Weekend Download
Political game starring a cat? Got that! Game with a really big title? Got that, too. How about a game made out of letters? Got that! A game that dispenses pie? Aww, not got that. Fail. Maybe next Weekend Download?
The Cat and the Coup (Mac/Win, 56-69MB, free) - In what is bound to be called "the most unusual computer game this side of Weekend Download", The Cat and the Coup is a slow-paced adventure sort of game that tells the story of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran. Only, you play his cat, solving puzzles by jumping around, knocking things over, and scratching. Yes, it's a very strange game, but it's surprisingly fun and a bit surreal. You also might just learn something from it, which never hurts, either!
AFROFARG: Attack of the Fragrantly Rude Organisms From Another Reality, Golly! (Windows, 20MB, free) - Big name with lots of fun words, eh? Also, AFROFARG is a tower defense game that uses a few basic elemental concepts to add some interesting challenges. Spark, snowball, and fire turrets can be used to deal with normal, fire, and ice enemies. Bet you can guess how the elements interact! You can also upgrade turrets and slow enemies. Fairly standard tower defense for the most part, but the artwork is good and the elemental attributes give it a little extra flavoring.
Splash (Mac/Win/Linux, 3MB, free) - An experiment in presentation submitted to an Experimental Gameplay Project month, Ascii is what would happen if the world were made out of letters that spelled what things were. The ground is made up of the letters G, R. O, U, N, D. Water is, of course, W, A, T, E, R, and if you see a C, L, O, U, D float by, you're probably floating in a balloon! Apart from the experimental visual design, Splash is a fairly standard platform game where you run and hop to collect letters scattered throughout the world. Gather them and unscramble them to spell a word at the end of the level, thus theming the next stage right before your eyes! Note: Linux and Mac users will need to download Love2D to play Splash. See the download link above for further details.
Note: All games have been confirmed to run under Windows 7 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!
You really like our games, don't you John? I'm not complaining though, ;).
Mac OS X here. I downloaded Splash and Love2D, but I don't think Splash looks quite right. I don't see any ground at the bottom of the screen, and I only see water when I splash.
More than that Ezra, the person seems off as compared to the rest of the world, so you're float-clinging to the bottom of the branches and the ground in the sky. The hill is also weird.
Also, after I beat the first level this error appears
Error
transitions/ShimmerUpTransition.lua:12: Can't set scissor with negative width and/or height.
Traceback
[C]: in function 'setScissor'
transitions/ShimmerUpTransition.lua:12: in function 'update'
libs/StateManager.lua:60: in function 'update'
[C]: in function 'xpcall'
I think I am having the same issue as Ezra in Ubuntu. I installed LOVE v0.7.2 and ran Splash. The water is off the bottom of the screen, the ground is at the top of the screen, and the protagonist starts behaving very strangely when I get to the hill - I hope they get this fixed, as it looks like an interesting game.
Splash is certainly quite pretty, but the controls made it nigh-unplayable for me. On the one hand, you can't maneuver left and right after jumping, which means that if you jump from a standstill, you're jumping straight up. On the other hand, running and jumping can be tough, perhaps because the game is a little slow to respond or perhaps because it's not crystal-clear where a platform ends, thanks to the rounded letters--either way, "run and jump" was mostly "run and fall".
I did make it to the second stage, but then I quit in frustration, because your vehicle at that point is definitely slow to respond, much slower than the moving obstacles that reset all of your progress.
It's a great concept, and I might try it again to see if I was just having a bad platforming day, but in the meantime it's going to sit on the back shelf.
Splash is good, played until the third level when it crashed, the movement is somewhat funny where when you move you start moving slowly and then very fast and you can't jump and move making the platforming hard.
The Cat and the Coup was interesting and fun as a history-based experimental game.
Got to the third level and splash and had to quite out of frustration. Between the horrible controls and the general frustration of your enemies responding much faster than you I found it nigh impossible to progress beyond that level. Not much fun at all, although I agree it was pretty.
Same complaints as everyone else regarding Splash.
The Cat and the Coup was certainly interesting, and the gameplay was simple enough that I could just focus on the environment while playing. Good stuff. Plus, I learned some history!
Finished splash - can't help with the *nix problems but the controls were no problem to me, you just need to account for momentum, so no, you can't change the direction of your jump in midair or spontaneously change direction (including on the second stage). For those stuck on the third stage:
It's the last one anyway, and it's a lot easier to jump up if you use the bouncy properties of the far right edge of the screen - you only ever need to jump right that way. As for the enemies, just shoot multiple times as they get halfway across the ledge and are moving away from you, that seems to do the trick after a few tries.
Update