Best Of Indie Games: Artistic Games

[Every week, IndieGames.com: The Weblog editor-in-chief Tim W. will be summing up some of the top free-to-download and commercial indie games from the last seven days on his sister 'state of indie' weblog.] This week on 'Best Of Indie Games', we take a look at some of the top independent PC Flash/downloadable titles released over this last week. The delights in this edition include a first-person shooter developed by a group of ex-AAA industry veterans, a tough vertical platformer about climbing to the top of a castle, a roguelike implementation of Namco's arcade classic Pac-Man, plus a an odd recreation of a museum performance piece. Here's the highlights from the last seven days: Game Pick: 'Hard Reset' (Flying Wild Hog, commercial indie) "In Hard Reset you play as Major Fletcher as he attempts to stop an army of nasty robots from destroying the last human city on the planet. It's cyberpunk, it's sci-fi, and it's a balls to the wall blast-fest that will see you holding the trigger down more often than not." Game Pick: 'Climb to the Top of the Castle' (Two Bros Games, commercial indie) "In Climb to the Top of the Castle you're a knight who is tasked with saving a princess by bashing lots of metal with your sword, and most likely falling to your death a fair few times. Indeed, given that the game is all about scaling heights, unsurprisingly one false move can see your lives count quickly reducing." Game Pick: 'Phone Story' (Molleindustria, commercial indie) "Molleindustria, the devs behind the likes of Every Day the Same Dream and Inside a Dead Skyscraper, would like you to stop for a moment and think about where your smartphone came from. Taking the form of four minigames, Phone Story follows the journey of your phone from its conception as raw materials to its assembly." Game Pick: 'Netpack' (Jamey DeOrio, freeware) "Netpack is a roguelike implementation of Namco's arcade classic Pac-Man, modified by Jamey to include turn-based movement, combat, character stats, and an inventory system to keep track of the fruits you've collected." Game Pick: 'Super Smash Land' (Dan Fornace, freeware) "Super Smash Land features a handful of the original characters and stages, along with both the campaign and versus modes. Also, it looks bloody amazing, and handles excitingly well." Game Pick: 'Glissaria' (Arkeus, browser) "Glissaria is a tower defense game at heart, drawing a lot of inspiration from the RPG and match-5 genres. There are resources that must be gathered, colourful tiles to be sorted, slimes to kill, towers to upgrade." Game Pick: 'The Artist is Present' (Pippin Barr, browser) "The Artist is Present is an odd recreation of a performance piece by Marina Abramović, where the artist sits still in the center of a museum's atrium while visitors take turn occupying the seat on the opposite end of a table."