Thursday Triple is a weekly roundup of Indie Games from around the Net.
There’s a lot to look forward to in life. A nice meal, a warm bed, travelling to the other side of the world to visit people (I am unreasonably excited at the prospect of riding an airplane – it’s been too long). The anticipation is half the fun, or at least that’s what I tell myself as I wait for my pancakes to finish cooking, and it applies to games-in-progress too. So if you’re like me and get a kick out of dreaming of things-to-be, here are three Kickstarters worth perusing.
Habitat
By 4gency
Given the propensity for space-sims in the ManaPool team, I’m surprised we didn’t find this game sooner. Unlike others in the genre, where stations and ships are manufactured in factories, Habitat tasks the player to create a functioning building from junk littering Earth’s orbit. Need to get somewhere fast? Slap a rocket on it. It’s easier said than done though, as your conglomeration of scrap must take into account the universe’s physics.
True mastery will come when you learn how to turn your habitat into a weapon. Aside from conventional defences, there’s nothing stopping you from launching part of (or your whole) station into your opponents to steal the pretty junk they have. In fact, the game encourages you to make wild and ridiculous contraptions just to see if they would work. About four and a half minutes into the video preview below, you’ll find the player utilizing the Statue of Liberty’s head to obliterate an unsuspecting foe.
[youtube link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p2HHswu2_c” width=”590″ height=”315″]
Habitat is on Kickstarter with just a day to go!
Heart Forth, Alicia
By Alonso Martin
When I saw this Kickstarter had well surpassed it’s goal, sitting comfortably at over $150,000 funded with two weeks to go, I was curious as to what the hype was about. Heart Forth, Alicia is described as a Metroidvania RPG – maybe it’s the fact that so many games use that term now, along with the other (unrelated) culprit “roguelike,” that it’s lost its appeal. But Heart Forth, Alicia is charming, and delving deeper into the project reveals that it may actually live up to the moniker.
Combat seems fluid with a mixture of melee weaponry and magic, and the companions you can find scattered throughout the world lend their own boons to fights. Exploration plays a major part, and you’ll want to explore the different regions to uncover more of the story and collect loot for your character. The game proudly wears its inspiration on its sleeve, and despite never being hugely interested in the genre, I’m intrigued. The dark humour certainly made me giggle.
[youtube link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDySQknA928″ width=”590″ height=”315″]
All I’m going to say is, 2:13.
Codemancer
By Important Little Games
Making programming more exciting to learn is going to be important as computers become increasingly ubiquitous. Just showing that coding can be fun and accessible is already a challenge, which is why Codemancer gets a solid two-thumbs-up from me for tackling the topic. The target audience is children between the ages of 9 and 14, though anyone could pick this up.
You play as Aurora, a girl embarking on a quest to save her father from an evil sorcerer. She learns magic along the way from friendly wizards, magic that works in ways analogous to programming logic. The goal is to eventually cover material you would find in an introductory programming course at a university. The next time I write a function, I’m totally going to imagine myself casting a fireball.
[youtube link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z-QFdAPc5I” width=”590″ height=”315″]
If not for yourself, think of the next generation. We could use stuff like this to purge coding illiteracy!