Tekkyuuman

4
One thing I can say for ikiki, is that his game making skills is improving. I downloaded every one of his games I could find, and some of his early stuff is practically unplayable. However, both nikujin and this game are exceptionally fun.

The graphics in this game take a peculiar turn, whereas nikujin looked like it used simplistic sprites, tekyuuman looks more like low quality drawings.

Gameplay wise, the game no longer scrolls, and instead of having a sword and a variety of actions one can take when near a wall/floor/ceiling, you can only slide down walls, and you have a spike ball on chain. You can only shoot the spike ball foward, but it bounces off the enviroment.

The games primary improvement over nikujin, is that there is a lot more “stuff” in a level. Nikujin had: Platforms, spikes, buttons with corresponding walls, explodable walls, three types of enemies, and four bosses.

Tekyuuman has: Platforms, electric walls, button platforms, torches which will kill you but can temporarily light your mace on fire, breakable platforms, collapsing platforms, spiked platforms, vine walls, bombs, at least six types of enemies, and four much more complex bosses. Each enemy has its own unique behavior, and part of each level’s “puzzle” is to figure out how to get passed them. Some you can simply hit and they die, others will react to your mace, and usually use it to kill you.

The objective in each level is to destroy a particular cactus like object, (that will kill you if you touch it.) There’s a slight delay between destroying it, and beating the level, so suicide tactics to break it won’t work. You have to be able to break it and survive.

Overall, the puzzles are interesting, and require the combination of logic and skill that nikujin used. Definitely one of the best platformers one can find among indies.

5 Charming Brutality
This game employs one of those “simple to learn, hard to master” sort of game mechanics and it does so with the same cute brutality of it’s graphics.

At first i found the elastic mace thing a little unwieldy, but i was soon taking out multiple foes with one throw which is immensely satisfying, especially when they explode with a “THUNK” and a shower of blood. But, just when you start to get comfortable, the game throws in another clever way of using the mace to keep things fresh.

Don’t get me wrong though, this game is hard. There is no saving to be found. Once you run out of lives, you’re back at level one. But, this game would be ruined by any sort of saving. I found that i just needed to try one more time, get one level further and it’s relatively short length makes it ideal for short sessions.