Screenshot Saturday Featuring Beat Saber, Mount Your Friends 3D, Many More

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The end of the week is best finished off with something new, or at least new to us.  Screenshot Saturday is what happens when hundreds of developers take the week’s work and tag it up for everyone to see, showing off progress in the form of pictures, .gifs, videos, and sometimes even music or code.  It really depends on what’s been accomplished.  This feature pulls a dozen images (sometimes more, never less) plus a bonus from the pile as a tiny little slice of everything that’s available, trimming it down to a manageable size while still leaving at least two to three more features-worth sitting unrecognized, because there’s only so much that fits in a single article.  There’s a lot to see and most of it’s animated, so take a look and don’t forget to let the images move to see all they’ve got to show.

Skychasers-  *Boom*crunch*BOOM*screenshake!*boom*  .gifs have no sound but sometimes you can hear it anyway.  Fly the open skies and shoot all the things, because that’s what they’re in the air for.  Also, they fire back, and that’s just plain rude.

Safe Not Safe-  Infiltrate the base, find the safe, crack it open, and escape with as many of your internal organs un-perforated by bullets as possible.  Go in quiet or loud using all the tools you can find, but the open, procedurally-generated levels are designed to keep their contents secure from marauders.  Closed beta signups available at the game’s Steam page.

Libraryland-  Libraries are supposed to be quiet and peaceful.  If that requires excessive levels of security enforces by a librarian ejecting patrons using the razor-sharp claws of her flying book like some kind of authoritarian bibliophilic Baba Yaga then at least those trying to get actual work done get a show with their research.

Beat Saber- You’ll want the audio turned on for this one.  While there are plenty of VR music games that use the “beat on notes as they stream toward you” mechanic, Beat Saber’s soundtrack and light sabers make it stand out from the crowd.  There’s probably a limit to how much techno-neon a game can handle before overload but that limit has yet to be discovered.

Moebial- There is absolutely no information on this game other than “inspired by Moebius”, which, with his career, really could mean anything. Maybe somebody will drink his koks without frapping it. Maybe you’ll get killed four pages in as what looked like an epic fantasy-adventure comes to a premature end. Whatever it is, though, it’s got the landscape down pat.

Suffer- The effects are a bit fancier than the Build engine had available but the rest looks like an HD Duke Nukem mod. This is a good thing and worthy of finding out more, when more becomes available.

Octahedron- Shiny! Jump through the neon level creating platforms under your feet that also shoot a helpful laser straight down, useful for electrifying the level and taking out disco-bats. It’s not quite so helpful if you do it right in the path of a horizontal bullet, though.

Venineth- Roll out and explore lost sci-fi worlds as a giant puzzle-solving pinball. The open levels contain sprawling vistas and ancient machinery just waiting for a steel ball to bring it back to life in a series of physics puzzles mixed with a bit of platforming.

https://twitter.com/jove_dev/status/954866897572462593

Unnamed- Not actually Desert Strike but one of the nicer-looking takes on reviving its gameplay.  Also, it’s very hard to write about a tribute to EA’s forgotten legacy without taking a swipe at what the company has become.

Violet Cycle- Isometric melee combat on destructible terrain.  The purple warrior’s primary attack is a dash-strike that lands with a solid hit, and you’ll need to work timing and positioning to get the most out of it.  Highly kinetic and thumpy.

Orphan-  After the invasion there’s not much left of the world, but the boy is determined to survive its hazards.  While there’s an immediate resemblance to Limbo the game has more than enough to set it apart, including gunplay and the boy’s ability to soak up a little laser fire.  He’s surprisingly tough for his age.

Pepper Grinder-  Small girl, big drill.  Pepper tunnels through the earth like a fish through water, and her drill can also be used to fire up machines scattered through the level.  It looks like this area has a shortcut, though, because that final cannon-shot looks like it would normally have gone to the left rather than up, leaving a chunk of level unexplored.

Bonus Image

Mount Your Friends 3D- At first I was thinking “the purpose of underwear is to make sure one’s bits don’t do that”, and then I understood exactly what every woman seeing boob-jiggle feels, except this is only one game instead of thousands.