Forced is a single-player and co-op action role-playing game developed by BetaDwarf, released in October 2013 for Windows, OS X and Linux through the Steam platform as well as Wii U. It is about gladiators fighting for their freedom in a fantasy arena where they are assisted by a spirit-like character called Balfus. Gameplay consists of selecting a weapon class and abilities to combat the various enemies of each arena, while solving puzzles using the help of Balfus. BetaDwarf was formed by a small group of students in 2011, who began developing the game in an unused classroom in Aalborg University – Copenhagen, Denmark. They were removed months later and launched a successful Kickstarter campaign involving an Imgur picture which documented their progress. Forced received moderate to favorable reviews with most critics praising its competitive gameplay and puzzle-system. The game's weak plot, technical glitches and excess difficulty were the negative highlights. It won the Level Up 2013 Intel award and BetaDwarf received the Danish Developer Of The Year (2013) for it.
Crosswords DS is a puzzle video game developed by American studio Nuevo Retro games released by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS handheld video game console. It was previously released in Australia as CrossworDS but a new OFLC entry confirmed that Nintendo Australia re-released it with a European localization. Crosswords DS features over 1,000 crossword puzzles that the player solves by using the stylus. Despite the title, it also features word search puzzles and anagram puzzles. It makes use of similar handwriting mechanics that the Brain Age titles make use of. Crosswords DS is included in the Touch! Generations series of titles, which includes such popular games as Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! and Nintendogs. The background music was composed by Fabian Del Priore.
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is a puzzle video game designed by Steve Fawkner for Australian game developer Infinite Interactive and published by D3 Publisher in 2007. The game combines role-playing with tile-matching elements. Taking place in a high fantasy setting, the player moves his or her character around the game's world and encounters monsters and other enemies to fight so as to gain experience and acquire treasure as in a typical role-playing game. Combat takes place on a board similar to Bejeweled, and by making matches of colored gems, the combatants can cause damage to their opponents, cast spells, or perform other abilities that affect the flow of the game.
Ben Jordan: Paranormal Investigator is a freeware episodic point-and-click adventure video game for Microsoft Windows developed by Francisco Gonzalez of Grundislav Games. The game consists of eight individual episodes, or cases, with an overarching plot connecting them together. The game has won numerous Adventure Game Studio Awards, including a 2005 AGS Award for Best Gameplay.
William Timothy Rogers Jr. is an American video game journalist, developer, and video essayist. His work is associated with mid-2000s New Games Journalism, a style of video game journalism that emphasizes the author's subjective and personal experiences in relation to the game world. The Guardian cited his 2005 opinion piece "Dreaming in an Empty Room: A Defense of Metal Gear Solid 2" as a core example of the genre. Rogers is additionally known for his verbose writing style and his video game reviews website ActionButton.net. He has also written for Next Generation, GamesTM, Play, Game Developer, and Kotaku. He later edited videos for Kotaku before resigning from the site and becoming an independent YouTuber.
Threes is a puzzle video game by Sirvo, an independent development team consisting of game designer Asher Vollmer, illustrator Greg Wohlwend, and composer Jimmy Hinson. The game was released on February 6, 2014, for iOS devices and later ported to Android, Xbox One, and Windows Phone. In Threes, the player slides numbered tiles on a grid to combine addends and multiples of three. The game ends when there are no moves left on the grid and the tiles are counted for a final score.
Action Button Entertainment is a video game development studio consisting of Tim Rogers, Brent Porter, Michael Kerwin, and Nicholas Wasilewski that has produced five games: Ziggurat (2012), TNNS (2013), Ten by Eight (2013), Tuffy the Corgi (2014), and Videoball (2016). The group convened in 2010 as Rogers worked on Ziggurat based on an idea he had while playing Angry Birds that he could not complete on his own. Porter joined Action Button after responding to a call for artists Rogers made via Twitter, and Kerwin joined based on a connection he had with Rogers from producing a mockup of a game concept Rogers outlined in his Kotaku column.
Gasketball is a basketball-themed puzzle video game for the iPad by Mikengreg, an independent development team of Michael Boxleiter and Greg Wohlwend. Players flick basketballs through 2D physics puzzles into the hoop in single-player, local multiplayer, and asynchronous HORSE-style online multiplayer modes. The game is free-to-play with in-app purchases. Development began in mid 2011 following Mikengreg's successful Solipskier. They were able to live from the earnings for Gasketball's two year development at their previous salary, which afforded them the stability to try new avenues and reject prototypes, though they worked 100-hour weeks. Towards the end of their development, they ran out of money and lived on the couches of friends. It was released on August 9, 2012, and the game did not reach their desired conversion rate at the time of launch.
Puzzlejuice is a 2012 indie puzzle video game for iOS produced and developed by video game company Sirvo. The game is a combination of Tetris, tile-matching, and Boggle: players rearrange falling tetromino blocks into rows of similar colors, which turn into letters that are cleared from the board by forming words. The fast-paced game also includes challenges and power-ups. The development team consisted of three people; programmer Asher Vollmer initially developed the game alone, before reaching out to artist Greg Wohlwend for advice on the aesthetics. Composer Jimmy Hinson produced the game's music.
Increpare Games Ltd is a British video game developer based in London, founded and operated by Stephen Lavelle. Lavelle uses the pseudonym "Increpare", the Latin word for "rebuke". Lavelle has released over 425 games since 2004, mostly small freeware games and often at the rate of several projects per month. With 178 games released between 2008 and 2014, Lavelle was named the "most prolific independent game developer" in the 2016 iteration of the Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition. Notable commercial releases include English Country Tune (2011) and Stephen's Sausage Roll (2016). In October 2013, Lavelle released PuzzleScript, an open-source scripting language for puzzle video games made in HTML5.
The Escapists is a strategy game played from a top-down perspective. The game was developed by Mouldy Toof Studios and following a Steam Early Access release in 2014, was released in 2015 for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. It was released on iOS and Android in 2017. A Nintendo Switch version of the game containing all downloadable content was released in 2018. The game was launched on the Epic Games Store on 23 September 2021, with the weekly free game campaign of Epic Games. Players assume the role of an inmate and must escape from prisons of increasing difficulty.
HuniePop is a tile-matching and dating sim adult video game created by American game designer Ryan Koons, under the alias of HuniePot. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux-based personal computers in January 2015, after being funded via a successful Kickstarter campaign. HuniePop is available in two different versions, an uncensored version available via Humble Bundle and MangaGamer, and a censored version via Steam. The game follows the dating adventures of the main character as they try to woo several different women in their home town.
TouchTone is a 2015 puzzle video game for iOS devices by Mikengreg, a two-person indie game development team made up of Mike Boxleiter and Greg Wohlwend. The player monitors phone calls as part of a government surveillance program to find public threats. The player unlocks chains of emails by completing a series of puzzles wherein a beam is reflected around a room to a set destination. TouchTone's core concept grew from a two-day game jam immediately following their 2012 release of Gasketball, but only found its hacker theme following the mid-2013 Edward Snowden global surveillance disclosures. The tone of TouchTone's story grew from satirical to serious over the course of the game's development.
Enter the Gungeon is a 2016 bullet hell roguelike game developed by Dodge Roll and published by Devolver Digital. Set in the firearms-themed Gungeon, gameplay follows four player characters called Gungeoneers as they traverse procedurally generated rooms to find a gun that can "kill the past". The Gungeoneers fight against bullet-shaped enemies, which are fought using both conventional and exotic weapons. Enter the Gungeon features a permadeath system, causing the Gungeoneers to lose all obtained items and start again from the first level upon death. Between playthroughs, players can travel to an area called the Breach, where they can converse with non-player characters and unlock new items randomly encountered while playing.
TumbleSeed is an indie action video game, created by developer Benedict Fritz and designer Greg Wohlwend, in which the player balances a rolling seed on an ascending, horizontally slanted vine past procedurally generated obstacles to reach the top of a mountain. It is based on the mechanical arcade game Ice Cold Beer and built partially through the Cards Against Humanity game incubation program. TumbleSeed was released in May 2017 to generally favorable reviews on MacOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Windows platforms. Critics, in particular, appreciated their haptic sense of the rolling seed from the Nintendo Switch's sensitive HD Rumble. Many reviewers noted TumbleSeed's intense and sometimes uneven difficulty, which the developers hoped to address in a post-release update. They credited this stigma and a tepid critical reception for the game's slow sales, but were proud of their work.
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy is a platform game developed by Bennett Foddy. The game was released as part of the October 2017 Humble Monthly, on October 6, 2017, where it went on to be played by over 2.7 million players. A Steam version of the game was later released by Foddy on December 6, 2017, with a release on iOS that same day. The Android version was later released on April 25, 2018. The Linux version was available for beta testing in August 2018 and received a stable release in the same year.
Bennett Foddy is an Australian video game designer based in New York. Raised in Australia and trained as a moral philosopher on topics of drug addiction, Foddy was a bassist in the electronic music group Cut Copy and a hobbyist game designer while he finished his dissertation. During his postdoctoral research at Princeton University and time on staff at Oxford University, Foddy developed games of very high difficulty, including QWOP (2008), which became an Internet sensation at the end of 2010 with the rise of new online social sharing tools. He later became an instructor at the NYU Game Center. His most famous game aside from QWOP is Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, a philosophical, physics-based platform game released in 2017.
Move or Die is a multiplayer action-puzzle game developed by Romanian indie studio Those Awesome Guys. Move or Die was released on Microsoft Windows on 21 January 2016 and was released on PlayStation 4 on 5 March 2019.
Baba Is You is a puzzle video game created by Finnish independent developer Arvi Teikari. Originating as a short demo built for the 2017 Nordic Game Jam, the game was expanded and released on 13 March 2019 for PC and Nintendo Switch. Mobile versions were released in June 2021. The game centers around the manipulation of "rules"—represented in the play area by movable tiles with words written on them—in order to allow the player character, usually the titular Baba, to reach a specified goal. A free update titled "Baba Make Level" was released on November 17, 2021, featuring over 150 new and previously unused levels and a level editor with online sharing.
Terra Nil is a strategy video game developed by Free Lives and published Devolver Digital for Android, iOS, and Windows. The game was released on March 28, 2023.
