Green Light Indie Bundle Review – Part 1

The following article is the first of three parts reviewing the games included in the Green Light Indie Bundle.

While the bundle is no longer available itself, the games included are all obtainable separately, so these brief reviews should help you to decide which of them would best suit you.

Part 1 includes reviews of  the games Hairy Tales, Potatoman Seeks the Troof, and Beware Planet Earth! Enjoy!

Hairy Tales is a simple, fun and interesting puzzler with a very quirky nature. In short, your aim is to guide an eccentric looking, caveman-hippy hybrid type character through each level to obtain a crystal, and as many mushrooms as you can, and reach a portal by manipulating the world around him. Despite its simplicity however, this game will really make you think and is a good bit of fun indeed.

Guiding your “Hairy”, as the characters are named, around a level is not as simple as just using WASD controls or clicking where you want him to go. The whole game relies on you being able to change the world around him so that he can collect the items instructed and reach the portal at the end. The world itself is built of hexagonal segments which depending on what lies on top of them will have different effects on your Hairy. This may be for example a tree which will cause him to walk back in the direction that he came from, or a fence which will divert him to the right, among other pieces giving different effects. Much like the classic game Lemmings, if you do not do anything then he will simply keep walking and fall of the world. This means that you have to constantly keep an eye on what the Hairy is doing and in some cases change the shape of the world as he walks around it as well as before you set him off to start the level.

In terms of the look of the game, there are a few words that you could choose; funky, jazzy, trippy, it all works. The whole game from the look to the characters to the attitude in general has clearly been designed with fun and crazy both in the developers minds! Graphically the colours and style of the game just add to its nonsensical nature and just make the experience as a whole feel that little bit more unique. There are a lot of puzzlers on the market, but this one has been designed specifically to be a bit “loopy” in its nature, and that makes it something a little bit more special than your average game in this genre. Even the music and sounds of the game add to this a little bit in their own way, as while simplistic they make what should be a sad and scary situation for these characters into an uplifting experience.

Now, to review this game without mentioning one fact would be to miss out the most obvious feature about it. It isn’t explicitly mentioned in the game, and for this reason it is probably a game that just about anyone of any age could play. The fact of the matter is though, these guys have been eating mushrooms, their world has turned to darkness, and they can only save it by collecting crystals to take to magical portals. Yeah, I think we are probably all on the same page here, if the big green eyes and questionable fashion senses of the Hairys didn’t scream it anyway, we probably all knew what was going on when we got to mushrooms… Anyway, this little indie puzzler is a fun experience and is guaranteed to brighten up a dull day with its quirky nature. A great choice for puzzle fans, and at a pretty low price if you have a day with nothing to do it is well worth picking up for a laugh if nothing else.

Final Thoughts: A simple puzzler but a fun one with a quirky nature that makes for some very good light entertainment at an affordable price.

Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.

Well, if there is one thing this little indie game can teach you it is that if you think your life is hard, you should try being a bloody potato. I could leave the review at that, it pretty much sums the game up quite nicely. As it is I suppose I should probably try and explain to you what on earth I am talking about, so here we go. Potatoman Seeks the Troof is pretty much exactly what it sounds like; you play as a walking, jumping potato on a journey to seek “the troof”. On this journey however you will find that the odds and inhabitants of the world are both very much against you, and the task will be no easy one.

This very basic indie platformer has more to offer than it first appears. Initially it seems like the game may be so simple that realistically it isn’t going to be that much fun to play. All you appear to do is run in a straight line and jump to avoid obstacles, nothing much too taxing and not an awful lot happens either. After giving it some time however the challenge begins to kick in. The realisation quickly hits that this world is not as simple as it seems and keen eye and a bit of concentration are the only means to beating its challenges. The game really tests your ability to look ahead and learn from your mistakes, and while it is very simple in nature it has within its arsenal a hell of a lot of ways to kill you and quickly wind you up. If you keen keep a cool head and have foresight at the forefront of your mind, you may just make it in this potato-hating world where everyone and everything is adamant to keep you from the troof which you seek.

The look of the game is as retro as they come, reminiscent of the original Mario games where the guy was literally made out of visible pixel squares. Whether an educated decision or just another means of keeping the game simple and cheap to develop is unclear, but it has been used well and works quite nicely in the nature of the game. The only problem maybe is that if you had not been told you were a potato, you would probably believe you were just a pale blob with legs and a face. As it is however, the nature of your character is made clear to you and such confusion is conveniently evaded. The sounds of the game, while few, also fit this retro style. The background music after a while however can only be described as infuriating, but this can easily be muted simply by pressing M as in instructed at the start. Aside from this control, all that you need to play the game are the left, right and up arrows on the keyboard; about as simple as it gets.

So is Potatoman worth it? Well beyond its simplicity, and the fact that it can be completed fairly quickly according to other sources, it is not a bad game if you are looking for something not too taxing to play but something that will still try to test you. While there is a story to the game, how present this is and how much it actually matters to what you are doing is questionable. The game has nothing inherently wrong with it, but you must be prepared for its explicit simplicity if you are going to give it a try. A bit of fun at a low cost, Potatoman may be enjoyed by some but be a bit too basic for others.

Final Thoughts: A platformer which is a bit of fun and with some sort of story to it, but brief and very basic meaning it may not appeal to some gamers.

Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.

Beware Planet Earth! is a tower defence game in which you must use customised devices created by a farmer in order to defend his cows from being abducted by aliens. I know right, it sounds pretty awesome just from that, and it is not at all a bad tower defence game to play as they go either. For fans of tower defence games or gamers looking for something not pricey or taxing to play for a laugh, this game could be the perfect choice.

Intrinsically this game is based on the same premise as most other tower defence games. That is that the aliens come from one side of a map and follow a path to the cows, and must make it back along the same path back to their spaceship with the cow to abduct it. The aim of the player is to use the devices provided to stop the aliens from achieving this goal by defeating them before they complete their task. The devices provided in this game take the shape of simple objects customised to be used as weaponry, such as a fridge which freezes aliens to slow them down. As with most other tower defence games as well,  the aliens come in different forms, some of which are harder to stop than others so that the player must use tactical placement and choice of weaponry in order to beat them. For example the normal aliens are average in terms of speed and strength, while ninja aliens are fast but weak.

The basic workings of the game therefore are no different from most other tower defence games, so it is heavily reliant on its theme to grab the attention of gamers. The theme here, to the games advantage, is fun, entertaining and well thought out. The idea of aliens abducting cows goes way back, but is always something people associate with cheesy old alien films or games. You only have to look back to when Destroy All Humans! played on the idea to see that such things can bring great results. The theme is used nicely and graphically the game looks very good. Taking a cartoony style, the look of the game adds to the comical effect intended by developers and helps avoid the game taking itself too seriously. The sound effects of the used are also quite entertaining but do not play a major part in the play being quite a basic tower defence game.

Beware Planet Earth! is a very entertaining indie tower defence game. While it does not bear much difference to other tower defence games in the way it works or is played, a comedic theme helps to sell this title well. The game makes not stop attempts to keep the player entertained at the same time as it ensures that it poses a fair challenge. Tactics are key here, but the game should certainly not be taken too seriously, and is almost guaranteed to entertain any gamer looking for a cheap laugh. For fans of tower defence titles this game is a must, and while it may not be the most in depth and challenging game they ever play, it will certain put a smile on their face while they tackle it.

Final Thoughts: While it does not pose any particularly new of different features to most standard tower defence games, it has no obvious problems, its theme is fantastically entertaining and the game is very fun to play.

Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.

Part 2 will include reviews of Megabyte Punch, Depth Hunter and Paranormal