There's always time for a good old-fashioned butt-kicking. Pretty much every game that isn't a business simulation revolves around this simple nugget of gaming truth. People love to beat up pretty much everything from crates to other people. Violence is inherent in the human race, much like ninjas and urban outfitters. Ace Wild mixes all of these into a well-done, yet simple, brawler reminiscent of Xbox's sublime Dishwasher: Dead Samurai. It's only in beta, but it's still great fun! Just don't expect anything besides fighting. Story is for wussies, after all. Fists all the way!

Aces Wild follows a boy fighting a bunch of ninjas in an idyllic setting. Easy! The controls are mostly intuitive, with four keys being used for actions: jump, heavy attack, light attack, and dash. You can clash with enemy attacks by attacking back at just the right time, but you can't actually block. Attacks are changed depending on which directional buttons are currently being pressed, and air combos are just as effective as ground combos. The only (minor) complaint with the game is that dash is a key rather than a double-tap. However, if you play on a gamepad, everything works great! A good gamepad to use is the Xbox 360 controller.


It's not many games that mix noir victorian-esque settings with traditional platforming and combat, but Arc & Malice is one such game. Continually updated by the developer with new content, Arc & Malice follows the travels of a fencer as he explores a mysterious mansion at the behest of a rather abusive ghost. The graphics are rendered in stark black with the background having the look of Old World dress print. In short, the art style is not but amazing, and even if the gameplay is relatively rote, it excels simply through the artistic vision.

You control you character in Arc & Malice using WASD for movement and KL for jump and attack, respectively. Holding a directional button while attacking will change the nature of the attack, and holding the attack button will charge up a rush forward. You can also do a rapid descending attack by jump, holding down, and pressing attack. Beyond combat, you can also jump off of walls, and there is a minor puzzle element through the use of keys opening doors. Nothing special, but certainly not bad!


Much like the recently released Infiniminer, Minecraft is a sandbox engineering game that revolves around the creation and removal of blocks from a landscape. However, much unlike Infiniminer, Minecraft is played entirely in the browser! It's still in alpha, and has no goal yet, but the thought of an impressive, Java-powered, three-dimensional, and shadowed (!) engineering game is giddying. There's not much you can do at the moment besides build, but new additions to the game are planned and in the works! Just make sure to capture some beautiful screenshots of your pixely creations to share with the world, as there's no save feature as of yet.

Minecraft is controlled much like a normally first-person shooter: WASD for movement, space to jump, mouse to look and perform actions. Two superfluous actions you can do is spawn yourself above the world and create a panicked blocky man to run through your creations. However, the main actions you will be doing is excavating, building, and changing blocks. Left click performs excavation and building, with right click toggling between one or the other. The number keys one through four change the block type. The four blocks you can choose from are concrete, dirt, brick, and wood, and are best used together in different configurations.

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.