Screenshot Saturday Featuring Tempest 4000, Heart Forth Alicia, Fe, Many More

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There’s no end to Screenshot Saturday, and it doesn’t stop for fire, floods, hurricanes, or gloom of night. Every week is a continuous parade of new games and returning favorites, parading one after the other in a semi-endless stream showing off the work of the week.  This feature knocks that list down to roughly a dozen-ish, although that number is subject to grow depending on the week.  Even so it’s only a fraction of the talent on display, so it’s never a bad plan to head over to Twitter and page down the hashtag’s page as far as your browser can stand before it gets bogged down by all the animations.  “Screenshot” is kind of a flexible word, and the number of still images is fairly small.

Tempest 4000-  The fourth game in the Tempest series, and the third by Llamasoft.  This is the PC version running in 4K at 60FPS (minimum) and it’s a thing of beauty.  The video is hosted off Periscope, and it’s got Jeff Minter chatting with people about the game in the background.

Pathway: In Search of the Lost Element- Tactical RGP with a 1930s Indiana Jones setting. That means a ragtag band of adventurers exploring ancient ruins while fighting the Nazis looting them for the mysterious relics and the newly-discovered element Valkyrium-500. Super-pulpy.

Unnamed- Some type of overhead dogfighting game with killer smoke trails and a nicely dynamic kill-cam.

Heart Forth Alicia- Metroidvania about a young witch on a quest to see as much hand-animated pixel art and as many lushly detailed backgrounds as possible. There’s also a bit of world-saving in there as well, but that’s more a secondary objective.

My Time at Portia- Harvest Moon-style game where you move into an idyllic town and become a craftsman, building things for the townspeople and expanding your abilities as you gain experience. It’s got a Kickstarter and a demo either on Steam or at itchi.io, and both campaign and demo are well worth a look.

Unnamed- Bullet-hell shooter that couldn’t be more bullet-hell if it came with fire & brimstone projectiles. This one is actually being made in Finland rather than Japan, complete with its basis being Finnish mythology.

Gravastar- JRPG-style adventure where the combat is turn-based but also modeled after arcade fighting games. Kind of like Sabin in Final Fantasy VI/III, except with the whole party having their own unique combat abilities. The reason the character goes blue in this animation is due to the character art being a work in progress.

Beacon- Action-RPG roguelike where you’re stranded on a planet and each new clone inherits a genetic bonus from the creatures her defeated predecessor eradicated on her attempt to make the next checkpoint. The art has a nice, clean style to it, and you can pull off some sharp maneuvers if you’ve got a good sense for the level layout.

Structure- Shooter taking place in the heart of a massive space-thingy.  This one is a bit short on details aside from an outline of the plot, but the silhouetted 3D art that’s almost looks like parallax 2D gives it a distinct and interesting visual style.

Unnamed- Seaman, what have they done to you!?

It’s Full of Sparks- Platformer where you’re not only a firecracker but also have the lifespan of one, and the fuse is burning down fast. Color filters make obstacles briefly disappear, opening the path forward, and if you blow it the next life is an all new firecracker because the one you were playing as is gone forever with its life wasted. No pressure, though.

Valfaris- After Valfaris disappeared from orbit only to reappear years later infused with darkness, citadel-native Therion decides it’s time for a violent homecoming. Interstellar evil is unquestionably a problem, but it’s one that can be solved with a flamethrower.

Undermine- You’re a peasant, not a hero, so pulling things out of a mine is much harder than it would be for someone better armed.  With hammer in hand and pure determination you might just get lucky and survive the mine’s dangers.  This particular image doesn’t seem likely to be found in-game, seeing as it’s the sprite for the ore pickup layered hundreds of times while spinning about to create a hypnotic semi-3D effect.

Fugl- Fly free through the world as a bird, or at least as a winged creature that would normally be a bird but sometimes is a goat instead. The bird warps into the shape of whatever it flies near, and sometimes that’s a normally non-aerodynamic critter.

Fe- Find the secrets of a deep forest filled with creatures both normal and mystical, where you go from a guest to an inhabitant as you learn its wordless ways.

Bonus Image-

Rot Purge- Generally when saying something non-obvious like a theme or undertone is being pointed to with a glowing neon sign it’s metaphoric hyperbole. But not always.