Screenshot Saturday is always a busy time but in the weeks between the Game Developers Conference and PAX East everyone has something to show. Whether the developers were at one show or the other, or both for the ones with crazy iron stamina, everyone is incredibly busy and that means there's plenty to find. This feature trims down the hundreds of entries each week into a manageable dozen, which is both convenient in terms of size but also restrictive in that there are too many good entries to cover, so it's always worth a once-over on the #screenshotsaturday tag to see what else might be waiting to be discovered.
AstraBlitz- Top-view free-roaming space shooter with a nice voxel engine to make everything shatter properly when decimated by lasers. Build your ship from parts and take it out into the endless universe to see what kind of trouble you can get into. Good, bad, chaotic, or as peaceful a space tourist as you can manage while still getting all the goodies, it's your call.
Gigabuster- Megaman-like run & gun. The space pirate has all the fancy skills she'll need to to take out an army of robo-baddies in the service of a space-monopoly- Wall-jump, air-dash, double-jump, and plenty of weapons that sometimes have unexpected side-effects.
Atlas: Groundbreaking Adventures- Grab a hammer and smite the ground to send monsters flying all over the map. What story there may be is still unrevealed but there's a demo you can get by following the instructions here, and it shows off gameplay with a hero who feels overpowered except for all the dying.
Cheonsa- Action-FPS with level and enemy design more like a mascot-platformer than the usual tough-guy setting. That doesn't mean it's easy, especially seeing as enemies soak up a good amount of damage before going down and aren't shy about shooting back. It's very early but the demo linked above is worth a look.
Avoyd- Six degrees of freedom shooter still very early in development but capable of making some very nice blue-sky environments to tool around in. The current demo lets you generate areas and fly about, but there’s a lot more on the way eventually.
Moonscars- Got nothin’. Some kind of sword-action game in a very early state, and the animation roughs look nice and kinetic. At the moment it’s just got a lovely scene of a peaceful moment in a catacomb that’s probably going to be ruined by something big, ugly, and mean any second now.
Magic Potion Millionaire- Platforming, traps, spelunking, and boss fights. The rest of the information on this is in Japanese, but the gameplay is universal and looking very nice.
Planet Alpha- A lost spaceman explores an alien world in a fully 3D but still side-scrolling adventure, manipulating daylight to wake up the world or put it back asleep. Surviving a planet covered with the kind of behemoths roaming Planet Alpha can't be easy, but it beats the alternative.
Eagle Island- A young man and his owl companion explore the ruins of Eagle Island, working together to survive its hazards in a randomized metroidvania adventure. If the owl was just a little bit more intellectually curious it could probably handle the entire adventure on its own. Demo over at itch.io.
Ascendance- Lovely exploration first-person platformer where you climb to the gems that transform the level, creating new areas and new gems to build even more areas to explore. There are no enemies to fight or avoid and no time limit to rush against, but rather a large area of interconnected paths extending into the sky, waiting to be created by a willing explorer.
Dawn of the Celestialpod- Alien tech has mutated a starfish into a space-squid, which seems biologically unlikely but also quite handy. Starfish just hang out on things, while squid are much more capable at rescuing their captured people thanks to long grabby tentacles. They're usually not known for destroying spaceships, though.
Atomic Heist- Grab the core, escape the space station, shoot everything in your path but mind the ammo-count, and move quickly because the core is radioactive. No pressure, though. Death is expected, but like any good roguelike you can regroup and try again with new upgrades, once you can afford them.
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Hexeosis- Just stare and let it flow and everything will be fine for a while.