Best of 2008 (shared):
In Iji you play as, well, Iji. Iji is a human who has been enhanced with nanotechnology after Earth is abruptly invaded by aliens. Her new nanotech field provides her with a kind of shield and also gives her the incredible weaponry that every action-platformer hero needs to survive.
Imagine if you had the heroes, enemies, backgrounds and music from classic 80s games mashed together like WarioWare gone retro. What you'd get is Rom Check Fail. The game has you moving with the arrow keys and attacking with the [spacebar]. Your moves and those of your foes change every few seconds when the game remixes everything again, so you've got to meta-game a bit in order to defeat all twenty levels. Mind-bending fun.
Why we picked them: An instant classic by a single author working in his spare time, Iji would be an impressive project even if it only consisted of the fun platforming and shooting. But it has so much more going for it: multiple directions for character growth, a complex and political story that shifts depending on your actions, wide-open gameplay that rewards you for creativity. This kind of depth in a story-driven action game is unusual; the fact that it's also free makes it nearly unprecedented, and well-deserving of a spot among the Best of 2008.
Another one of the JIG reviewers' favorites was BZZZZT!!! To play, you simply use the arrow keys to move your BZZZZT!!! And with everything changing in a matter of seconds, you need to BZZZZT!!! Rom Check Fail, by Farbs, is a clash of classic video games, hurled at you at warp speed. Your randomly chosen video game protagonist attempts to eliminate the randomly chosen antagonist in their own unique fashion, but if you're not fast enough, everything changes. With tremendous attention paid to each video game's character and environment details, Rom Check Fail dishes up an entertaining blend of action and strategy, which leaves you begging to pump in more (imaginary) quarters to try to beat the high score. That's why Rom Check Fail was one of our picks for the Best of BZZZZT!!!
Audience Award:
In Iji you play as, well, Iji. Iji is a human who has been enhanced with nanotechnology after Earth is abruptly invaded by aliens. Her new nanotech field provides her with a kind of shield and also gives her the incredible weaponry that every action-platformer hero needs to survive.
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