Shooting Butts And Pushing Boxes: This Week In Indie Games

[Every week, IndieGames.com: The Weblog co-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 browser game about shooting butts, Bennett Foddy's take on IGF 2010 Nuovo Award winner Nidhogg, a Ludum Dare 21 competition entry, plus a 4K remake of Spectrum Holobyte's Sokoban. Here's some recent highlights from the site: Game Pick: 'PoleRiders' (Bennett Foddy, browser) "PoleRiders is essentially Bennett's own take on Nidhogg, with two players looking to push each other backwards along a straight plane, but with poles instead of swords. There's a ball on some string above the battlefield, and the idea is to vault off the floor and kick the ball towards your opponent's castle." Game Pick: 'Molecat-Twist' (iWait4 & Vidroid, browser) "The player's job in Molecat-Twist is a pretty simple one: guide the Molecats to their fungal food source and try not to have them die in the process. To do so, you're going to have to manipulate the movements of the lead Molecat as the rest of them appear conditioned to follow him." Game Pick: 'Shoot The Butts' (Kyle Reimergartin, browser) "Shoot The Butts is a simple horizontal shoot'em up in which you play a spaceman with a jetpack, shooting at, you guessed it, butts. If your hero gets hit, he'll lose his purple outfit -- another hit kills him and restarts the game." Game Pick: '503 - Service Unavailable' (Horace The Endless Server Technical, browser) "What better way to make up for a malfunctioning page or a scheduled maintenance run than to provide a text adventure to your fans? Rock, Paper, Shotgun definitely wins the award for one of the best 503 - Service Unavailable message/announcement/thing ever." Game Pick: 'Fragmentation' (Riley Adams, freeware) "Fragmentation is a Ludum Dare 21 competition entry that puts you in control of a nameless runner who has to outrun the disintegrating floors behind him. You gain speed incrementally while running, but crouching and sliding slows you down a bit." Game Pick: 'Sokoban 4k' (dwim, freeware) "Sokoban 4k is a 4,096 byte-remake of the classic block pushing game, featuring all fifty levels from the glorious-looking CGA release by Spectrum Holobyte. Your objective here is basically to push and shove boxes to the marked storage locations." Game Pick: 'Scoregasm' (Charlie Knight, commercial indie) "Featuring over 50 levels, multiple endings, achievements, combo medals, gorgeous visuals, oddly suggestive sound effects and even a 5 dollar note somewhere, Scoregasm is definitely a lot of bang for your buck." Game Pick: 'Iro-otoko 2' (Nametake, browser) "Iro-otoko 2 is the sequel to Nametake's Flash-based 2D platformer released just four months ago, featuring the same gameplay elements from the original but with an entirely new set of puzzles to solve. In it you play as a sword-wielding knight who has to collect as many coins and and gems as he can from each level."