bare-minimum posts

Games with destroyable landscapes are always a favorite, and MinimaBomber is one of these games. Sharing much in common, both design-wise and visually, with the incredibly hard I Wanna Be The Guy, MinimaBomber takes it one step further and lets you sculpt the landscape through your wonderful explosives. It's a shame that it's so short, because it's absolutely excellent. Then again, it was an entry into the Experimental Gameplay Project bare minimum theme, so one can't expect it to be too long.

MinimaBomber controls like any other platformer. Use A and D to move left and right, and press S to jump. As you progress, you get access to new abilities, such as wall grabbing, airwalking, and double-jumping, which is a nice addition. You also have two kinds of weapons: bombs and rockets. Rockets home in on your mouse cursor, where bombs arc through the air as grenades. There's a little more to it, but why not just paly it yourself?

Despite bad translations, gamers can still enjoy games that are genuinely fun. Look at the Castlevania games, after all. Bactoriam is one of these games. It has a terrible translation, but the mix of traditional arena shooter gameplay and interesting physics make it a must play. It is, after all, an entry into the Experimental Gameplay Project's monthly theme of bare minimum.

Bactoriam's gameplay feels like a fusion of Osmos and any arena shooter. When you fire or move, you drain yourself of goo' If you run out of goo and take a hit, you die. You also lose goo every time you take a hit. It's a simple system that turned out extremely well, and is a great play for any fan of shmups.

Creating your own objects and customizing are all the rave lately, with games like Crayon Physics Deluxe topping the charts in terms of critical and commercial feedback. PaintShip, an entry into this month's Experimental Gameplay Project theme of bare minimum, is one of these customizable games, and is easily one of the best we have played. Best of all, it's entirely browser-based, which means you can play it anywhere you go!

PaintShip revolves around creating a ship, placing your components, and taking on missions. In practice, this comes out to drawing your ship inside a small frame and then placing the components anywhere in the frame. The components can be different colors as well, which changes the color of the things they do. Gameplay is simple, with your ship darting around to wherever your mouse is and attacking ships that your mouse scrolls over. THere are some minor movement issues, and it would be nice if there was a button to prevent yourself from firing, but all-in-all, it comes out to be a very excellent game.