Authors: Lloyd Sabin and Jim Zabek

Halloween arrives next week. I know this because my neighbor just a few houses over has a display of decorations that would shame many a professionally stocked haunted house. We moved just a few months ago and I still haven’t found the boxes with the Halloween stuff in them (though Christmas is looking good). The pathetic string of purple lights around my front door makes me feel like I’ve done something to celebrate the season – and it’s better than the guy across the street who is banking on a string of Christmas lights (green bulbs removed to give him plausible deniability) to save his bacon. Still, the lack of assorted skulls, ghosts, and ghastly visages dampens the normal joy I feel as winter begins to wrap its icy fingers around my bones.

So this edition of GARPA is tilted slightly in favor of finding projects that could accompany the spooky spirit of Halloween. But fear not, if we spot something interesting that isn’t creepy or spooky, we’ll include that, too. We are gamers after all.

PC Games

You Are Not the Hero by Donn Manalili

$33,510.00 pledged of $12,001.00 goal, funding ends November 12th

You Are Not the Hero [Hero from here on in] has a great sense of humor and confidence in itself to go along with it. Its premise is simple:  things gamers usually do in RPGs should, in a perfect world, piss off the in-game NPCs as well as have repercussions. Slay a beast? It was probably someone’s pet. Kill a witch? That was my sister. And hey, get out of my bathroom!

So, how to remedy these issues? If you’re Donn Manalili, you create a 2D action platform game with an anime style which tells it like it is and places the player in the tiny, quick moving shoes of Petula, Hero’s protagonist.

The royal army has just passed through Petula’s village, scavenging for supplies and stealing some of Petula’s jewelry. Getting the jewelry back is the main quest of Hero. But the real point of the game is ignoring that main quest and doing anything else you could possibly imagine in an open world. Start a business, buy a house, explore ruins or go fishing all day…the open world of Hero intends to focus on details and not get lost in its own scope.

The technicals of Hero include:

• Pixel-based movement instead of tile-based movement
• Dealing with enemies through options other than combat
• Run, jump and explore a world of forests, tunnels, and caves
• Pound through mazes and solve puzzles
• Different outcomes for every game depending on how you play it
• See how the other half lives by getting a job as a farmer, innkeeper or merchant

The response to Hero on Kickstarter has been excellent and a host of goals are being met, including upgraded graphics, and is fast closing on Mac and Linux support. Additional chapters are also proposed including Petula in a modern-themed world as well as a possible horror story, so things are looking very good for Hero and supporters should be able to play it in the not-too-distant future.

Confederate Express by Maksym Pashanin

$5,215.00 pledged of $10,000 goal, funding ends November 20th

Confederate Express places players in the role of a courier. Doesn’t sound exactly thrilling from the get go, but stay with me. The game let’s players choose what kind of package they want to deliver according to their skill level, what kind of group they have assembled to deliver said package, and of course the player’s attitude towards permadeath.

All characters available to choose from are unique criminals that come from the local prison when assembling your courier team. There’s also a whole slew of loot scattered throughout the game world that you can gather as you explore while on your delivery runs. Maps are varied and randomized every time a new game is started, with the promise of a new game every time it’s started.

Of course this would all be very pedestrian without zombies, right? The back story of Confederate Express involves homeostasis, bio-engineering, a horrible ‘side effect,’ and many, many zombies, as well as an entire opposing army, rebels and angry robots. All will try to stop you from getting to where you are supposed to make your delivery.

Confederate Express is rendered in 2d sprites, with advanced lighting effects, in an interesting blend of old and new school graphic technology. The end result is a unique looking game with a bit of a creep factor and a dark sense of humor. Funding is ongoing as the developer is still looking for an audio composer and an animator, but Maksym Pashanin seems hell bent on completing this game and making his supporters happy.