheat codes that let you move around the game.
We Want YOU was pretty good. Shades of The Forever War.
It would be nice to have a ranking/scores on WWY.
Like number of kills, years fighting (more = vet), number of soldiers sent (how many times played), total kills and total deaths.
Update