Best Of Indie Games: Just Following Orders

em>[IndieGames.com: The Weblog co-editor Tim W. rounds up the week's top free-to-download and commercial indie games from 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 puzzle-based roguelike with an emphasis on managing resources, a single-button Flash action game, a pair of platformers made for the recent Global Game Jam 2010 event, a one-button remake of Civilization, and a space trading strategy game with shoot 'em up elements. Here's the highlights from the last seven days: Game Pick: 'Desktop Dungeon' (Rodain Joubert, freeware) "Desktop Dungeon is a puzzle-based roguelike with an emphasis on resource management, where the health of your adventurer is restored by walking into unexplored rooms or corridors. You can choose to engage an enemy immediately upon finding them, or save the tougher encounters for later after you've gained some battle experience with weaker inhabitants of the dungeon first." Game Pick: 'One Button Bob' (Tom Vencel, browser) "One Button Bob is a single-button action game in which you have to help Bob survive an obstacle course to reach the treasure he desires. The control scheme is switched around in every room, meaning that you could be running away from a boulder, climbing a set of ladders or jumping from one platform to another as you venture further into the cave." Game Pick: 'Where We Remain' (Twofold Secret, browser) "Where We Remain appears to be a simple 'save the girl' Zelda-style adventure at first glance. Yet look a little closer, and you'll find that there is so much more to it. Trapped on an island by a mysterious being, our hero must find his sweetheart and rescue her. But is there a way to escape the island?" Game Pick: 'Super Space Rogues' (Ted Lauterbach, freeware) "In Super Space Rogues you play as a trader who owes a big sum of money to an alien overlord, and must find means to repay him back or suffer the consequences. This basically involves mining asteroids for precious minerals to be traded at a friendly spaceport, or destroying pirate ships and making off with the loot that they drop." Game Pick: 'Press Tilda' (Press Tilda Team, browser) "Press Tilda is a Unity-based puzzle platformer in which you can bring up a console to type in commands and change the layout of a level directly. By typing in certain keywords, players can swap the position of their character with another item in a stage, send an attack order to one of the robot guards, push objects or even set them on fire." Game Pick: 'War and Peace' (Stéphane Bura, freeware) "War and Peace is a one-button remake of the classic strategy game Civilization, created by created by Stéphane Bura as a submission for the Gamma 4 game showcase competition. The technology tree which was the highlight of the original series has been distilled down to just two branches of research, and your task is basically to choose whether to dedicate all of your resources into developing war machines or encourage the cultivation of technology advancements." Game Pick: 'Boxplode' (David Newton, browser) "Boxplode is a neat little puzzle game created by David Newton, in which the player's objective is to destroy all boxes with numbers on them by causing a series of explosions to blow everything up. The chain of explosions work like a domino effect, and you have a limited number of clicks to clear all blocks in a single level to progress." Game Pick: 'depict1' (Kyle Pulver, freeware) "Created by Kyle Pulver (with Alec Holowka providing the ditties), depict1 is a platformer which will hurt your head lots, but probably also make you smile too. An unknown announcer barks orders at you, which you need to follow... maybe. The whole game is pretty much an incredible mind-bork."