Vinrafel Gaming

Waves crash against a small mound of rock, alone in the dark ocean. With no memory of your past, you enter a strange spire. Vaporum is a dungeon crawler that was developed by Fatbot Games where you explore a steampunk citadel to discover your past. It follows the formula of games like Legend of Grimrock with some significant deviations. While it is not revolutionary in any way, Vaporum does a good job of filling an otherwise fairly scant genre. The gameplay is that of a real-time dungeon crawler, like the aforementioned Legend of Grimrock . The player controls a character with a variety of stats and equipment with which you solve puzzles and fight enemies. Movement and combat are both tile based with the player and any other entity occupying a single tile. The basic elements of Vaporum’s gameplay are nothing particularly new. If you’ve played anything remotely similar then you’ll be familiar with the basics. However, there are some deviations from the basic formula. For on...

You were created with a single purpose: to create paperclips. Now you will fulfill that purpose. Universal Paperclips is a browser-based clicker game from the developer Frank Lantz where you play as an A.I. that makes paperclips. It is a cautionary tale about the dangers of even the most mundane of true artificial intelligences. Even as one who does not generally enjoy clickers, this piece kept my attention and was certainly a very interesting work. The gameplay is mostly what you would expect from a clicker. You press a button to get paperclips and, over time, upgrade your ability to create them. There is more to do, but to reveal that would be serious spoilers. Let’s just say that you radically change how paperclips are created throughout the game. What is really interesting about this game is how your task unfolds over time. It is a cautionary tale about the dangers of simple instructions when one is dealing with an artificial intelligence. In fact, this scenario finds its ori...

In a deep cavern, a robot awakens. With no knowledge of your past you must fight your way out of this strange and living compound. Cogmind is a recently released rouge-like game. It harkens back to the original Rogue with it’s simplified graphics, but uses more advanced AI to create a more living world within the game. The gameplay of Cogmind is a pretty basic tile-based dungeon crawler. The player can explore the world in a turn-based manner, revealing the map as you go. Combat also works on a turn-based system wherein the player can move or shoot their various weapons. Really, the basic mechanics aren’t any more complicated than that. The only real variation in gameplay occurs in the power system. Each element that the player can equip to their robot requires that they use energy to run. Without enough power the player won’t be able to shoot, making them useless in combat. There’s little more to it then any mana system you might find in other games. Now, one of the hallmar...

A strange creature passes by your window. Now it is your job to find the five fruits of legend. Gorogoa is a new puzzle game that combines brilliant artwork with a set of puzzle mechanics that deviates from any other game I’ve seen. The art alone would sell the game, with it’s attention to detail and well maintained aesthetic. With the inclusion of the unusual mechanics, this game ends up being a great gem. Gameplay occurs in a four square grid. The player has up to four different images that they can move through, interact with objects therein, and move from one grid space to another. Where this gameplay really shines is in its use of perspective. Sometimes, the player can pull one image away to find another, completely new image beneath it with a doorway or window of the previous image left behind. In addition, blank spaces in images can be overlapped with other images to change it and effect the world. Combining all of these mechanics together creates a puzzle game where the world...

You’ve been strapped into a computer program. There’s no telling what it’s for or why you are there. Your best bet is to try to figure this all out. W4RR-i/o-RS is a strange little game that popped up on Steam recently. While the game itself is rather uninteresting, the concept behind it is intriguing. It claims to place the player in the position of a futuristic person who is running a computer program. You are given all of the information they are and left to figure out whatever you can. Everything in the game occurs in a single spreadsheet. The player is given eight warrior robots of some sort with a few stats for each. It is then the player’s job to have them battle it out. This is done through one of three controls the player can use. They can specifically have one robot fight another, they can cause a random battle to occur, or they can move forward in time. If this were all that there was to the game, then this would be a rather pitiful piece. There is really very little...

I like strange indie games with weird mechanics and vague stories. The thing is, such games need to have some point to them. Over the Moonlight is a small, free to play game that is about making art… I think. Perhaps this was a tech demo or some school project, but the developer seems to have made a game but forgot to give it any point at all. The gameplay of Over the Moonlight is very simple. The player finds an island with some plants and a blank white screen. You pick up the plants, draw something (literally anything) on the screen, and then get on a boat and go to another island. That’s it. There’s no grand goal or even any form of puzzle involved. In essence, Over the Moonlight is a rudimentary MS Paint with a ridiculously over the top user interface. Honestly, there’s not much more to say. You paint and then have a strange encounter with the moon and the game closes itself. There could be something about art allowing one to progress from one spot in life to the next o...

On the face of it, this game is just a really elaborate excuse to practice math problems. However, there is a more insidious side to the design of this game that is not immediately apparent. Bryan Audley’s Numbers is a recent puzzle game developed by SUNSET Games wherein the player is trapped in a labyrinth that they must escape. To do so, they must use their knowledge of mathematics. Bryan Audley's Numbers screenshot The entire game consists of one basic mechanic. The player opens a door to another chamber, reads the three digit code for the chamber, and if any of the three numbers are prime then the room will kill them. That’s it. You continue to travel between rooms, occasionally getting levels that only tell you some obvious mathematical fact like “all even numbers are not primes.” As such, this game is really something that one could give to a kid who is learning to factor numbers in school. Otherwise, write these few lines of code in Java and you can go forever wit...