Weekend Download
Ahem. Here we go Loopty Loo! Here we go Loopty Li! Here we go Loopty Loo! Because it's Weekend Download that you can possibly read on a Saturday night!
Tower Climb (Windows, 18MB, free) - You! Climb that tower! Er... that cave-like tower! From the inside! TowerClimb is all about, yes, climbing. Up and up and up you go at a slow and precarious pace, working your way as high as you can in this endless, procedurally-generated tower. You can climb walls and ceilings as well as leap off platforms, but otherwise it's just you and your persistence that will get you to the top. Oh, and the items you can find and trade that give you some neat abilities.
Sheep (Windows, 1.4MB, free) - A simple, charming herding game that separates itself from the flock (oh, the wordplay!) with its finely-tuned level progression. As a little pup, the sheep naturally go where you go. Use this ability to move them into the green goal area on each stage. Once they're there, step out and the fence will pop up, securing them inside. Obstacles such as wolves and rivers are introduced later on, giving you just enough incentive to keep playing.
Heartwild Solitaire Classic (Mac/Win, 15.6MB, free) - Did you enjoy Heartwild Solitaire, the casual solitaire game from 2008? If so, or if you're just in love with card games, this nifty little redux will be perfect for you. Heartwild Solitaire Classic presents seven unlockable stories, all for the price of free, each obtainable by completing rounds of the classic solitaire game Klondike. The ambience and progressive story make it worth experiencing!
Note: All games have been confirmed to run under 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!
Couldn't get the tower climb one to work in windows 7 :(
Tower climb is a great concept (and good art and music), but it seems pretty buggy. On XP it crashes at the end of a level.
Tower climb doesnt seem to work on Windows 7, It keeps asking for directx 2008
Been playing Tower Climb for the past week. It has a very 'Spelunky' vibe to it (though with considerably less polish and you're going up, not down), and I find the pacing & the music very fitting for the game. It also has that vibe where you definitely feel that 95% of your failures/deaths are your fault, not the fault of bad luck or impossible situations. (Some impassable situations do crop up on occasion, but you can pass them if you've had a chance to build up your inventory some).
A tip, as it isn't made immediately clear: You can press W to see your inventory. Press 1 for jump potions, 2 for dissolve potions and 3 for teleport potions.
The game was made for a contest & the author stated he didn't have time to polish it or give it all the features he wanted. If you're into the game, be sure to give him your feedback on the Towerclimb Gamejolt page for future versions.
Hey guys, as the game's overview page says if you're having trouble playing TowerClimb, you may need the most recent version of DirectX.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/
That should fix all your problems. Works fine on Windows 7 for me.
I have directx 11, it is asking for an OLDER version
You may need to install directX 9, there's a link on Tower Climb's d/l page.
[Edit: Download and run that directx file at your own risk. It's not an official site, just somebody's dropbox account. -Jay]
so, I need to install an OLDER version?
when I nave the newer one?
how annoying...
*downloads*
The DirectX download on TowerClimb's page seems just fine. If you'd rather grab it from Microsoft's website, here's the link:
http://bit.ly/Y4CwU
Really loving Tower Climb. It's still a work in progress, (something that I wish JiG would mention sometimes; when you link to an unfinished game it's a very different thing from reviewing a complete work) in fact an "alpha build" according to the author, so it's pretty rough around the edges. But I can't seem to put it down; the level generator's just about perfect, and I "get" this more than I could Spelunky.
Can't wait to see what this ends up like! Thanks once again for pointing me towards great things!
Tower Climb's a nice game with a similar idea to the previously linked Probability Zero, but I really don't get the appeal of this one, to the point that I think I'm missing something. If you run out of double jumps, which is very common, the only way to ascend is to climb the wall exceedingly slowly, right? I kinda hope I'm wrong since it seems like it'd be a fun idea otherwise.
Yeah. Actually, you usually want to save your double-jumps for when there's absolutely no way to otherwise climb (which happens occasionally). You can get around climbing and jumping better than it would look like at first; it's very well designed in that regard. After you play for a while, you get a sense of "oh, I can drop crawl along that ceiling there, drop off at the edge, and just barely make that cliff face there before the spikes."
I can see how the slow climbing speed could be extremely off-putting. I'm usually so wrapped up in considering all the other possibilities that I don't notice, though. (unless I'm in a lava-trap segment).
My only complaint so far, bugs aside, would be the underwater segments. But that's probably just because I'm so bad at them. (This is probably one of very few games where the underwater parts have the fastest pace).
I really hate looking at all the macwin links and finding weekend downloads that only have one mac game that happens to be obscure and annoying and unlikeable. Grr. Maybe I'm just bitter about Spelunky not being on mac yet.
Yeah, as a mac user I usually just don't bother checking JiG on weekends. It's not their fault, that's just what there is available!
Doing all the download reviews on weekends makes it pleasantly convenient to skim past the download games, too. I can just scroll right on down from "Mobile Monday" to "Link Dump Friday" and keep reading.
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