Indie News Roundup July 24 2016 Feature

July 18 to 24 Indie News Roundup

BLOC

BLOC will be available in the United States, Canada, Mexico,  and Brazil on July 28 on the Wii U eShop. Pricing is set at $2.99.

Here’s some preview footage by Twinworld Game Reviews:

Gotta Protectors

Gotta Protectors was originally planned for release on the North American 3DS eShop last Thursday, but the game was delayed. It should now be available on July 28.

Here’s the message by Ancient:

Collateral Thinking

collateral-thinkingAstrosaurus Games is currently preparing for the release of Collateral Thinking “an arcade-style action platformer for Wii U that’s all about beating up alien ghosts, recovering blueprints, and rescuing billionaires on a tight schedule (and budget)”.

The team says Collateral Thinking will be out within “the next week or two” in North America, while Europe and Australia will get the game on August 18. When it’s available, it will cost $2.99 on the eShop.

The indie developer has shared the following overview of the game:

“Collateral Thinking is an arcade-style action platformer for Wii U that’s all about beating up alien ghosts, recovering blueprints, and rescuing billionaires on a tight schedule (and budget). Each level is a self-contained screen that gives you one of three specific tasks to complete in 30 short seconds – to “Avoid” all the hazards, to “Bust” all the enemies, or to “Collect” all the blueprints. These quickfire challenges force you to quickly survey your surroundings and then jump into action in order to progress through the 100+ floors and net as much cash as possible along the way. The game is meant to blend the core floor-climbing, obstacle negotiation of Donkey Kong with the original Mario Bros.’ single-screen enemy hunting, and then crank up the speed, intensity, and absurdity while adding elements of Wario Ware’s unpredictability and impulsivity to the mix.”

Letter Quest Remastered

Digerati and Bacon Bandit Games have shared that Europe will be getting Letter Quest Remastered on July 28 for €9.99.

Letter Quest Remastered is a game that involves players spelling out words to battle monsters and survive. It’s a turn-based RPG featuring upgrades, books, special items, potions, and more.

You can find an overview and trailer of the game below:

Spell words to battle monsters, earn gems and use them to purchase upgrades, books, special items, potions, and much more! Letter Quest is a game about using your linguistic skills to survive. It’s a turn-based RPG featuring high-res artwork, clever wordplay, and a great soundtrack.

Letter Quest, Remastered

New ENDLESS MODE – choose your favorite background art, music, character, weapon, and letter tiles and see how long you can survive!

8 more achievements, now 60 in total!

Fully animated enemies and shopkeepers

A brand new soundtrack in addition to the original music – choose your favorite!

Tooltips during battle

Fully rewritten in Unity, allowing for a smoother experience, better resolution options, higher-quality music and sound effects, and much more!

70 quests to complete

A built-in dictionary of over 192,000 English words that is frequently updated

Higanbana no Saku Yoru ni, The House in Fata Morgana, World End Economica Episode 1

The latest issue of Famitsu revealed that FuRyu has a new label called Kataruhito.

The goal of this project is to convert visual novels made by indies which originally came out for the PC and bring them to the 3DS.

The initial lineup includes the following three visual novels:

Higanbana no Saku Yoru ni (The Unforgiving Flowers Blossom in the Dead of Night)
Available on July 27 for 800 yen
Written by Ryukishi07 of 07th Expansion

The House in Fata Morgana
Available on July 27 for 950 yen
A long visual novel by Novectale

World End Economica Episode 1
Available on July 27 for 800 yen
Created by Isuna Hasekura, of Spice and Wolf fame

Tumblestone

tumblestone-boxartTumblestone is not out on the eShop, but may seem a bit pricey to some, since the game costs $24.99. A similarly priced retail version is also coming out soon, on August 30.

The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild was asked during a Reddit AMA how the price was determined. Regarding this, the studio explained:

“Because of the amount of content and quality of Tumblestone, we felt that $24.99 was a steal. In fact, we were discussing $29.99 for quite some time but decided to go with $24.99 at the last minute. It’s unfortunate that other games in the genre get stale as you play through their story modes, but Tumblestone is specifically designed not to, and here’s how. Each of the 12 worlds consists of 30 levels. Each world has its own modifier that significantly changes the way you think about the puzzles. They aren’t just some new obstacle that you have to deal with – sometimes they’re complete rule changes that you can feel yourself using a different part of your brain, and just as you think you’ve mastered one modifier, the next one will completely trip you up, making the next set of 30 levels feel like an entirely new challenge. Within a world, levels 10 and 20 are special “midpoint” levels, which give you a set of randomly generated puzzles that you need to solve in a time limit without making a mistake, and the 30th level is a boss battle against an AI (with all of these midpoint and boss battle levels using that world’s modifier). What’s more, is that these modifiers start mixing together (in over 400 different combinations), and just like a single modifier being introduced completely changed the way you think about solving the puzzles, mixing them has the same effect. All of the core levels of the story more were hand-designed over years of iteration to be interesting and challenging. And that’s just the story mode. Tumblestone also has three arcade modes that a huge percentage of players have spent dozens of hours on. Not to mention the local and online multiplayer that you’ll want to come back to indefinitely. There’s more unique, engaging content in Tumblestone than a JRPG, and with so much to do in the game, there’s no way you’re going to get bored if you’re a fan of classical puzzle games in the genre.”

The team also shared in the AMA it is “planning on bringing all of our future games to Nintendo consoles”. For now, they are working on porting Tumblestone to additional platforms, including New 3DS. When it comes to NX support, the team says “It’s too soon to say”.

Shift DX

After about an year of being announced, Shift DX is now being quietly released on the Japanese 3DS eShop by COSEN.

Taking that into account, it’ll probably release rather soon in the west.

Meanwhile, you can take a look at the Japanese trailer below:

Wind-up Knight 2

Wind-up Knight 2 is now out on the 3DS eShop as a New 3DS title.

You can watch the launch trailer below:

Gameplay Footage

Below you can find gameplay footage of various indie games that were recently released on the Wii U eShop.

Buddy & Me: Dream Edition

Dragon Skills