The film noir style has not always been in vogue, but this is not the case lately. Popularized by works of media such as Max Payne and Sin City, noir has been on the rise. As a genre, it conveys a sense of nostalgia while allowing the content producers to use all that vocabulary they learned in college. However, most games tend to miss the mark when it comes to noir. Not In Another Brothel, though. This game hits it right on the money, which is all the more confusing given the absurd premise. Chasing after dames across the city, you must use your gun which fires crates to go through each level.

You move around with WASD, and aim/fire with the mouse. Crates come from your gun and have physics modeling. This means that to progress you will be building structures that you can climb! Given that your character has a jump approximately equal to the size of a single crate, he'll definitely need all the help he can get. If you get stuck (such as accidentally burying yourself beneath a pile of crates), simply press R to reset the current level. Gather the dames and touch the exit to finish a level! If you exit, you have to start over from the beginning, so keep that in mind before turning the game off.


There's a classic sort of platformer where the amount of colors on the screen is about as much as the pixels themselves. These ancient games were clever despite their limited graphics, and often more clever than the kind of games you would expect today. Jumpman is in the style of those games, but instead of simply copying it, Jumpman adds new layers of mechanics and creativity to a tired formula. There is nothing at all wrong with this sort of innovation, and Jumpman is one of the best indie games we have ever played, freeware or otherwise.

Jumpman has no story, and we like it that way! It is merely a series of level paths for the player to progress through. You move around with the arrow keys and use space to jump. You can also rotate the entire world with the A and D keys. The game has a variety of obstacles to overcome, such as different types of enemies, and an equal amount of puzzle elements, such as blocks that kill you, pieces with standard physics, and recursion along the level edges. It can be pretty freaky to see all the duplicates of yourself, and even stranger to move within their area!


There's not many indie games that absolutely demand that you play them with a friend, but Social Experiment is one of them. When your girlfriend is kidnapped, you set across the world to rescue her from the clutches of her captor (the "freaking spastic loonatic" Magic Man) with your best buddy in tow. Along the way they must solve a variety of puzzles to continue, bypassing all of the craziness in their search for the main character's true love. It's not too hard, has nice pixel visuals, and some great music. What's even more amazing is that it was made by a 15-year old!

Both characters are controlled by the keyboard, with WASD controlling Wilks and the arrow keys controlling Malky. When in single-player, Z switches the character being controlling and X toggles between "stop" and "follow". While following, the AI-character will automatically jump over obstacles, even invisible ones. On top of these, each character has a special move: Malky can bounce using Wilks' noggin, and Wilks and smack things with Malky. As said above, this is a game best played with a friend, and some parts of the game are impossible without either a buddy by your side or being able to focus on both characters at once.


Once again there is proof of the overreaching influence and inspiration that Cave Story provides to many a newcomer to the indie scene. Astatine is this proof, as the developer outright said that a combination of Quake and Cave Story inspired him to create this excellent action game. And excellent it is. While not entirely creative with the story (it takes place is some nightmare land called the Forbidden Lands, for goodness sake), it does not suffer from bad pixel-work, poor audio, or terrible execution. No, it's just where it should be: not too complicated and caught up in being pretty, but rather focused on making a fun experience for the player.

The player controls the titular character, who wakes up with no memory of who he is. He then promptly begins his trek through the environment, figuring out why he can't remember anything and why exactly there are so many zombies and evil creatures around. Not the best story, but it serves as a familiar framing for some fun 2D platforming and shooting action. The two main complaints that I have are that the collision detection is spotty and that the animations move very minimally. It feels like they could move a lot more! Regardless, it's an entertaining game with a lot going for it.

For more coverage on indie games and the scene, keep an eye out for Independent Minds at the same bat time, same bat channel. Also check out Freeware Friday and our indie category for some excellent freeware games and indie news, respectively.