[General Discussion] Amateur games

Here's a few I've enjoyed quite a bit.

Apprentice and Apprentice II: The Knight's Move



A couple of AGS adventure games that are really good per AGS standards, featuring some beautiful graphics and music. You guide a character called Mortimer Pibsworth on his path to wizard-hood... by going on errands and doing a bunch of meaningless tasks for your mentor? Fun game with a nice story that continues in its sequel. And the voice acting is pretty good.



Eternal Daughter



A Metroidvania kind of game. Cute pixel graphics, fun gameplay, and secrets abound.



Guardian of Paradise



Cool action-RPG. The puzzles were quite reminiscent to the ones found in Beyond Oasis/Story of Thor, where you have to use different elementlal spirits to open doors/break boulders/get past stuff.



La-Mulana



I had to include this beauty, or my list would be amiss. A very neat platformer/exploration game, that shares a lot of similarities with an MSX game called The Maze of Galious. You are archaeologist Lemeza Kosugi and you have to explore the ruins of La-Mulana, in hopes of finding its lost treasure. And also your father, who had a headstart and has begun exploring the ruins ahead of you. You find tons of items in each of the different areas, some their use aren't apparent at first (like in MoG). To add to the fun, Lemeza carries a handy MSX laptop, which can be used in a variety of ways. You can also find a lot of ROMs for the MSX, and combining them can yield some useful effects. You can even play an extra game, or two. Play (or endure, more likely) La-Mulana only if you want a real challenge, as some of the puzzles and traps contained therein can be quite frustating/ridiculous. In a cool, retro kind of way.



Lyle in Cube Sector



Another fun Metroidvania kind of thing. Actually, the game's look and feel just screams Metroid. Guide Lyle through the Cube Sector and rescue his cat, which has been "stolened", as the story goes. You attack enemies by making & throwing cubes at them. You could also use cubes to jump higher, get to unreachable ledges, and even fly. This cube-making system was quite cool, and becomes intuitive once you get the hang of it. The chip music isn't orginal, but it was nice. I especially liked the track at the very beginning of the game. Another area had a Modern Talking song.



No-Action Jackson



Another quality, quality AGS game. Play this now if you're a fan of The Day of the Tentacle.



rRootage



A very nice shmup that has you battling a wave of boss battleships. The are four different modes of play; in one mode, you could change the color of your ship to absorb same-colored bullets and deflect them back at the boss. In another, you could graze bullets to fill up a bar which grants you temporary invincibilty. The game features some cool vector graphics, and the music's pretty good, too. It's an improvement over Noiz2sa, another game from Kenta Cho (the games' developer) which I've also liked. Also check out more of his shmups, like TUMIKI Fighters and Torus Trooper.



Warning Forever



Another shmup boss-fest, similar to rRootage, but this one has a timer, so you have to work fast and blast the boss ships faster. Each boss you defeat adds seconds to the timer, and another pops right in with more destructible appendages, guns, lasers, etc. Pretty fun stuff.



Zep's Dreamland



You have to help this Zep guy get to the exit by building all kinds of blocks to navigate through the different terrains and obstacles (lke building restriction block that prevent you from building certain blocks) throughout the levels. Good puzzler. Pretty easy to boot, and only 40 levels-long.

I did. Plays very similarly to Zep's Dreamland, and seems harder. It also has this Lode Runner element, where you can dig through floors and stuff. Pretty cool, thanks!

I also went through Zep's tutorial to learn the basics again, and noticed that my description of the game was pretty messed up, as I haven't touched it in a long time. So, that's fixed.