Tiny & Big in Grandpa's Leftovers

Gaming Genres: Physics, Action-Adventure, Platformer, Sandbox
Story Genres:  Comedic, Adventure, Fantasy, Science Fiction
Graphical Styles: 3D, Cartoon, High Resolution
Platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
Pricing Model: Pay $
Developer(s): Black Pants Game Studio
Publisher(s): Black Pants Game Studio
Initial Release Date: June 19, 2012
Website(s): Homepage, Steam, GOG, Boxed Version, Gamersgate
Description:
Set in land where common physics apply, but everything else looks different. You are Tiny, a technophile guy with a ray cutter, a gripping-device and a fine attitude towards the world. But now your nemesis Big again stole the only heritage your grandpa left you: A nice pair of white, fine rib underpants! And he‘s surely up to no good, why else would he take them to that forsaken desert, where no one goes! So load up that self-made raygun and rope device (snitched from the local hardware store) and take your annoying and jabbering backpack to accompany you. It‘s always been good use to your gramps. Besides, the robot taxi to the desert is waiting! Run, jump, drag, shove and laser your way through the ultimately ancient scenery, gain back those underpants!

Features:

• Unique Hand-drawn Look – all hand-crafted textures, primo Hatch Shading, and dynamic Sound Words puts you right into a graphic novel!
• Creative Jump ‘n’ Slice Gameplay – use grappling rope, rocket science and laser surgery to slice the whole world, overcoming all obstacles in your very own way. Enjoy unlimited slicing freedom and unique sandbox gameplay!
• Better than Life Physics – experience believable physics in a completely destructible, immersive environment that has been built to be cleaved into beautiful, multi-core-simulated pieces of art!
• Character-driven Story Line – follow Tiny into a weird and humorous story drenched in peculiarity: get back grandpa’s underpants, by all means necessary. Defeat Big, your old arch enemy in the process!
• Buckets full of Indie Music – collect more than 15 songs from hardly known but genuine indie bands. Discover new songs from the underground, and show off to your friends!

Opinion:
A great game, made very unique by the use of the cutting tool, allowing you to cut almost anything in the world. It is a rather short game, but still does drag a little near the end, as it somewhat of a one trick pony.

Images (+):

Related Media (+):

• Release Trailer
• Pre-order Teaser
• Trailer
• Kick it Tiny Trailer
• Levels Showcase Trailer
• IndieDB Trailer
• Final Alpha Trailer
• Trailer
• Cutscene Trailer
• Up That Mountain Trailer

Hints/Tips/Walkthrough (+):

• Video Walkthrough

Indieness: Indie
Play?: Should Play

Avencast

Gaming Genres: Action-Adventure, RPG
Story Genres: Fantasy, Adventure
Graphical Styles: 3D, Realism, High Resolution
Platforms: Windows
Pricing Model: Pay $
Developer(s): ClockStone Software
Publisher(s): Lighthouse Interactive
Initial Release Date: October 30, 2007
Website(s): Homepage, Wikipedia
Description:
Avencast combines the sense of adventure and character development found in RPGs with fast-paced action in the vein of classic beat 'em ups, all set in a world where magic truly rules the day.

Key Features:

• Challenging game play: Keyboard-and-mouse-based controls that enable skilful and dexterity-based special moves and combos.
• 50+ different combat moves and magic spells from three categories in two magic skill trees.
• More than 40 unique 3d models of monsters and characters.
• A multitude of different enemies with a great variety of skills and strategies.
• Equip your character with more than 120 unique items including magic weapons and armours.
• Enchanting ambience in a detailed and charming 3d world - atmospheric moods through real-time soft shadows and impressively lit combat scenes through fascinating spell effects.
• Intriguing storyline in 3 Chapters.
• Multifaceted game, play through riddles and quests that demand brain and dexterity.
• 360° free camera control.

Opinion:
The first offering by Clockstone, Avencast started as a hobby project of a small team with no game development specific experience. It turned into an action adventure RPG with elements from many sources. Some inspiration came from Diablo 2, but there is just as much puzzley adventure in it, as well as a beat'em up style spell casting system. Overall, it is very reminiscent of a older style, post Diablo 2, action RPG; But some of the gameplay definitely has a more modern indie feel to it.

In the game you play a mage with access to two types of magic, the close combat based blood magic and the ranged soul magic, and summons available to both. Which spells you choose to buy with your level up points is really the entire game strategy as the rest of the stats are quite minimalistic; Your character can use those same level up points to increase their mana, health, or the effectiveness of either soul or blood magic and the items include these same stats as well as potentially adding to your speed, mana regen, magic defence, and defence.

The meat of the game is the combat system, which like I said before uses a beat'em up style. You use a combination of directional keys and a left/right click. This allows you to launch any and all spells, and I believe it is a great system. It adds urgency and action to the gameplay that without it would almost feel turn-based.

The puzzles are also rather unique and improved from the the standard genre fare. There are brainteasers and puzzles that I found very enjoyable of every difficulty. And, while not exactly puzzles, a variety of traps and environmental dangers can be found in a late game stage that add to the diversity of gameplay.

All in all, it is a very good game. Nothing is really perfect in it, but also nothing is broken, and some of it is an improvement on the genre.

Images (+):

Related Media (+):

• Avencast Trailer Page

Hints/Tips/Walkthrough (+):

• Walkthrough
• Fixing Errors, Bugs, Broken Quests, and Console Commands (+):
• All support for Avencast seems to well over, with even the forum being closed to new users. Unfortunately, Avencast has a few bugs that in some situations can be very game endings (not that the developers offered a solution even back when they cared). Well, do to the in-game console accepting all range of game scripts the solution to any bug is actually pretty simple and figuring out what to put in any situation can be accomplished by by either searching the SQLlite file \lang\eng\localisation.db for items or quests or by searching the script files included in the dev kit.
• The major bug percent in the game causes nessesary quest items to simply never drop. This can be fixed by reloading at a previous save file and killing the carrier again, but depending on when you notice/finally give you this can mean many many hours lost. A better fix it to just add the item to your inventory and increment the quest it its next stage.
• I encountered this bug the very first quest of the second chapter, when you are looking for a demon staff, and before I realised it I had spend like five+ hours clearing out the entire level. Here is the best and easiest solution to that particular missing item:
• Press (;) while in-game to bring up the console.
• AddToInventory(mc_ID,"hm_q_demonstaff_01",1);  //Add the demon staff to the inventory.
• SetStory("Theodosius: Staff", 2);  //Set the quest state to having picked up the demon staff.
• SetSpecialMark(GetObject("Theodosius"), 1); //set the quest giver's (above the head) hovering icon to, in this case, a "!".

Indieness: Indie
Play?: Should Play