Interesting games on itch.io: September 27

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7 mins read

List by Matt S.
  

I’m a big fan of itch.io for the freedom and open platform that it allows for developers to be creative, experimental, and directly canvas the audience for feedback for games that are not yet ready for primetime on Steam and its ilk. In addition, itch.io allows you to be transgressive, subversive, and downright dangerous. It’s a true “art gallery” for game ideas and creative developers, and it should be celebrated for that.

What makes itch.io a little difficult at times is finding things that are interesting to play. Discovery is a real issue when great ideas are buried among high school projects and nasty little efforts to scam a quick buck from players. With that in mind, I thought what might be helpful to readers would be if I did a brief write-up of interesting games that I’ve come across on itch.io each week. In many cases these games will be unfinished or “in development,” but I’m highlighting them because they promise something special and are well worth keeping on the radar.

Note: I also haven’t played these games. I highlight them as interesting based on the itch.io description and concept. Where I find the time to do actual reviews or other coverage, I will compose separate articles on the game in question. These aren’t so much an endorsement (or piece of criticism) as they are a head’s up.

Naturally, if you want to pick up a couple of the Dee Dee visual novels while you’re there on itch.io to support our work here, I would be eternally grateful! There’s a new one that recently came out, Sade!

K32 Super Rocket

We have a bit of a themed edition of the Interesting Games feature this week – all four games are modern Game Boy or GBC titles! There is a new original Game Boy game jam going on right now – GBJAM 9, and has created a flurry of activity with people coming up with new old games to play. First up we have K32 Super Rocket.
K32 Super Rocket is a Game Boy Color side-scrolling shooter, with a colourfully childish aesthetic that features eight levels, crammed into just 32kb of space. The game features a health bar and a fuel bar, music of its own, and even more impressively, it was all built in assembly. I know I’ve seen this before, but one of the appealing things about these “new old” projects is seeing how developers challenge themselves via limitations, and this developer has gone all the way to actually make these games as they were once made. No short-cut tools here!
Mud Warriors is a Game Boy Color adaption of Ryan Veeder’s Mud Warriors text adventure game. That means it’s the Game Boy equivalent of a point-and-click adventure, and what stands out about this one is the rather lively use of visuals giving the technical limitations that the developer is working with. Just looking at this in motion has me getting warmly nostalgic for the games I used to play a lot of back in the day.

As the Itch.io game listing goes “we used to play games every day after school. But I’m a big kid now. I don’t play games anymore.” Having not played the original text adventure (which you can play here), I can’t add anything to that, but it seems like this is a lightly comedic adventure and something that offers up a bit of nostalgia for youth.

Glory Hunters Chapter 1

Glory Hunters seems to be incredibly ambitious as a Game Boy project, so much so that I had to double-check that the game was playable on Game Boy devices, which it absolutely is. It’s still in an early state (the version for download is 0.1), but the potential is massive – an open world, 200 achievements, and a pretty unique concept.

In Glory Hunters, you’re on the hunt for “glory points” which you earn by completing quests and earning those aforementioned achievements. You can use those points to upgrade health, buy items, and hire assistants for the quest. You’ll also need to gather materials and help the townsfolk around, as you also attempt to save the land by awakening a slumbering deity and delving deeply into monster-filled dungeons. This is absolutely a game I would have jumped on were it released back on the game boy, and I’m looking forward to giving this one a whirl too. Hopefully, the developer gets the encouragement they need to finish work on this chapter and continue to work on more.

Until The Light Comes

If Game Boy games were being made in 2021, I think we’d get a lot of stuff like Until The Light Comes. This is a procedural platformer (procedural games weren’t that common back when the Game Boy was new), and it makes such a lot of sense given the limitations of the console.
  

The game has an aesthetic that is vaguely Metroid-like, but the gameplay is significantly different. In Until The Light Comes, you need to avoid bomb traps and swing your package like a weapon – yep, you’re a miner in this game, with the goal being to travel as far through a deadly, monster-packed cave before finally succumbing… and then you get to try it again. There’s probably a hint of Downwell in there too. It might not be the most original idea, but making it work on the Game Boy is pretty damned impressive.

– Matt S. 
Editor-in-Chief
Find me on Twitter: @mattsainsb

This is the bio under which all legacy DigitallyDownloaded.net articles are published (as in the 12,000-odd, before we moved to the new Website and platform). This is not a member of the DDNet Team. Please see the article's text for byline attribution.

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