Best Of Indie Games: Taking to the Skies

[Every week, IndieGames.com: The Weblog co-editor 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 goodies in this edition include a turn-based aerial dogfight game, a puzzle platformer by Karoshi creator Jesse Venbrux, an interactive fiction game about the Russian Roulette, a visual novel, and a game about gardening that doesn't feature zombies in it. Here's the highlights from the last seven days: Game Pick: 'Steambirds' (Andy Moore and Dan Cook, browser) "Steambirds is a turn-based aerial dogfight game that is viewed from a top-down perspective, where players are given command of a squadron of planes with their own unique abilities to deploy. Fans of strategy games like the Advance Wars series would feel right at home here, with the only differences being that combat takes place in the skies and rigid tile-based movement has been done away with." Game Pick: 'Redder' (dessgeega, browser) "In Redder you play as an astronaut forced to make an emergency landing on an alien planet after finding out that she has run out of crystals to power her ship. This 2D platformer features a world map, regular checkpoint locations, and an unlimited number of retries to assist players who are unaccustomed to difficult challenges." Game Pick: 'Maru' (Jesse Venbrux, freeware) "Maru is a simple platformer that plays rather similarly to Jesse's other creation called Frozzd, although the tone in both games are practically on different ends of a spectrum. The adventure basically involves leaping from one planet to another to collect the spirits or souls of other creatures that look just like the protagonist, then figuring out how to get to the portal that will transport you to the next area and continue with your mission." Game Pick: 'Six-Chamber Champion' (C.E.J. Pacian, freeware) "Six-Chamber Champion is a single-room IF game created by C.E.J. Pacian in under two hours for a 371-in-1 Klik & Play Pirate Kart event held last weekend. This particular adventure should be tried out without reading anything about it at all, since every screenshot and mention of it only serves to spoil the best bits. Suffice to say that the story involves a gun and trying to avoid killing yourself." Game Pick: 'Air Pressure' (Bento Smile, freeware) "Bento Smile's Air Pressure is a visual novel with original graphics and music, featuring quite a number of branching story paths but only three endings to discover. The entire adventure takes about ten minutes to play through, and Terry Cavanagh (developer of VVVVVV) even liked it enough to recommend the game to everyone." Game Pick: 'Extreme Gardening' (Jan Willem Nijman, freeware) "Extreme Gardening is a short puzzle game about trimming hedges. On each of the fifteen levels, players are shown how the hedge should look, then given 10 seconds to cut it into shape using the mouse to click and drag the hedge away."