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New Release: Silver Grapple

A hardcore grapple-based actioner, from Jamie Rollo New Release: Nidhogg II New Release: Songbringer New Release: Greedy Guns

A colorful open world shooter, from Tio Atum New Release: The Royal Cosmonautical Society

February 28, 2016

Target Acquired: Super Ubie Island Remix

target acquired   No comments
Super Ubie Island Remix, from Notion Games, is an updated and rebalanced version of Super Ubie Land, a browser-based game released in 2013. This is a traditional hop-n-bop platformer featuring colorful world, cartoony enemies, and a green alien creature (Ubie) who has crash landed on a strange planet. Ubie must travel through several themed areas, taking on platforming challenges and defeating huge animals that act as the game's bosses, in order to collect the pieces of his ship and return home. He comes equipped with a red balloon that allows him to glide long distances, which in turn offers up some tough challenges in which he must glide over huge gaps and bop on enemies' heads to stay aloft, and that's to say nothing of the exploding TNT crates.

Super Ubie Island Remix is now available for PC via Steam and is coming soon to Wii U via the eShop. Check our full coverage here. February 25, 2016

New Blip: Katana ZERO

new blip   No comments
Katana ZERO is the latest from developer Askiisoft, featuring fast-paced acrobatic melee combat in a dark neon-lit world. It's tough to take down a whole slew of bad guys on your own, but fortunately you have access to a drug called Chronos, which allows you to manipulate time, reversing your mistakes and slowing things down to the point where you can knock an enemy's bullet back at him. Players can dash and slide quickly through the environment, dodging lasers and getting behind baddies before slicing them into bloody shreds, and they can hop between buildings by extending cables between them for some ninja-style rooftop running in the dark of night.

The game is coming to PC in Q4 2016. 
New Blip: Wizard of Legend

Wizard of Legend, from Contingent 99, is a dungeon crawler featuring exploration and fast-paced combat for one or two players in offline co-op. Players can chain together attacks and incorporate magic spells into their offensive onslaught as they tear through enemies with a variety of environmental effects. There are more than 100 spells to learn, and all attacks are mapped to individual keys so players can switch between attacks on the fly, but the more powerful spells have cooldown periods to prevent the player from spamming these attacks. The world is procedurally generated with some hand-crafted setpiece rooms, and players can unlock several other wizards as they explore the areas.

The game is headed to PC, Mac, and Linux via Steam in Q3 2016. 
Blitz Breaker

Blitz Breaker is a precision platformer starring a robot named Blitz who is trying to escape the factory where he was built. However, unlike most platformers, there is very little jumping; instead, the robot is able to dash in a straight line until he smashes into a wall and bounces away, often doing so through narrow spike-lined passages. The player's dashing skills are called upon in increasingly difficult ways across 101 levels, including several boss encounters. The player is tasked with reaching the end of each level under a par time, with coins adding a few precious seconds to the clock, and many optional challenge levels awaiting skilled players.

Blitz Breaker is currently available on PC via Steam and Itch.io, with Mac, Linux, and iOS versions in development. For more information, check our full coverage here. 
Signal Lost: Glorious Leader

Glorious Leader was originally planned as a send-up of North Korean "leader" Kim Jong Un, promising seven levels of irreverent silliness, with a planned release date of Q4 2014. A Kickstarter campaign followed but was ultimately cancelled, with the developers citing a hack as the primary reason and stating "Between the hacking and other threats, we think it is time to reevaluate our commitment to Glorious Leader! We thank our fans and supporters, and we are sorry to let you down." Here's what we originally had to say about the game.

The Steam community is a curious crew, and so they have greenlit Moneyhorse Games’ Glorious Leader... presumably just to find out what the hell this thing is all about. The game features Kim Jong-un singlehandedly destroying the imperialist regime, taking down hordes of soldiers and bosses with a wide array of weaponry across seven levels. The game also sees him occasionally riding a flaming unicorn and a narwhal, which as you may know, is the unicorn of the sea. The dictator’s repertoire includes zipline skills, American flag burning skills, riding horned animals skills, and befriending Dennis Rodman skills. 
New Blip: Freedom Planet 2

So, there's practically no information about this game, but the first Freedom Planet was so good that we're posting the teaser anyway. In the first game, players took control of one of three anthropomorphic animals, each with their own unique abilities and playstyles in a colorful world styled after 16-bit classics like Ristar, Rocket Knight Adventures, and especially Sonic the Hedgehog.

The trio of characters and their trademark abilities return in the sequel with Lylac's hair whip and high-speed dash, Carol's wall-riding motorcycle, and Milla's strange energy powers, as well as some new abilities. A new evil has arisen in the form of Merga, an ancient water dragon that has been released due to the events at the end of the first game, and this time, the heroes find their allegiances split between opposing sides. The characters are a bit older now, more mature and experienced, and several new characters are being introduced, many voiced by actors from a number of well-known animated series.

The game has a long way to go... Galaxy Trail plans to have the beta ready 2017, but there is no formal release date yet. The game will be released for PC, Mac, and Linux, followed by Nintendo's platform, with other console versions TBD. We'll be watching this one and keeping the Master List updated with any changes. Below are the initial teaser (sorry, no gameplay) and a screenshot mockup. 
News: Downwell Coming to PS4/Vita

news   No comments
Downwell, from developer Moppin, is coming to PS4 and Vita later this year. The game - which featured prominently in our Best 2D Games of 2015 list - is an excellent descent-based platformer that requires quick reflexes and mastery of a variety of weapons to survive an increasingly difficult gauntlet of enemies and hazards. You play the role of a man who has purposely flung himself into a well with "gunboots" strapped to his feet, which he uses to stomp on enemies' heads, blast them to oblivion, and slow his descent.

For more details on this twitchy tri-chromatic blastfest, check our full coverage here. February 14, 2016

Target Acquired: The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human

The Aquatic Adventure of the Last Human, from YCJY Games, features a submariner travelling through the gloomy and desaturated world beneath the ocean's surface as he explores the ruins of civilization following humanity's extinction. In this metroidvania adventure, the player pilots a hybrid spaceship/submarine and attempts to determine what happened to mankind, all the while fighting off creatures of the deep, including large bosses. The underwater theme comes as a result of ocean levels rising due to climate change, as well as a number of other issues facing the human race in the 30th century. The submarine comes equipped with a harpoon as its primary weapon, and players earn upgrades as they explore the environment - including torpedoes, thrusters, shields, and even a chainsaw - allowing them to deal with stronger enemies and push their way farther into the depths.

The game is now available for PC, Mac, and Linux via Steam, Humble Store, GOG, and Itch.io. Check our full coverage here. 
New Blip: Spark the Electric Jester

new blip , test flight   No comments
Spark the Electric Jester, from Felipe Ribeiro Daneluz, a.k.a. LakeFeperd, draws its inspiration from the 16-bit mascot era when every wacky character under the sun was given a starring role in a colorful and cartoony platformer, although the most obvious influence is the Sonic the Hedgehog series, particularly with the game's sloped surfaces and emphasis on high-speed movement. Prior to this game's development, LakeFeperd actually created several Sonic fan games, including Sonic Before the Sequel and Sonic After the Sequel, games which took place before and after Sonic 2, as well as Sonic Chrono Adventure. But this new adventure is not a Sonic clone... Just like Freedom Planet before it, it shares a number of Sonic influences but has new gameplay.

Spark is a jester who finds himself out of a job after robots take over the world, and so he sets out to get his revenge and destroy them all. Spark can change colors to gain new abilities and is able to take down enemies with melee weapons, projectiles, and good old fashioned spin dashing, and he also gets to ride a cool jet-powered hoverboard.

The game is headed to PC and Mac in Q2 2016. A 3-stage demo is available on the game's Kickstarter page. February 9, 2016

New Blip: Rise & Shine

Rise & Shine, from Super Awesome Hyper Dimensional Mega Team (developers of Pro Zombie Soccer), is about a kid named Rise and his gun named Shine. All around him a war is raging against the Space Grunts, gigantic musclebound interplanetary soldiers who have invaded Rise's world. But Rise is a sharp kid, and he has a weapon capable of firing of many different kinds of ammunition, including radio-controlled bullets that he can steer around corners, allowing him to defeat enemies, avoid detection, and solve puzzles... and occasionally face off against the Space Grunts on his own. Taking a cue from classic video games, Rise's dilapidated world is filled with life and color, rather than the browns and greys so often seen in modern 3D titles.

The game is coming to PC via Steam, and Xbox One via XBLA in Q2 2016. February 7, 2016

The Best 2D Games of 2015

news   2 comments Even though 2D RADAR is brand new, we have an annual tradition of looking back at all of the 2D video games from the previous year and picking out the best of the bunch. This is done in the style of an awards show, with a list of categories and nominations, some between-round shenanigans, and ending with our pick for the best 2D game of the year.

This year's show is bigger than ever, with 16 categories, spanning the major genres and featuring some oddball categories like the "Best Weirdest Game" and the "It's About Damn Time" award. Be sure to check out the video below, and for more info on all of these games, please visit our sister site, 8 Bit Horse.


Here's a preview of all of the categories featured in the video:
Best Updated Re-Release
Most Innovative
Best Old-School Throwback
Best Fire
Best Weirdest
Most Ambitious
The "It's About Damn Time!" Award
Best Use of Brutal Difficulty
Best Game Starring an Animal
Best Game Starring a Ninja
Best Puzzler or Puzzle Platformer
Best Platformer
Best Action-Adventure or Action-RPG
Best Action Game
Biggest Disappointment
Best 2D Game of 2015
 
Early Arrival: Path to the Sky

early arrival   No comments
DekDev continues the recent trend of roguelike action platforming, but flips the old structure on its head. Rather than descending ever deeper into more deadly and dangerous dungeons, the action in Path to the Sky focuses on ascent. As the player climbs ever higher in this vertically oriented procedurally generated world, the enemies become ever more difficult to defeat. The chunky sprites and outdoor environments are reminiscent of Risk of Rain, but focuses much more on climbing, melee attacks, and aerial combat.

Path to the Sky just entered Steam Early Access for PC, Mac, and Linux, featuring the first three islands, of the six planned for final release. 
New Blip: NeuroVoider

NeuroVoider is a twin-stick action-RPG from Flying Oak Games, the studio behind Dead End, a grindhouse-style mobile game where players run down zombies in their tricked-out roadster. NeuroVoider is set in a world where the robots have long since exterminated humanity. However, one night, while the robots are jamming out to some sick synth tunes, the last remaining human brains awaken and decide to fight back, building new bodies out of robot parts. The game supports single player or local 4P co-op for some frenzied blasting across a procedurally generated world and facing off against big bullet hell-style bosses. Blowing up bad robots yields loot that lets you customize your weapons for increasingly destructive loadouts.

The game is coming to PC, Mac, and Linux via Steam, PS4 via PSN, and Xbox One via XBLA in Q2 2016.