Free Online Game

Title: Wizard of Legend
Developer: Contingent99
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Releasing 2016
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A fast paced 2D dungeon crawler where you assume the role of a powerful wizard on his quest for fame and glory!

Often in games, wizards and mages are designated as support. Powerful but fragile units kept away from the fray, helping out the warriors with magic and healing. Wizard of Legend takes the opposite approach. In the fast-paced dungeon crawler, you're a force to be reckoned with, wielding the might of the elements to decimate enemies.

The set-up is simple. You're a mage facing a series of trials to prove your skill and join the Council of Magic as a new Wizard of Legend. Those trials will take you from dense forests to dank dungeons, each featuring procedurally-generated layouts and dangerous enemies.
But you're more than capable of surviving these challenges. There's a vast array of magical abilities to choose, ranging from chain lightning and devastating fire blasts to summoning meteors and dropping totem turrets. Chaining together your chosen abilities is key to defeating the hordes of undead foes, beasts, and bosses; combat is a spectacle of powerful screen-filling effects, as you control crowds, stun enemies, evade attacks to get into a better position, unleash flame and ice and wind.

Special items and perks will complement your magic, but if the challenge proves too much, Wizard of Legend lets you team up with a friend in local co-op. If you'd rather prove your superior wizardry, you can face your friend in spell-slinging PvP combat.
Wizard of Legend is expected to release in mid-2016, and is currently seeking votes on Steam Greenlight. You can learn more about the game and follow its development on TIGSource and Twitter.

Just a short post for today, but there are a lot of interesting indie releases and projects on the horizon. The gorgeous hand-made adventure game Lumino City is releasing on iPad tonight and frenetic roguelite shooter Galak-Z is finally coming to Steam tomorrow, so you can definitely expect impressions of those soon.

In the meantime, here are some promising Kickstarters to watch, as well as a few games on Greenlight that might interest you:

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On Kickstarter

Doko Roko

Doko Roko is a 2D rogue-like, vertical action game with an emphasis on lightning-fast combat and rich atmosphere 

Collect strange and ancient magicks to do battle with the more hostile denizens of The Tower. Wield massive swords forged from meteorites and cursed earth to slay the many dreaming demons who climb the tower alongside you. A frenetic and responsive combat system that is easy to pick up, but difficult to master.

Wanderer

Wanderer tells the tale of a man called Rook, a greying convict who wakes from cold sleep aboard a massive orbital prison facility to find that it's crash landed on the ruins of an abandoned Earth. 

With the guidance of a hacker named Jin and the aid of a ragtag group of survivors he recruits along the way, Rook must locate and explore the nine cell blocks which have detached from the prison's central tower and scattered across Earth's ghostly wasteland.

Puzzle Depot

In Puzzle Depot, you start out as Todd Torial, Box Pusher 3rd Class, who's just been “volunteered” as a test subject for the facility's CryoFreeze program. When he wakes up, he finds the facility is in chaos. As you navigate your new, more dangerous world, you realize it's not just the facility that's fallen to ruin, but the entire planet.

On Greenlight

Cally's Cave 3

Join Cally and her friends in this action-packed run and gun platformer, conquering insane bosses, exploring to find secrets, and levelling up EVERYTHING. Use your weapons to level them up and evolve them into their ultimate forms! 

Unlock new character abilities like the Triple Jump, Dodge Roll and Water Wings. Use a second playable character, Bera to unleash crazy awesome ninja moves and solve challenging puzzles.

The Mooseman

The Mooseman is an atmospheric 2D adventure game set in the mysterious lands of Perm chud’ tribes. The player's avatar is the Mooseman; a mythological character from perm animal style objects, which we were greatly inspired by.

Intersection

InterSection is a spatially-challenging puzzle game based on manipulating two 2D planes aligned to your player in 3d space. You are linked to two worlds; the dying world of your people, and a young, green world. Use this link to connect these worlds and save your people.

Title: XO
Developer: Jumpdrive Studios
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Early 2016
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Command a ragtag fleet of starships to escape an unbeatable enemy and save what's left of humanity

Mankind faces a threat unlike any other: a faceless relentless armada that outclasses us in every way. This unstoppable enemy ravages across the galaxy, abducting humans for unknown purposes. As master tactician and commander aboard the lead battleship of a meager fleet, you must rescue your people and defeat this seemingly unbeatable foe.
Inspired by works such as Battlestar Galactica, The Lost Fleet, and FTL, XO offers strategic space fleet combat, driven by desperation and overwhelming odds. Forget negotiations or colonizing or empire-building; your only goal is survival and enduring long enough to gather your forces. Jumping from planet to planet to collect necessary resources like air and fuel, rescuing disabling ships to add to your fleet, and dealing with the stress and tough decisions of being a leader fighting a war of attrition. You will face mutinies and rebelling generals, will need to make sacrifices, and keep your people strong and focused, if you want to save humanity.

XO's combat occurs on a 2D plane, where you set waypoints and select targets in real time. Time is an important factor in battle; using an ETA slider, you can designate units to flank enemy vessels at the same time from multiple angles, or have your forces attack in waves, among myriad other strategies. The game's vector-art aesthetic turns each encounter into a vibrant spectacle of fleet-to-fleet combat: enemy vessels releasing swarms of fighters and massive harvesters clamping onto disabled ships to extract humans, as your fleet retaliates with point defense cannons, particle accelerators, and defensive sandcasters.
One of the most fascinating aspects of XO is the developer's hard sci-fi approach to every aspect of the game, from ship design to combat. Momentum and physics must be taken into account while setting waypoints. Collecting resources requires you to send diveships to gather fuel from gas giants or water and air from habitable worlds. Planets are procedurally-generated based on their location in a solar system, so distance from a sun determines if a planet is frozen over or a barren molten rock. Even the ship design and weapons tie into this realistic approach: your battleship's large radiator fins at its rear are there to shed heat waste generated by powerful laser cannons.
More information on XO's development and gameplay can be found on the developer's blog; XO is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, and votes on Steam Greenlight.

Title: Lagrangian Point
Developer: Hindsight Games
Platforms: PC
2015
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A 2D, top down tactical space combat game

Against gorgeous backgrounds of nebulas and shattered planets and other extraterrestrial debris, Lagrangian Point promises tactical battles between customizable armadas. Missiles and projectiles streak across the void, flaring against energy shields and tearing through asteroids and hull armor alike. To counter these onslaughts, a deep customization element opens the door for a wealth of potential tactics, from drone launchers and mine layers to cloaking devices and fleet command  modules.
These subsystems can be controlled individually, allowing you to fire weapons independently or manually face shields to protect damaged areas, or attacked to disable enemy ships. Lagrangian Point will even include a hull editor to create completely unique ship designs. The ship creation element will feature heavily in competitive and cooperative modes; if online gameplay isn't your forte, there will also be an open-world solo campaign, where you make allies and enemies in a reactive world inhabited by various factions.
Lagrangian Point is aiming for release later this year, and is currently on Steam Greenlight. You can learn more about the game on its official site, as well as the developer's Twitter and Facebook pages.

Title: Impact Winter
Developer: Mojo Bones
Platforms: PC
2016
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The world as we knew it is over. A white shroud of endless snowfall blankets the landscape, the aftereffect of a devastating impact event. This is the world you inhabit in Impact Winter, a dynamic survival game in development for PC
Your situation is dire; holed up in a dilapidated church, with help arriving in 30 days. Supplies are scare, and the scavengers lurk in the darkness beyond your shelter. As Jake Solomon, you are the leader of a small group, each member acting independently with their own strengths and stats. While the NPCs are AI-driven, it's your responsibility as leader to resolve disputes, assign tasks, and make the tough decisions that could mean life or death for your group. Hunt for food or weather the incoming blizzard? Welcome a stranger in? Venture into the darkness to search for a missing person?
The world of Impact Winter is one of danger and desperation. Fuel and food are critical in this winter wasteland, and similar to the recently released game This War of Mine, starvation and other elements can affect the moral of your group. To remedy this and survive for the 30 days, you'll need to venture out into the harsh environment, braving scavengers and wildlife. Combat is possible, but like everything else, ammo is limited so a safer choice could to be scare threats away with a warning shot. But the greatest danger is the weather itself; unexpected storms, freezing temperatures, poor visibility, strong winds that slow your movement, can kill you just as easily as another human. Your AKO-LIGHT drone can track the temperature, scan the environment for areas of interest, and provide night vision when darkness falls...but be wary of battery usage or you'll find yourself without a map or illumination in the snow-swept landscape.
Impact Winter is planned to release sometime in 2016. You can follow its development on TIGForums and the developer's Youtube channel. Impact Winter was recently Greenlit.

Title: Elsinore
Developer: Golden Glitch
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Release: 2016
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Consider, for a moment, the Shakespearean tragedy. Tales of betrayal, death, love, prophecies, mystery, ruin. These stories have influenced literature and other mediums for centuries, and now Elsinore promises to combine Hamlet's story of revenge and murder with the adventure game genre, as you attempt to prevent a massacre witnessed in a prophetic dream.
As noblewoman Ophelia, you find yourself caught in a four-day time loop during a period of political tension in Elsinore Castle. Using knowledge gained over multiple loops, you can influence and manipulate events and individuals. However, this interactions are more than simple branching dialogue parts, as each character has their own schedules, desires, plans; thus your actions can have ripple effects that influence other character's behaviors and fates. Perhaps you'll learn more about the Denmark-Norway conflict in the Great Hall or end up locked in the dungeon. Perhaps you'll betray and assassinate or be killed yourself. Discover secrets, witness new events unfold, and experiment across loops to prevent the foreseen tragedy.
Elsinore is planned for a 2016 release, and is currently seeking support on Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight; stretch goals include voice acting, additional animations, an iPad version, and new areas and characters such as Fortinbras' War Camp. You can learn more about Elsinore on the developer's Tumblr page.

Title: Valzar
Developer: Mike Craft
Platforms: PC
Releasing 2014
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Valzar is an action platformer with roguelike elements. A randomized world of humanlike enemies, grumpy gods, magic fruit, and mistakes.

Valzar immediately hooked me with its visuals. It's true that pixel artstyles are quite prevalent recently (and that's not a bad thing), but Valzar's weird enemy designs, vibrant color palette, and hectic display of magic attacks and flying blood makes for a intriguing compelling look. You play as a young girl, traveling across a vast world, fighting dangerous enemies and worshiping powerful gods. After equipping your preferred attacks and weapon from a varied selection of spells and equipment, you venture out into this dangerous world. Valzar is set up differently than other roguelike platformers; rather than your usual progression from area to area, you're presented with a map to explore as you see fit, each section of the grid offering a new level to fight through.
Thankfully, Valzar's gameplay is as equally polished as its visuals. Aside from the spells and weapons you can equip, there's a large array of items and perk slots that can adjust your playstyle. Headgear and auras, fruits and potions, pets, class, all can boost different stats or provide the player unique abilities. Deities discovered throughout the map can be worshiped to increase certain stats and be rewarded with gifts. Outfitted with all these augmentations and special gear, the player is thrust into hectic fast-paced combat against surprisingly smart enemies. You won't find any calm planning here; you'll need to evade deadly projectiles and enemies while landing strikes of your own. The enemies are just as well equipped as you, with the same magic and weapons, and can even adapt to your tactics. Fond of leaping over an enemy's head and attacking from behind? Don't be surprised if that enemy intercepts your jump and attacks you in mid-air
Valzar combines challenging fast-paced combat with a sense of exploration in its weird colorful world. You can learn about this roguelike platformer on its official site and vote for the game on Steam Greenlight.

Title: The Sun At Night
Developer: Minicore Studios
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Price: $14.99
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Many games give you a canine companion. Fallout, Fable, Dead To Rights, even Metal Gear Rising. But it's much rarer to play as the animal itself. In The Sun At Night, you play as a heavily-armed Russian space dog, in a sprawling world filled with dangerous enemies, cool upgrades, and intense combat.
As the intelligent Laika, you're augmented with powerful armor and an array of weaponry as you explore the caverns, jungles, various military camps, laboratory, and other facilities of an alternate Earth ruled by an all-powerful USSR regime. The Sun At Night set across a large interconnected map, and as you explore and discover secrets, your canine warrior becomes a far more formidable fighter, thanks to a wealth of upgrades. From increasing your health and speed, to improving your shields, to granting your weapons new functions with modifiers, you can customize your playstyle in various ways. You'll need all the improvements and enhancements to succeed, as The Sun At Night is a challenging experience. A mix of bullet hell action as you evade enemy fire and fast-paced platforming and shooting as you fight dozens of robots and massive bosses makes The Sun At Night a satisfyingly difficult game. Skill trees and secrets offer a nice amount of replay value and an story told through dialogue, journals, and cutscenes kept me interested throughout the game.The Sun At Night is a an expansive, action-packed game, with a unique protagonist and intense gameplay. You can purchase the game here, and vote for it on Steam Greenlight.

Title: inSynch
Developer: Them Games
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Price: $4.99
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Gameplay-wise, inSynch is simple. Four lanes converge at a center pit, and various shapes travel towards the middle. It's your job to bounce these shapes into the pit with a button press. Timing is key here. So as a game, inSynch isn't very deep.
But as an experience, an audiovisual experience, inSynch shines. The stop-motion animations give the game a wonderful textured look, and the shapes move towards down the lanes, not as static figures, but imbued with life, dancing, unfolding, reforming, flapping, twisting and turning like abstract dancers. Their graceful movements add to the gameplay, requiring you to learn the patterns if you want to time your bounces. The music building as you progress, changing with your performance, a smooth soothing soundtrack that draws you into the experience. inSynch is a relaxing game; in fact, in Explore mode, it's impossible to fail. Complete a track in Explore and you unlock its more challenging Exploit counterpart, where you can fail and the seemingly sedate gameplay becomes a test of skill and reaction.
InSynch's simple gameplay is bolstered by its finely crafted aesthetic, a playful mix of stop-motion animation and reactive music. You can purchase the game here and vote for it on Steam Greenlight.

Title: Prisonscape
Developer: Heaviest Matter
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Currently Kickstarting, late 2014 release
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Prisonscape was among the first games I previewed all the back in September. Now the RPG is aiming for a December release and progressed leaps and bounds since last fall.
Prisonscape is an adventure RPG set, not in a sci-fi future or the grand halls of some fantastical world, but in the gritty grimy corridors of prison. Through bloody violence, sharp tongue, intimidation, intelligence, or a combination of all those elements, you must navigate the various gangs, the racial factions, the guards, friends and foes alike to endure prison life. While the gameplay discussed in the last preview remains intact, new details have emerged. The player will progress from county jail to state-of-the-art Miranda Unit, followed by two other areas. Crafting is far more realistic than other games, a layered deep process even to make something as simple as a basic shiv. Drug addiction and withdrawal, working with guards as a snitch, the ever-looming threat of a cell shakedown, Prisonscape promises to offer a "gritty, uncompromising atmosphere", compared to other prison games such as The Escapists or Prison Architect.
Prisonscape is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. You can also vote for the game on Steam Greenlight. If you're going to be PAX East this weekend, the developers will be showcasing the game there as well.

Title: Four Sided Fantasy
Developer: Ludo Land
Platforms: PC
Releasing early 2015
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From the level designer of Perspective comes a successor to his award-winning game The Fourth Wall, a game about limits of the screen.

The first thing about Four Sided Fantasy that caught my attention was its dev team, since it composed of DigiPen students. From games like Nitronic Rush (and its successor Distance) to Perspective, DigiPen talent has proven to always deliver innovative quality experiences. Actually it was DigiPen students who developed Narbacular Drop and TAG: The Power of Paint, two indie games that inspired the acclaimed Portal series. Not only that, but the level designer of Perspective is developing the game; Perspective remains one of my favorite freeware games, a mindbending mix of 2D platforming and 3D perspective that I don't believe has been attempted since. It's those factors that attracted me to Four Sided Fantasy, a puzzle platformer about screen wrap.
Four Sided Fantasy is the successor to developer's Logan Fieth's freeware game The Fourth Wall. The core mechanic is the ability to manipulate screen wrap. At any time, you can freeze the screen, allowing you to loop around the edges. Something as simple as screen wrap might seem like it would be difficult to craft a diverse game around, but playing The Fourth Wall proved otherwise, using that mechanic to create a variety of interesting puzzles and challenges. Four Sided Fantasy builds off that original version, introducing vibrant colorful visuals and a story of discovery and exploration as a seemingly normal business trip turns into something more mysterious. The trailer hints at new mechanics, such as gravity fields and moving between background and foreground.
Four Sided Fantasy will be released in early 2015. You can support the game on Kickstarter and vote for it on Steam Greenlight. Play the original prototype The Fourth Wall here, as well as Perspective.

Title: Grave
Developer: Broken Window Studios
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Releasing 2015
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Grave is a first person, open world survival horror experience. Explore an ever-changing world filled with frightening creatures. Grave is a hybrid of environmental exploration and combative horror, creating constant tension as the player balances exploration and survival. Our goal is to revitalize the survival horror genre with modern techniques seen in current horror games, while retaining the survival and inventory elements of classic titles.

Grave is an upcoming survivor horror game set in a surrealist nightmare. You awaken on a mysterious desert plain, an endless landscape that shifts with each sunrise. Inspired by the work of Salvador Dali, this world is ever changing, new areas, biomes, and structures appearing with each passing day. From ruined cities and displaced forests to a sudden downpour, you can never be prepared for what weird misplaced area appears over the horizon.
But this world isn't void of danger. Otherworldly beings emerge as night falls and light is your only defense against these grotesque enemies. While this may bring to mind Alan Wake, Grave puts an interesting twist on the mechanic by offering a variety of tools from flashlights and flares to matches and gasoline and making each enemies behave differently to light. Some are easily destroyed, others are merely stunned, while others are attracted to the illumination.
I was able to play the early press demo and even at this early stage, Grave delivers a tense atmosphere. Roaming the windswept plains as haunting music plays. Stumbling upon a derelict town when night falls, a flickering match your only illumination in the suffocating black as an unearthly shriek pierces the darkness. The satisfaction of finding a generator or a gas can, or setting a patch of gas aflame with a flare to kill an approaching creature. Finding some mysterious object out in the world where there was just empty plains the night before. Grave is already scary and fun, and the creatures, weapons, and environments to come will only flesh out the game's solid foundation.
You can learn more about Grave's development on IndieDB, support the project on Kickstarter, and vote for it on Steam Greenlight.

Title: Lemma
Developer: Evan Todd
Platforms: PC (potentially Mac, Linux)
Releasing 2014
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Lemma is an immersive first-person parkour game. Every parkour move has the potential to modify the environment. Surfaces pop in and out of existence at will.

At a glance, the game Lemma probably brings to mind is Mirror's Edge. However while both feature first person parkour, one let the player loose among stark dystopian streets and rooftops while Lemma drops the you in an abstract landscape where the environment itself can help or hurt you. In Lemma, you play Joan Emerson, a physics student who enters this mysterious world and soon finds herself unraveling its secrets. It's a semi-open world, spreading out from a hub that lets you choose which areas to explore in what order you want.
Besides the parkour and abstract levels, what makes Lemma fun and interesting is how the environment reacts to your presence and how you can affect the environment. Your influence is probably most apparent; by wall-running or sliding off edges, you create a surface to continue moving, and later you gain the ability to select structures as you move as shown in the GIF above. But the environment is always your friend. From dangerous turrets and virus-like red material that spreads across the level to explosive cubes that hone in on your or throw parts of the level at you, there's a wealth of hazards to deftly evade with your superior movement.
Lemma is still in alpha, but is quite playable; you can download the alpha here to get a feeling of the gameplay and world. The developer is working on new content and additions, such as blocks that expand at your touch, switches that allow for machinery like elevators, and improved animations. You can learn more about Lemma here and on TIGForums, support the game on Kickstarter, and vote for it on Steam Greenlight.

Title: XenoRaptor
Developer: Peter Cleary
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Beta available now
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I shared my thoughts on XenoRaptor in early February, and I've been enjoying this franctic action shooter and its bullet hell mayhem ever since. The developer has been working tirelessly on the game, providing regular updates on his Tumblr and TIGForums, and XenoRaptor has only gotten bigger and better over the weeks. This is a game best seen in motion so I hope you don't mind some excessive use of GIFs.
Additions have included:
Doubling the amount of enemies and bullets onscreen, allowing for even more chaos and making explosive weaponry more effective
New weapons, such as the tactical nuke (with lasers!), improved laser, and multi-directional firepower
New engines abilities like hyperdrive
Bigger bosses and the ability to mind-control bosses
The developer is also improving the menus and working on an objectives system, that will provide missions such as defending a base or friendly ship and surviving while confined to specific area. You can buy Xenoraptor or try the demo here, follow the game on Tumblr, and vote for it on Steam Greenlight.

Title: Gang Beasts
Developer: Boneloaf
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, Android, WiiU, PS4, XBox One
In development
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Gang Beasts is a stupidly silly local multiplayer party game with doughy ragdoll physics and horrific environmental hazards.
I'll be honest. I first saw a screenshot of Gang Beasts during Screenshot Saturday. It looked interesting but nothing really jumped out at me as amazing or something to be hyped about. And then I read this great RockPaperShotgun preview and realized that was a mistake. Gang Beasts is awesome.
Even in its extremely early playable alpha, the game is one of the most fun and funniest I've played in a while. RPS was right when they said "every fight turns into a desperate action sequence." Gang Beasts is pushing and prodding your opponent into an industrial grinder. It's having a four-way brawl atop speeding trucks. It's punching your opponent in the face while both of you dangle from a window washing platform. What's more, those exciting fights are incredibly simple to control - keys for movement, for punching and grabbing - and your cute colorful brawlers all have physics-based animations that add some satisfying yet oddly hilarious brutality to every fight.
And that's only the 0.0.1 alpha. Reading through the developer's IndieDB and Greenlight pages, they have even greater ambitions. A shopping mall with glass elevators to fight on top of. A hotel/casino featuring a bar for a good old-fashioned bar brawl. A construction site with destructible walls and floors to smash through. An amusement park with a Ferris wheel and roller coaster to fight on. Levels ranging from fights in the middle of freeway traffic to fights on top of a train. A single player mode with levels and bosses. Various moves like headbutts, elbows, and evasive dodges. It sounds incredibly promising and the alpha is a clear evidence that Boneloaf is well on their way to achieving those goals.
Gang Beasts is still in early development. You can download the alpha here; it's currently multiplayer-only, with up to four players able to brawl locally across several levels, but the developers plan to add AI bots and a Sandbox mode in the next build. You can learn more about Gang Beasts on its IndieDB page and vote for it on Steam Greenlight.

Title: Zaharia
Developer: Inner Void
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Releasing late 2015
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Zaharia is an RPG with an oriental and middle eastern flavored setting, inspired by Middle East cultures charm and made with care to be original but, at the same time, plausible and convincing.The player will be able to create his own character and use him freely, writing his own story in the world of Zaharia without neither compromises nor constraints. While exploring the game’s world, the player will discover its centuries-old history, and will come in contact with a world radically different from the ones inspired to European Middle-Age.

In the vein of Fallout, Underrail, and the like, Zaharia is an isometric turn based action RPG. But what makes the game stand out is its setting and premise. This is far from the ruined worlds of those games or Wasteland; it's a realistic fantasy world inspired by Middle Eastern culture and architecture. This is a world on the brink of leaving the mystic ways behind and entering a industrial and technological revolution. The deserts and sprawling cities hold many opportunities to build your skills and more importantly build your reputation and define your character. Stealth and taking enemies by surprise to gain an advantage is just as important as smart dialogue choices. The combat promises to be equally realistic, casting you not as an all-powerful warrior, but a skilled combatant who can easily be overpowered if cornered and outnumbered. NPC members have beliefs of their own and may even reject your orders if it clashes with their values. And they will remember your action and decisions, so your reputation and the factions you support will play a critical role in the missions you can undertake and their outcomes.
Based on the prototype demo, Zaharia has great promise and potential. While I enjoyed the gameplay, it was the atmosphere and world that was most intriguing and it's a world I'd like to see more of. You can learn more about Zaharia here, vote for it on Steam Greenlight, and support the game on Kickstarter.

Title: Classroom Aquatic
Developer: Sunken Places
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Late 2014
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Classroom Aquatic is the world's first trivia/stealth game. Players play as an exchange student in a school of dolphins, taking a test that the player is in no way prepared for. They must resort to cheating in order to pass it!

Classroom Aquatic is quite literally about a school of dolphins. Basing a game on a pun might seem like it would have little substance for an experience, but Classroom Aquatic takes the premise and runs with it, promising to deliver a weird game with a unique core mechanic. The framework is that you're a human exchange student in this submerged school and to pass the absurdly hard exams, you need to cheat. Playing the demo (available here), I was impressed by the atmosphere and how fun the gameplay was. The surreal tone adds to the enjoyment, but the game itself has a solid foundation to build on, as you cautiously peek at your fellow students' tests, watch the teacher's path for the best moment to glance over, and time distractions with thrown erasers. While I only played with a mouse and keyboard, I imagine the experience would be even more immersive and absurd with an Oculus Rift.
 While the demo is understandably bare bones, the developers plan to build on the gameplay with more environments and game modes, such a Detention where you must prevent other students from cheating off your test by tricking them with wrong answers or Science Fair which tasks you with sabotaging other science projects without getting caught. You can learn more about Classroom Aquatic at the official site, vote for it on Steam Greenlight, and support the project on Kickstarter.

Title: Retrobooster
Developer: Really Slick
Platforms: PC, Linux
Price: $17.99
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Cave flyers have been around for years and the focus on moving through tight spaces while also avoiding objects and enemies have proved to be a popular framework for challenging games. Now Retrobooster promises to take the genre to new heights with modern visuals and physics and the game absolutely succeeds.
What stood out the most, from the moment I started playing Retrobooster, was the visuals. Now in terms of textures and other details, Retrobooster isn't exactly photorealistic, but once the bullets start flying and enemies start exploding, the game is an absolute visual treat. The particle effects, the subtle lighting playing across walls and ceilings, the realistic smoke of your thrusters against surfaces, it turns the relatively simple gameplay of evasion, maneuvering, and shooting into an intense frenzy of light and color and particles that's a joy to watch in motion. However, Retrobooster is more than a visually stylish experience; it's a challenging action game that requires skill to survive. Learning how to control your thrusters, momentum, and inertia takes practice, but once you get past the learning curve, you'll be able to weave through the dangerous traps and thread between projectiles with ease. The level design shines here, from the deadly crushers and moving gears to the claustrophobic caves and tight mazes of metal and stone to precisely move through, all while evading bullets and firing your own.
If surviving alone is too much of a challenge, you can also team up co-operatively or destroy each other in split-screen deathmatch with up to four players. But solo or co-operatively, Retrobooster is an impressive visual experience that is as fun and challenging as it looks. You can learn more about Retrobooster and purchase it from the developer's site and Desura, and vote for the game on Steam Greenlight.

Title: NeonXSZ
Developer: Intravenous Software
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Price: $19.99 (currently $9.99, 50% off) 
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If there was one word to describe NeonXSZ, it would be "ambitious." A blend of Descent-style ship combat, copious loot, procedural environments, and a wide range of weapons and parts to equip, NeonXSZ is a fast stylish expansive action game.
From the get-go, NeonXSZ separates itself from other games. It's not the kind of experience that will hold your hand and guide you with missions and objective arrows. Instead you're let loose in this large word of transport tunnels, cityscapes, and other open areas, with only a few tutorial messages and then free reign to go and do as you please. It's a game built on exploration, in both exploring the world to find missions and enemies to fight and exploring the mechanics. I found this worked very much in the game's favor, especially with my favorite feature: the cockpit.
Given the perspective and mechanics, the cockpit plays a huge role in combat and gameplay, and the fully  interactive dashboard adds a great sense of immersion/ very screen has a function and it's fully interactive. You can rotate the digital map in the corner screen and change the secondary camera screen from front to rear view. Locking on to a target display their information on another screen. You can choose and change your weapons by selecting the icons on the center console. But beyond that integral aspect, the overall gameplay impresses as well. While the movement and controls take time to learn and adjust to, soon it'll be possible to easily skim through tight spaces or fly forward and let your momentum carry you while firing at enemies behind you. The gameplay is fast-paced and fluid, from close dogfights to distant firefights where using your displays and targeting systems is a must to blow away your enemies. The wealth of weaponry and equipment - drones, teleportation, shields, homing missiles, and more - and ship types allow you to craft the kind of playstyle.
NeonXSZ is an expansive game that really opens up once you take time to learn its system and mechanics, and should appeal to fans of deep customization, exploration, and fast fluid combat. The game is still in alpha, but is extremely playable and more content is on the horizon, such as the Combat Arenas and new areas that will be added in the next update. You can purchase NeonXSZ on Desura and vote for it on Steam Greenlight.

Title: Bosses Forever 2.Bro
Developer: TOO DX
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, Browser
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Bosses Forever is stuck in Greenlight hell and that's a damn shame. I first learned about the game today, thanks to the Monthly Showcase over on r/gamedev, and it only took one playthrough to see that Bosses Forever is a fun charming challenging game that deserves far more attention.