Following Freeware – July 2016 releases

Willem’s Winners

GNRBLEX

A year after the Giant Pandas died out in 2133, the Universal Preservation Act was signed, the objective of which was to save all species in the galaxy that faced extinction due to human interference. Terry and her companion robot Mary, who is only ever a light-second’s teleportation away, are assigned the job of saving the Gnrblexian mind-maggot, only two of which are still in existence. They only breed in the presence of a suitable host, and they are very sensitive to almost everything imaginable. When agitated, they tend to make their own heads fatally explode, thus complicating Terry’s job a bit. She has to keep the maggot in her care alive while getting it to the breeding chamber and introducing it to its mate and their host. Unfortunately, as if all that is not difficult enough, she runs into a few problems along the way.

Created by WHAMGAMES, GNRBLEX was another game made in under a month for the July 2016 MAGS competition. Despite its short production time, the game is well worth playing. The low-resolution pixel art graphics, shown in third-person view, are simple but beautiful and made with an eye for detail. Terry and Mary are more intricately drawn, with Terry’s suit having buttons and blinking lights on it, and Mary’s head appearing as a floating green hologram whenever Terry talks to her. There is only a little gravity in the facility where breeding must take place, so Terry floats above the floor a bit, bobbing up and down as she goes. All areas in the facility are color-coded to indicate their use, thus making red, blue, green and grey the prevailing colors throughout. The sounds are all just right: doors hiss and whine when they open and close, buttons click satisfactorily and the maggot makes cute noises to indicate it’s under stress and will explode soon. Otherwise this is a very quiet game, with no background music or voices to be heard. All dialogue appears in text above the speaking person’s head.

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Terry is controlled with the mouse using both buttons: left lets Terry interact with things and right makes her describe them. Her inventory, together with buttons to save, load and quit the game, are located at the bottom of the screen. The puzzles are well thought-out: Terry has to keep the maggot alive while sometimes doing things that agitate it at the same time. This makes even mundane tasks a bit harder than normal, giving rise to a wide variety of challenges ranging from pure inventory-based puzzles, doing some math, and perusing the facility’s log files to making sure you don’t use the wrong equipment in certain situations. The game can end two different ways: either the maggot dies or the breeding succeeds. If you are not careful, Terry can die together with the maggot in some places in the facility. It’s important to save early and save often (with only a single slot) because that maggot will die many times before you know how to avoid its demise! If you forget or press your luck too far, fortunately restarting the game doesn’t take much time. All in all, GNRBLEX is a commendable game, especially considering the fact that it was made by only one person in less than a month.

GNRBLEX can be downloaded from the AGS website.

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Kaitlyn and the Diving Helmet

The man in black hovers over Kaitlyn’s grandmother’s house, demanding Kaitlyn give him their Titanic boarding pass, which he needs for his maritime exhibition. Kaitlyn refuses because the man has stolen her grandfather’s diving helmet already. To get the man to go away and retrieve the lost diving helmet, this plucky heroine will have to clog a toilet, give some fuel to a taxi driver, and use a pogo stick in this wacky adventure by Carmel Games.

As we are used to from this developer, Kaitlyn and the Diving Helmet is shown in third-person mode in brightly colored screens where almost no lines are parallel or straight. Kaitlyn is a young girl about eight years old, dressed in red pants and a pink T-shirt, with her long brown hair tied back in a ponytail. The heads of every character, including Kaitlyn’s, are rather large compared to the rest of their bodies. The setting comprises the house of Kaitlyn’s grandma, above which the helicopter bobs up and down, as well as the man in black’s exhibition, a comic book shop, and a street. A repetitive but cheerful flute melody that can be switched off accompanies the gameplay. The voice acting is excellent: Kaitlyn sounds young and fresh, the villains mean, and the other people in the game have fitting voices as well. The sound effects, like a toilet flushing, a safe opening and a cannonball dropping on the floor, don’t sound very natural but they fit the game’s whimsical atmosphere well.

Kaitlyn is controlled using just a single mouse button for movement and interaction. The inventory can be found at the bottom right of the screen, with icons for the settings and a walkthrough at the bottom left. The puzzles are mostly inventory-based but Kaitlyn also has to open a few locks for which she needs to find codes consisting of either colors or numbers. While certainly not one of Carmel’s deeper games, all in all this is a fun little adventure that can be finished in a quick 20 minutes.

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