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Sony have announced a new Indie Games category on the PlayStation Store. As the name suggests, the new category will contain all of the latest indie games on PlayStation Network in one place.

In order to celebrate the launch of the Indie Games category, Sony are offering special deals on select indie titles. These are as follows:

• Retro City Rampage: 50% discount to all from May 7th to May 21st

• Papo & Yo: promotional bundle containing the soundtrack and game: 40% discount (55% for PlayStation Plus subscribers) from May 7th to May 21st

• Zombie Tycoon II: Free for PlayStation Plus subscribers for a limited time

The post Sony Launch New “Indie Games” Category On PlayStation Store appeared first on Siliconera.

It would be shorthand to describe Guacamelee as a melee-heavy Metroidvania with platforming puzzles built around dimension switching and your various combat abilities, with a touch of  early-Lucasarts-esque humor, but that description isn't quite adequate.

The ever-silent Juan is an Agave farmer living in a world of luchadors. His village is quickly attacked by skeletons led by the evil Carlos Calaca, his childhood girlfriend (given no name aside from El Presidente's Daughter) is kidnapped, and he's killed. Juan is not the kind of man to let that stop him. In the world of the dead, he comes across Tostada, an undead luchadora who gives Juan a blessed mask that turns him into an all-powerful luchador. He then comes back from the dead (with Tostada in tow, if you're playing co-op on the PS3 version, which unfortunately the Vita version, which I played for this write-up, doesn't have).

Upon escaping the land of the dead with the help of a portal, Juan sets off on a quest to stop Calaca from using el Presidente's Daughter from combining the worlds of the living and the dead to make himself the ruler of both (which neither world particularly wants to have happen).

Perhaps it's just coming off of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate, but moving and platforming in Guacamelee feels fast. It's not just that Juan moves at a decent clip on his own, but the game seems to be built around respecting your time. Run into a room with a number of bottomless pits you can jump into with an assortment of obstacles impeding your progress? Well, if you fall, Juan will be immediately returned to the start of the challenge with a bit less health. I far preferred this mode of checkpointing to Mirror of Fate's overly helpful (and ultimately difficulty-removing) method and it was nice that each death didn't lead to a game over screen.

Combat starts pretty simple. You have a three hit combo on the ground, a three hit combo in the air, and the ability to launch enemies with an uppercut, all mapped to square. Beat up on an enemy for a bit, and you can toss them in any direction with triangle (I was typically inclined towards tossing one enemy into a group of enemies). You can also roll through enemy attacks and air dodge to add a couple extra "hits" to your combo counter.

While you don't have a whole lot of options in the beginning, practically each ability you get doubles as both a new way to attack and a platforming aid. For instance, the Rooster Uppercut (mapped to Circle and Up) is a launcher that brings you skyward alongside your enemy, but it's also your de facto double jump (until you get the double jump, at least, but even then it still has its uses). Between the abilities you unlock and the special throws that you can purchase (my favorite of which is a back-drop that damages surrounding enemies), combat gradually gets more complex. You'll fight enemies while switching between the land of the living and the dead, only able to hit enemies in one dimension at a time (although you can grab an enemy, then switch dimensions do damage skeletons across worlds), using specific attacks to break enemy shields before you can combo them.

By the time you're dealing with all of these battle complications, you've got yourself a versatile enough moveset to start chaining together obscenely lengthy combos, using rolls, jumps, and special abilities to keep your combos going even when you would have knocked enemies away. While there aren't any real bonus to lengthy combos, it's just fun to do them and be rewarded with a Spanish word or phrase I can't understand and occasionally the creepily-grinning face of the man who teaches Juan his new luchador techniques and transforms into a goat.

As my last sentence might have implied, Guacamelee is not afraid to have fun.  Video game references and modified memes can be found everywhere. Whether it's a poster announcing a lucha match between Mega Hombre and La Mascara (who wears a mask that bears a distinct resemblance to Majora's Mask), the femme fatale's frequent winking use of double entendre, or the fact that you get new luchador skills by destroying "Choozo" statues, there's a lightness to Guacamelee that is kind of rare in games nowadays. However, despite the consistently lighthearted tone, there are still a couple moments in Guacamelee that I thought were kind of poignant. It's nice to play a game that's mostly humorous but isn't afraid to get serious when it needs to.

In fact, I like that each boss, while generally pretty funny, had their own little backstory that made them somewhat empathetic. Even Flame Face, a man who was cursed to have his head burn eternally by Satan for being too evil, had a moment or two when I kind of liked him. It didn't hurt that each boss fight felt right for the way the character had been established. My particular favorite was the fight with Jaguar Javier, the most no-nonsense of all Calaca's underlings. He's an honorable guy and fights you with attacks that aren't too far from your own, with the occasional colored shield and dimension switch. It just matches his personality and the fact that I had to learn how to read his attacks to beat him felt like an honorable match between warriors.

I think it's the little things that I enjoyed the most about Guacamelee. I liked that you have to teach yourself how to get through some of the tougher puzzles, as opposed to having the game tell you exactly what to do before you get there. I like that there are references to games in the very brickwork of Santa Luchita. I like that the game paced in a such a way that respects your time but isn't afraid to challenge you. Guacamelee feels like it was made by people who just love games.

Food for Thought:

1. Exploration mostly results in combat and platforming challenges, and beating those leads to treasure chests filled with cash, or what are essentially pieces of heart (or equivalent extenders for your special attack meter).

2. I liked that Juan's trainer/goat-man makes note of the fact that one particularly powerful ability he gives you "seems exploitable." Speaking of, Juan gains a number of very interesting abilities throughout the course of the game that I didn't want to spoil during this playtest.

The post Guacamelee: Not Afraid To Have Fun appeared first on Siliconera.

Independent game development has exploded clear across the globe. Though it could be argued that the hottest spot of them all is Toronto, Canada. That's where the trio of Jonathan Mak (Everyday Shooter), Mare Sheppard, and Raigan Burns (N+) helped to give birth to the modern North American indie game movement that is still very much in effect today.

Drink Box Studios is one of several PAX exhibitors to call Toronto their home, and were showing off a near complete version of Guacamelee! You might know it as that Metroidvania-esque platformer that stars Mexican wrestlers that we talked about last summer. The genre is starting to become a tad bit crowded, so how does it manage to stand out? Well, the usage of Luchadores certainly helps, but there are two other key distinctions, according to Drink Box Co-Founder Graham Smith: "First, it's a brawler, whereas most other examples are shooters."

As touched upon last time, you've got your standard attack, along with special moves, which includes uppercuts and other maneuvers that you'd find in a Mexican squared circle. Plus there's a dodge move, which allows you to roll past enemies and obstacles, "God of War style". Pretty much everything demands being up close and personal. The other big difference? It's a two-player game, something that was fairly tricky to pull off, and that's without also factoring its other major gameplay hooks; the ability to switch back and forth between two different planes of existence.

There's the world of the living and the world of the dead. Each has its own unique architecture and enemies; both must be deal with in its own . Again, orchestrating it all was no easy feat: "It was a real challenge, dealing with two characters, especially keeping them together. Having platforming and dimension swapping happening at the same time made thing even more difficult, because they kind of interfere with each other."

Making a manageable single player experience was equally challenging. Though after two years of development, Drink Box was able to figure a way, of not making the game too difficult with just one player, and not too easy with two. Still, there was one major concession: Originally there was going to be three dimensions: the world of the living, the world of the dead, and the world of nightmares. But it was just too much!" or concession:

Guacamelee! taps into the Mexican Day of the Dead (or Dia de los Muertos) esthetic, and rather unabashedly. Which begs the question, was there any trepidation about doing so? It's not every day in which a game is based upon an actual ethnic culture: "In the beginning we were very nervous. But Augusto, the lead animator of the game, was born and raised in Mexico, and he's has been our soundboard. We every idea by him, though he also comes up with most of the stuff anyway.

Also, when we started showing the game publicly, we also brought in a lot of Mexicans to get their , which has been very positive. Mexicans in general seem to be really behind the game; they're excited that someone is doing a game that taps into their culture. I reading something, I think it was a message board, where someone asked, 'Wow, why can't a Mexican company make a Mexican video game; why does it take a Canadian company to do one?'"

As the game's leads, Luchadores have long been an exotic delicacy that a few parties have tried importing in video game form already, but it's never panned out for them: "Actually, we ran into some difficulties, all because we have Mexican wrestlers as the lead. Initially, when talking to publishers about funding, some of them told us 'we already tried that, releasing a Lucha game and it didn't do well… do you really need one?'

But we didn't see it as a game starring Luchadores, just a game that happened to have them. It's a brawler set in Mexico, sot it just made sense to have such personalities."

Though, what about the chickens, what's that about? Specifically how ones character can transform into one (to get through tight age ways), plus how they play a fairly significant role in the game in general: "Well, we needed something to add to towns, to give them an extra bit of life, because they felt empty. We added chickens to make them feel alive. Then one day, someone in the studio, decided to control one of the chickens with the controller.

Next thing you know, everyone's controlling chickens! So it was decided upon that you had to play as one. Because, hey, everyone loves chicken!"

Both the PS3 and Vita versions of Guacamelee! were on hand. If you happen to have both, you can play the game on the big screen as you normally would, and use the handheld's smaller display as a dedicated map. Otherwise, the entire thing can be played on the go. It was recently announced (after PAX East) that both iterations will work in tandem, via Cross-Play. Which also means that for $14.99, you'll effectively be getting two games, one for each system.

The post Melding Platforming And Dimension Swapping In Guacamelee! appeared first on Siliconera.

Sony have announced that a number of indie games are headed to PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. A few of these are already available on other platforms but are now being confirmed for the PS3 and Vita alongside a other titles for PlayStation Mobile and even a couple for PlayStation 4. You can view the list of games below:

• Blacklight: Retribution – PS4
• Primal Carnage: Genesis – PS4
• Divekick – PS3 and PS Vita
• Spelunky – PS3 and PS Vita
• Velocity Ultra – PS Vita
• Limbo – PS Vita
• Metrico – PS Vita
• Sportsfriends – PS3
• Ibb & Obb – PS3
• Guacamelee! – PS3 and PS Vita
• Hotline Miami – PS3 and PS Vita
• Dragon Fantasy Book II – PS3 and PS Vita
• Thomas Was Alone – PS3 and PS Vita
• Luftras – PS3 and PS Vita
• Friend Network App – PS Vita
• A Virus Named Tom – PlayStation Mobile
• Beatdown in Treachery City – PlayStation Mobile
• Crumble – PlayStation Mobile
• Crystallon – PlayStation Mobile
• Don’t Wake the Bear – PlayStation Mobile
• Hermit Crab in Space! – PlayStation Mobile
• Oh, Deer! – PlayStation Mobile
• Rymndkapsel – PlayStation Mobile
• Ten By Eight – PlayStation Mobile

The announcement was made following Sony’s PlayStation Indie Arcade event at GDC this week, where the platform holder demoed a number of the aforementioned games.

The post Spelunky And Other Indie Games Announced For PS3 And Vita appeared first on Siliconera.

Guacamelee makes no attempt to mask its love for Super Metroid. The protagonist, a Mexican named Juan, has his own take on Samus's wall jumps (although explained less elegantly than in Super Metroid) and his own take on the morph ball (Juan adorably transforms into a chicken). At one point, I destroyed a Chozo statue (it was referred to in the game as such), prompting an angry goat to turn into a dimension-shifting wizard and teach Juan how to travel between two dimensions with L2 and R2.

Okay, so maybe some things are different.

The key element that separates Guacamelee from its predecessor is the combat. Juan's combat is mostly limited to square, but he can knock enemies into the air and juggle them, rolling around with the right analog stick to dodge attacks all the while. The circle button had a couple of special attacks mapped to it. An uppercut, performed with up and circle, which I thought made for a great launcher, and a belly-flop of sorts, which was a handy followup. These two abilities were also used in area traversal. The uppercut acted as a handy makeshift double-jump, and both were capable of breaking certain blocks that blocked progression.

When an enemy has been stunned, Juan can grab them with triangle and toss them in any direction (optimally at other enemies). Interestingly, these throws seem to disregard dimensions, so enemies tossed in one dimension can harm the silhouettes of enemies in the other.

Now that I've mentioned dimensions a few times, it seems appropriate to talk about the dimension-shifting mechanic. When Juan travels between dimensions, certain platforms and blocks materialize and disappear. This means that certain bits of platforming require you to be constantly shifting dimensions so you can progress. It was interesting to have to wall jump towards the outline of a block in one dimension, shift dimensions mid-jump to make the block appear, then jump from that block and shift dimensions to eliminate a wall that blocked my progress half a second before.

Combat would also utilize this mechanic, throwing multiple enemies at you in different dimensions. When you were outside of an enemy's dimension, they'd appear as either a black or a white silhouette. You couldn't hurt them, but they could hurt you, so combat became a constant dimension-switching balancing act.

The last boss, the aptly-named "Flame Face," was an exercise in dimension-switching. While he remained in one dimension (shooting his pistols at 45-degree angles), he called in minions in both dimensions. Every so often he would start pouring lava into the room, requiring me to switch into the other dimension in which it was just water. After dodging in and out of dimensions and punching Flame Face, my demo was over.

Guacamelee will be released for Playstation 3 and Vita.

Food for Thought:

The game's writing is pretty funny. For instance, when I first met Flame Face, he shot the ground repeatedly to show off...but couldn't fight me because he wasted all of his ammo on the ground.

The post Guacamelee Hands-On: Super Metroid Libre appeared first on Siliconera.