Quick Fix: Screenshot Saturday 1/30

Title: Scorn
Developer: Ebb Software
Scorn is an atmospheric first person horror adventure game set in a nightmarish universe of odd forms and somber tapestry. Isolated and lost inside this dream-like world you will explore different interconnected regions in a non-linear fashion. Every location contains its own story, puzzles and characters that are integral in creating cohesive lived in world. Throughout the game you will open up new areas of the game, acquire different skill sets, weapons, various items and try to comprehend the sights presented to you.

Title: The Black Death
Developer: Siren Studios
Experience a bustling medieval land under the threat of a devastating plague. Survival is becoming increasingly unlikely, but day to day life must continue. With a variety of classes to choose from, each with their own unique play styles and approaches to survival. How long can you survive before you succumb?

Title: The Last Leviathan
Developer: Super Punk Games
An evocative voyage of creativity, discovery and terror...

Title: Inventory
Developer: Black Tower Basement
A Hack'n'slash RPG about beautiful loot and greedy heroes

Title: Mad Devils
Developer: Itzy Interactive
Mad Devils blends the popular WWII genre with supernatural/fantasy elements in a one of a kind, co-operative shooter experience. Follow a group of devil GI’s who continue to fight WWII in an afterlife that darkly mirrors war torn Europe. Choose to play as one of the six remaining members of the Mad Devils squad, leveling up each with their own unique powers and weapons. Fight to close the portals being used to reinforce Nazi forces on Earth with devil troops.

IOS Review #110: Knotmania

Title: Knotmania
Developer: 2 Think Games
Platforms: IOS Universal
Price: $2.99
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If you've played Zen Bound or Shadowmatic, you're already familiar with the feel of Knotmania's gameplay. A relaxing atmosphere and tactile mechanics make Knotmania an enjoyable game, but the sentient alien entities that you untangle make it unique.

Knotmania revolves around the simple premise of untangling knots. Multi-touch controls lets you pull apart strings and twist, drag, and rotate with ease. But those fibers aren't static; instead they're living creatures, worm-like beings that flex and coil and react to your touch.

It may seem like a small change, but the notion of manipulating living creatures gives Knotmania its weird quirky charm. Each level begins with a twisted knot to tackle - sometimes a single worm, sometimes many entangled with each other - a calm relaxed mass indifferent to your presence. Begin tugging and dragging and, as expected, they resist and twist away, moving in slow graceful movements as if through water or in zero gravity. Maybe one worm will try to wrap around and wrestle with another. It adds an engaging vibe akin to an unearthly nature documentary to what's a relatively simple format.

Knotmania includes 76 levels, each one featuring a colorful pairing of room and strings. The oddly textured environments enhances the alien atmosphere, and seeing the shadows of the twisting, flowing worms against the backgrounds helps cement the sense that these are living physical things in the environment.

While the core gameplay is quite relaxing, there is an element of challenge in completing the levels under a time limit, as well as the optional goal of using the fewest amount of touches. An upcoming update will add a Zen mode that removes the timer.

Knotmania is available for $2.99.

The Watchlist: Anew: The Distant Light

Title: Anew: The Distant Light
Developer: Resonator, LLC
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One
In development
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An open-world, dual-stick action game which showcases a beautifully painted, storybook world

From Limbo to the upcoming Orphan, there's something compelling about a child enduring a harsh and dangerous world. Anew: The Distant Light follows a child on a distant moon, light-years from home and on a critical mission.

Set on a sprawling world, extending from rocky barren surface to subterranean lakes, you'll shoot and leap your way through dangerous beings and deadly hazards. A high-tech suit enhances your mobility, granting you the skills to gracefully dive beneath the water or use jet boosters for augmented jumps.

As you explore farther, new technology will expand your options, letting you solve puzzles and speed across the moon in alien vehicles. But agility alone isn't enough to survive this ruthless landscape, and an arsenal of powerful energy guns, grenades, and more lets you hold your own against hordes of alien creatures, lurking predators. and heavily-armed inhabitants. 

Anew brings this alien moon to life with a vibrant art style and smooth animations. Snow coats the dimly lit surface around your landing site, water sloshes and splashes as you fight under the surface, and lasers fly across the screen in furious neon streaks.

Anew: The Distant Light is still early in development, and is slated to release on PC and consoles. You can learn more about the game and find more screenshots here.

Quick Fix: Screenshot Saturday 1/23

Title: Anew: The Distant Light

Developer: Resonator, LLC

Anew: The Distant Light is an open-world, dual-stick action game which showcases a beautifully painted, storybook environment. You are a child with limited resources, waking up on a distant alien moon, twenty light years from Earth. You must carry out a mission of critical importance. Battle, puzzle, and journey through an exotic and dangerous world.

Title: Pode

Developer: Henchman & Goon

Pode is a puzzle adventure about friendship and cooperation. Join Bulder the rock and Stella the star on a wonderful journey through an ancient, lush underground world filled with riddles and mysteries.

Title: Long Gone Days

Developer: Bura Mathews

An RPG following the story of Rourke, a young man who was designated to be a soldier at birth. Rourke was born in the core of the earth, a place technically invisible to the rest of the world.

Title: Life In A Box

Developer: El-Metallico

A pixel art point 'n click about a physicist who has lost his daughter and tries to return her by building a time machine.

Title: Yaga

Developer: Breadcrumbs Interactive

Yaga is an action RPG allowing you to shape your own east-european folktales through the actions and choices you make. Your choices are combined with procedural generation to tell the story of a one-handed blacksmith roaming the world in search of adventure

The Watchlist: Consortium: The Tower

Title: Consortium: The Tower
Developer: Interdimensional Games Inc
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One
Releasing late 2017
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The ultimate single player first-person immersive sim. Explore, talk, fight or sneak through The Churchill Tower in 2042

The immersive sim. It's a small subgenre of games, an eclectic mix of themes and gameplay all bound by a goal of letting you role-play as a character in believable reactive worlds that mold to your choices and actions. Deus Ex, STALKER, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, a few others, but perhaps most recently, Consortium. An ambitious sci-fi game set in the confines of a single plane, yet feeling like an expansive experience thanks to the depth of its narrative, relationships, and gameplay freedom.

Now developer IDGI is back with Consortium: The Tower, an even more ambitious sequel that takes what worked in the first game and evolving those elements on an impressive scale and scope.

Consortium: The Tower takes place in a near-future London, in the massive Churchill Tower, now controlled by a mysterious terrorist faction. You play as Bishop Six, an agent of the titular organization, on a mission to observe, report, and handle the situation. How you accomplish those goals are up to you. The tower is home to a whole array of different groups -  terrorists, police, civilians, Consortium and other more enigmatic individuals - each with their plans and agendas. You can sky-dive to flank enemies from above and unleash devastating firepower, cloak and sneak through unseen, explore the tower for better routes and hack into terminals for useful data and hidden secrets.

But Consortium wouldn't be an immersive sim if it doesn't offer choices beyond the shooting and sneaking. The spoken word here is as powerful as any weapon or piece of technology; in fact, it'll be possible to be complete a playthrough without firing a shot. Find yourself in a tense standoff with an enemy squad and you can press the talk button (that lets you engage in conversation anytime, anywhere), throw down your gun to defuse the tension, and convince the group that you're not a threat or even to fight alongside you.

Going further than that, disobey your orders, go against the Consortium's wishes, and you're be disavowed by the agency. In another game, that would be a game over, but here, The Tower continues along, except now you're a rogue agent. That status may make you very valuable to other factions and individuals in the game.

While the game is already ambitious, the developers have even bigger plans if budget allows. Their vision for The Tower is one of a nearly fully-explorable environment, with areas ranging from malls and apartments to museums and industrial areas, essentially what you'd imagine an actual skyscraper of this magnitude would contain.

Consortium: The Tower is expected to release late next year and is currently seeking funds on Kickstarter. You can learn about the game here.

SitRep: Somerville

Title: Somerville
Developer: Chris Olsen
Platforms: PC
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When I wrote about Somerville last year, I was already impressed. From its brilliant narrative framework of a teacher telling her class the story of humanity's war against an alien incursion, to its smoothly animated movement and low-poly aesthetic, the game was shaping up to be one promising cinematic platformer. Since then, the game has only evolved further, especially in the art department.

Perhaps the biggest change since the last article is visually. Somerville's environments have gone from simple test levels to atmospheric landscapes. Dark forests, midnight skies filled with menacing monolithic alien vessels, ruined churches and bridges, and much more await our hero.

But these environments aren't just static places to be explored. Wildlife roams the woodlands and wind whips at the underbrush and other loose items like leaves and tarps.

These beautiful but dangerous levels must be traversed with caution, watching out for patrolling drones, mines and other threats. But John is as versatile and ready to fight as ever, now able to wield a knife with smooth efficiency,

Somerville's development is moving at a steady pace; you can follow its progress on the developer's Tumblr and Twitter pages.

The Watchlist: Fara & The Eye of Darkness

Title: Fara & The Eye of Darkness
Developer: Spaceboy Games
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
In development
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A roguelike with a card-based spell/combat system

Fara & The Eye of Darkness is an upcoming action roguelike that combines fast-paced arena combat with deck-building/card game mechanics, as you face fierce enemies with an arsenal of powerful spells.

As the titular demon witch, you're determined to cure your world of an insidious corruption that's twisting the good animals and inhabitants into aggressive monsters. To defeat this evil and her malevolent siblings, Fara must use an expansive array of spells, ranging from speedy dashes and devastating energy blasts that scar the battleground as they barrel through enemies to fiery sprays and crackling bursts of magic that strike multiple foes at once. 

Enemy encounters transports you to smaller arenas that truly test your agility and smart use of the cards in hand. Between fights, you'll explore a procedural overworld filled with towns, shops, and NPCs, and building your deck from defeated enemies, shops, and looting chests throughout the world.

Fara & The Eye of Darkness is still quite early in development, and is expected to release sometime next year. You can find more spell GIFs and follow the game's progress on Twitter.