A lot of indie games have rolled off the presses in the past week, including several as entries in the TIGSource "A Game By Its Cover" competition (which ends today). We've featured one of these games below, but look for more in the weeks to come!
Tricky Truck (Windows, 19.2MB, free) - From the creator of Sumotori Dreams, the game about sumo wrestlers shoving each other, comes a game about parking a truck loaded with a bunch of stuff. Move the truck around each small arena, careful not to tip over, and make it to the marked goal safely. As anyone who has played Sumotori Dreams knows, this is an exercise in patience, precision, and timing, not beginner's luck. Those trucks are are tipsy.
Mind Jolt (Windows, 5.8MB, free) - Built as a tribute to Mind Shock, Mind Jolt is an arena shmup that manages to be intense while staying accessible to a wide variety of players. Much less twitch-action reflex dodging than most shooters, much more intelligent moving, firing, and observing enemy patterns.
The Moonkeeper (Windows, 1.4MB, free) - A very, very old-school exploration platformer that tries to make everything as retro as possible. But, you know, that's kinda awesome. Our moon base has been infested by aliens, so you must find and destroy their gestation pods. Work through a series of interconnected passageways as you hunt for keys, press switches, make perilous jumps, and nab new items to help take care of the strange enemies.
D.O.T.: Dot Order Tie (Windows, 24.5MB, free) - An entry in the TIGSource A Game By Its Cover Competition, DOT is a top-down maze-like game of exploration. It's one of the few games you'll actually need to read the instruction manual for, but the basic gist of things is you're trying to collect 999 dots, and in order to get them, you'll need to find hidden passageways and decipher codes for a number of doors. Very interesting puzzle mechanics, and the story is so great you have to read it to believe it.
Note: All games have been confirmed to run under Windows Vista 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 have retrieved the perfect tie =)
Tricky Trucks seems to crash on start up for me D: I put in the settings, click start, and I get the "*game name* needs to close. Sorry for inconvenience bla bla bla." :'(
Those messages don't really help...they may as well put "And, no, we won't offer any helpful suggestions." at the end...
@Lukex115: I am having the same problem. when I click the application, it says I should extract the files. when I extract the files and click it it says I should extract the files. but I already did that so I click run, do the settings, hit play, and it stops working. ::
Tricky Truck crashes after the settings screen for me as well. I also tried version 1.11 with the same results. Anyone successfully play it yet?
I went and browsed those fake Famicom cartridges. What is up with the horizontal bar with the down-and-up jag and fading-out bottom? It seems like a very common design; I've seen it several times now.
It must be a Japanese thing. I remember it being parodied on level 86 of Hoshi Saga 3.
A few comments about Dot Order Tie, spoilered because there's a bit spoilery about my criticism:
I was originally going to be negative about the patterns being the same each time it's played through, but on second thought it's not that bad a thing. There's one main reason you're going to go through the maze a second time, and there's no need to make that harder than it already is. (Granted, it might have been nicer being able to get sent back into the maze after the bad ending, but that's the developers choice. Not changing the locks helps keep that from being a downright awful choice.)
There's a total of 1,000 dots in the maze, one in a secret room. You only realize that if you think 'meta' (because 999 is an unusual goal to reach), or you beat the game and it tells you that the tie isn't perfect.
I do think negatively of the secret room. Not in its placement or its method of access, but the fact that there's no hints about it. Mazes can be fun or at least amusing, but brute-forcing each and every wall on the edge isn't. The developer put a 'clue' in the comment thread that he debated putting into the instructions; he probably should have put that into the 'bad ending text'.
Additionally, the reward for creating the perfect tie is... not rewarding. The instructions show that the author's got a good creative streak; I was hoping to see more of that for recreating the tie. Instead, the reward is a single sentence.
For those seeking the perfect tie, the hidden room is
connected to a room with horizontal symmetry.
Loved the ending to The Moonkeeper:
Many adventures await you . . . But for now, you must REST and EAT PANCAKES.
It was a shot in the dark, but i've figured out why Tricky Truck doesn't work. It's a game developed using Microsoft XNA (no thanks to the author for telling us this) so you will need to download the XNA framework here.
Wish I could help everyone having trouble running Tricky Truck. Worked just fine for me on Vista.
Okay... I'm lost with these puzzles in D.O.T.
I'm probably missing something REALLY obvious...
You're not alone, Waggles. But thanks for being the first to admit it.
Power of posting. For anyone stuck:
Through diligent searching, you will come across rooms that have a pattern made of wall and the door symbol. You'll be able to see into the room from a little alcove from one of the sides. What I did was run and try and find the four rooms so that I have all the codes because if you try to explore on one code at a time, you repeat a TON of rooms. You shouldn't have to write down the code either. If you need reference for a room, you can simply hit [v] and bring up the mini map. Even if you don't remember what room is for which door, there are only 4 so trial and error shouldn't be too dificult. I found the rooms were easily memorized after you use the code twice or more. I got up to 930 before I finished discovering every room and I really didn't feel like going back for the last 69. What infuriated me was the rooms that you got to through fake walls. That will be harder than codes.
Oh..wow..it WAS obvious.
The first code is totally accessable from the get-go, nothing hidden, no wall-humping required. Just explore fully.
Two rooms up and three to the left from your starting room...not that you can walk as the crow flies, but that's where the first one is.
For D.O.T., it's REALLY important you check out the readme instructions. :-)
@Chris S Nope, installing the XNA framework didn't work for me; I'm still getting the same error message D:
Installing the XNA framework didn't help me with Tricky Truck either. My only consolation is this perfect tie I'm wearing...
dot order tie spoilers:
could someone just post where to get the 1000th dot?
Dot Order Tie 1,000th Dot:
It's connected to room 5,9, but you need to enter from the top from 5,8 and head down through the middle into the secret room.
Okay. I've read the brief, not very helpful instructions and I've read the comments here. Now tell me, for the love of crap, how do I open a door!?
Finally played Tricky Truck by... using my wife's laptop running Vista. First time Vista ever came in handy.
I like it, but then I was the sort of weirdo who spent at least tens of minutes in GTA:San Andreas practicing this sort of thing in Las Venturas' warehouse district. I want more challenges!
So yeah, if you're still having trouble, try it on your wife's laptop.
Has anyone else have a problem playing Moonkeeper? When I run the game, the intro screen runs and when I press shoot or enter the game 'starts' but is only a black screen. I hear the sound fx of walking/shooting if I press the right keys, but see nothing. Does it not work on Vista?
@flowerfoot
I'm having the same problem, and I'm trying to run it on 7. Quite odd.
I found a fix for The Moonkeeper! The creator of the game posted this link in the comments when people complained of a similar problem:
http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/the-moonkeeper/files/the-moonkeeper-1-01-no-surfaces/download/231/1891/
Aaaah sorry for the double post. This version crashes on me at the 3rd screen. :l
Add me to those who can't play trucks. I want to.
The only thing I can think of is I'm running windows XP not vista.
Moonkeeper keeps crashing on mee! what should I do to fix?
Moonkeeper ran for me on Windows 7 for a while, but after about ten minutes it crashed while moving between screens. Then I tried again and it crashed in one of the early areas. Too bad, because I was interested in seeing what it had to offer.
An eerie, minimalist game about collecting the perfect tie? Neat.
This is very strange as I got Tricky Truck to work yesterday by installing the XNA Framework, however this morning it now fails to start, getting the same error message again as before.
How very odd.
So then by the looks of things Tricky Trucks doesn't work on any computer with Windows XP. :/ Maybe there are a few exceptions, but hey, it's most likely to not work for at least nearly all computers with XP.
Thanks game creator for not testing for this and wasting our time.
Right, i've been having another go with trying to get Tricky Trucks to work, seems it should work if you install v3.0 of the XNA Framework instead of v3.1 (which I linked to previously.)
I have a dual-boot setup which means that I could try this under Windows XP (was trying to get it to work under Windows 7 x64 previously) which already has v3.0 installed and the game worked first time, so went back to 7, installed the v3.0 framework and lo and behold it now works again.
@Lukex115
I agree, if the creator had tested this like he really should have done, we wouldn't have had to do any of this messing around.
I really don't think that I did "decipher codes" at all in D.O.T., nor did I see any interesting puzzle mechanics. Invisible passages and a red-key-opens-red-doors equivalent do not make for fun times.
Also, why the hell is it 24.5MB? I can't make sense of it needing that much space by long shot.
I think 95% of the filesize is for the huge looping .wav background music.
After several unsuccessful attempts at getting down that extreme downhill challenge in Tricky Trucks (the bobsled-looking one without turns) using skill and brakes, I finally achieved success when the video froze for a second and I suddenly found myself at the bottom and hit the brakes. Guess I used the force.
Tried XNA 3.0, still no luck for this XP user.
Thought I'd give it a try, but no luck for Trucks on my XP. And my vista just broke a few weeks ago :(
Tricky Trucks did not work for me on Vista until I enabled my internet connection. I usually disable it unless I'm actively surfing the net. Happened to try it again after going online to figure out why it wouldn't work, and it worked fine. Disable the connection, didn't work. Enabled it again, worked. I hope this may help someone!
Tricky Truck worked for me on Win XP, but it crashed on the overpass stage. I spent 15 minutes trying to make that jump and when I did...crash@@! Oh well, I still think it's a good game.
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