Screenshot Saturday Featuring Little Bug, Morphies Law, Many More

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Screenshot Saturday is a busy day.  So busy, in fact, that this week the feature is divided into two, which explains why half of these are by me and the rest by super-helpful co-writer Kyle LeClair.  Kyle got the latter half of the day, I did the earlier part, and between the two of us it’s a little bit bigger than normal.  So, short version for those who are new to the shindig- Every week developers show off progress made towards creating whatever it is they’re working on using the Screenshot Saturday hashtag on Twitter.  It’s a great way to see new things you’d never heard of before or catch up on the progress of those you’re following.  It’s also hundreds and hundreds of images long, so this feature trims it down to a manageable dozen-ish, although frequently it grows beyond that limit.  Most images move and they don’t do it automatically, so make sure to give everything a helpful click to see all it’s got to offer.

Kyle’s Half

https://twitter.com/BelaMessex/status/957344421653041153

Little Bug- A 2D platformer about a little girl having to navigate her way home through a surreal world after getting lost in the woods. It’s pretty inevitable that a game with this sort of setup has some sort of horror lurking within it, but exactly what kind of horror can cause an entire half of a liquor store to disappear in an instant? Something tells us we don’t want to know…

Bendy in Nightmare Run- Much like Five Nights at Freddy’s, Bendy and The Ink Machine is a horror game that has already received so much attention that the developers are now branching out in different directions for the franchise. So why not have the creepy cartoon imp star in a runner game? It still looks like it can be fun, even if there inevitably ends up being some disturbing lore behind it.

FutureGrind- If you’re the type of player who’s been waiting for the second coming of Uniracers, then FutureGrind may be for you. A stunt racer coated in neon where you ride a tricked out cycle that has to have the wheel match the color of the track, you can easily get a taste here of how intense things can easily get with a unique hook like this.

https://twitter.com/BonekoTheGame/status/957353346557530113

Boneko- A retro platformer where you play a girl attempting to rescue her friends from an abandoned mansion, along with her cat that has been turned into a hat that give her magical powers, because video games. And the clip here may be testing out the dialogue boxes, but the real star is the mansion itself, which is incredibly detailed. We can’t wait to explore that even further…

Baba Is You- Currently in the running for the grand prize at the 2018 Independent Games Festival, Baba Is You is a puzzle game where you actually change the rules my moving things around, shown so far with minimalist graphics. That said, the world map here doesn’t look cluttered at all, and looks like a perfect screen for a game such as this.

Morphies Law- This competitive FPS has a unique gimmick where each shot landing on an opponent’s limb causes your own limb to increase in size, altering things significantly and setting things up for tons of unique moves. Though really, “Fidget Spinner” is much too last year. It’s all about Ugandan Knuckles know, so maybe see about a moves that uses more fists.

Chuchel- The latest adventure game from Samorost and Machinarium developers Amanita Design, Chuchel is a unique and striking piece of work with a stunning art style, and will no doubt have another fun story to experience…but really, let’s experience this one scene out of context and just ponder exactly how an excited creature with a cherry and a one-eyed skeleton relate to each other.

James’ Half

Vavio- Everyone likes music, everyone likes bullets, so a musical bullet hell makes perfect sense. Those zippy movements are very clearly mouse control, so it seems likely the ship shoots by auto-fire as well. As Jeff Minter has said- why would you ever stop firing?

Unnamed- The ice flow is melting and you need to get your fellow penguins to a more stable home by acting like a little jerk in a feathery tuxedo. Really, it’s for the penguin colony’s own good.

Puppy Chef Academy- Learn to cook in VR. While smell, feel, and experience in gauging cooking time don’t really work in VR, it’s still good to get moving in the kitchen and get your VR Cooking Mama on.  Single-level demo over here.

Anew: The Distant Light- Pew-Pew-Pew *SMACK!* Giant robots make everything better. Most of the time, though, you’re a young person in a strange alien world much too far from home, alone and carrying still stuck with the fate of the Earth riding on your actions.  At least the planet is a beautiful sci-fi environment even if its inhabitants are mostly hostile.

https://twitter.com/PLANETALPHA/status/957287135798874112

Planet Alpha-  Side-scrolling action/adventure on a strange alien planet.  While the backgrounds look like a wonderful place to explore, with giant creatures inhabiting the caves, jungles, and mountains of this unique planet, we’ll just have to find a way to be happy with platforming and puzzles.  It’s a fair trade.

Unnamed- Computers do exactly what you tell them to do while rendering no judgment. Sometimes the results are not quite as expected. Sometimes all you can do is look around nonplussed as infinite eggshells rain down over the landscape.

Carried Away: Winter Sports- Ok, now that’s just a brilliant little mashup. The thing about mountains is they don’t come predesigned for the perfect run, so fusing bridge-building mechanics onto the slopes so you can max out the big-air potential of each jump (or smush your winter athlete into a cliff) sounds like instant entertainment.

Badass Hero- Twin-stick semi-roguelike action platformer/shooter.  Shoot fast, hit enemies that get to close, build the combo to generate a shield, and try not to die too badly along the way.  When you put all the moves together the game actually lives up to its name.

Hellbreaker- Just posting this one to say the developers are bad people who do bad things and should feel bad about it. Which isn’t the same thing as saying they should stop.

Bonus Image

Blazing Legion- She’s walked these streets, a loaded six-string on her back. She plays for keeps, because she might not make it back. She’s been everywhere (Oh yeah!) standing tall. She’s seen a million faces, and rocked ’em all!