Best Of #ScreenshotSaturday: January 2017
Every month, Pop Geeks looks through the extensive entries to #ScreenshotSaturday – screenshots of games that are posted to Facebook and Twitter every Saturday under the #Screenshot Saturday banner – and brings you some of the best indie games that are worthy of your attention, all in a listicle form counting down to our favorite. Welcome to the first, and hopefully not last, edition of The Best Of #ScreenshotSaturday! Not see a screenshot from the last month that you thought was interesting? Let us know below!
Eon Alter
Explore the lavish dungeons and tunnels that stretch below Tarnum Fortress and conquer dozens of unique quests and challenges. Prove your worth on a tactical battlefield, and overpower your foes with strategy, magic and martial prowess. The Eon Altar’s defenders are many and they are deadly. Choose to cooperate with your allies or deceive them. Engage them in player to player dialogue to expose the truth in myths and legends, and guide your hero to their ultimate destiny or defeat. The game has a number of features, including:
- Receive personalized secret thoughts from your character direct to your smartphone
- Choose whether to share personal information with your friends or use it against them
- Upgrade and manage your character without interrupting other players
- Control the action from your smartphone with context sensitive information
Elothia
Leveling is essential feature in every RPG game from prehistoric times to nowadays. In Elothia when you get enough experience to advance to the next level, you don’t get any new stat points like you usually would. Instead you raise your trainable stats cap and get older in-game. So the real strength of the main character is unlocked by interacting with the world itself, like battling, exploration and more, while the level shows the overall unlocked potential of the player. As an addition, players get one skill point when they level up. Training is much as it is in the “real world.” So if you want to raise strength, you need swing your sword more. If you want to raise you magic, use your spells. It’s simple, yet an interesting way to breathe some life into the mechanic of level up = stats up. This mechanic is inspired by the awesome mmorpg from ancient times “Ultima online.”
Skills in Elothia are the main differentiator between player play-style. We don’t have classes in the game, but instead, we leave the paths open for free choice, so the player can create many classes, from ordinary warrior or mage to some combined exciting dual, or triple class characters. The skill tree is in the form of focused spiritual rings, which could be opened by meeting stats requirements, or by certain storyline choices, or by some completed deeds. Each spiritual ring is tied with specific place in the world. This mechanic is influenced by “FFX”, but from fresh new angle, and it connects the player with the game world itself.
Songbringer
Songbringer is a 3/4 perspective, pixel art, sci-fi, action RPG with a Zelda-inspired, procedurally-generated overworld and ten dungeons. The game is single player or two player local co-op. Players enter a six-letter world seed when starting a new adventure. The seed is used to generate the world dynamically and is deterministic. Entering the same seed will always generate the same world. Over 308 million worlds are possible. Progress in the game is made by discovering new items which enhance the player’s abilities and grant access to new areas.
Some items can even be combined, for example the fire cube crafted with the tophat becomes a flaming top hat. Combat in the game is action-packed, including many kinds of weapons such as the nanosword, the boomerang-like top hat, the ghost sword projectile, bombs and the blink orb teleportation / dodge skill. The player encounters various kinds of enemies, crowded mobs, and gigantic bosses. Puzzles keep the gameplay fresh and varied. In some dungeons, the player loses the sword and must solve the dungeon’s puzzles before being able to get back to the overworld. A deep and immersive story underpins the Songbringer universe. The story is told from the perspective of two friends: a human named Roq and a robot named Jib.
Epitasis
Epitasis is an exploration puzzle based game. Quickly thrown from your normal life into these distant and far off worlds, you must solve ancient and cryptic puzzles and search for treasured relics in hopes of learning what happened to the ancient civilization that once called this place home. If all goes well, you may just have a chance to get back to your own. Epitasis is being developed by Lucas Govatos using Unreal Engine 4 and is intended for a PC, Mac and Linux release.
Stealer
After on and off progress since 2011, developer 08 Games is finally revealing enticing new footage of STEALER (or 5734L3R), an atmospheric cyberpunk adventure set in a world of robots and oppressive security, and weaponry, stealth, hacking, and platforming are your means of navigating danger.