Revolver and Co

It's 2038, and a late maniacal inventor has left behind a legacy of madness - coordinates to an island full of wealthy robots, a gun that asks questions, and a widow that's hired you to answer them.

As Izzy Buspec, the newest recruit to Randco, take charge of their patented revolver as you explore the densely packed biomes of Corvynnia, bringing down hordes of docile robots in a money-making adventure. Every time you fire, you'll have to answer one of over 2,000 trivia questions with answers based on numbers, percentages, geography, dates, and more - the further you are from the actual answer, the more of its own ammunition the revolver will discharge. If you run out, it's back to Randco HQ to reload!

Revolver and Co features 105 story levels across 7 unique worlds and 12 question themes which will test you on a wide range of subjects, tied together with humorous debriefings between Izzy and her maniacal boss before the start of each mission.

Or if you're looking for more of a challenge, have a go at one of the Endless challenges, which pits you against a barrage of questions until you finally succumb to an empty revolver chamber. You can even unlock more Endless challenges by completing the story levels, including a gruelling hour-long session where the only thing you have to lose is time.

Information

System: Nintendo Switch, Windows
Price: £5.89
Music: Allison James
Fonts: Dan Johnston and Allison James

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Reviews

“the most addictive pub quiz simulator I’ve ever played“ - Nintendo Link

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Ne Touchez Pas 5

An extremely difficult game with one simple rule - do not touch.

In Ne Touchez Pas 5, you navigate 100 different levels with six different characters, all with unique control methods, attempting to reach the finish in one piece. Dodge deadly fans, evade eviscerating laser beams, and manoeuvre around moving segments, hit switches to open paths, collect optional bits and throw yourself through the void at the end of each level to progress.

Play as:

• L'Oiseau, a french bird that flaps its little wings!

• Jetpod, a tiny pilot with the lust for thrust!

• Rockit, a rocket built for destruction but here to kick some walls!

• Astro, an astronaut that doesn't know why they're here and is getting dizzy!

• Car, with a full tank of petrol and a six digit milometer!

• Square, just here to give people an easy mode!

Features 100 levels, 480 collectables, progress tracking, catchy music with a nostalgic easter egg for the four people that will remember the original Ne Touchez Pas games from the noughties, and a quit button for when you get stuck. You will probably get stuck.

Information

System: Windows
Price: £0.99
Music: Various
Fonts: Bebas Neue

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Reviews

“Hardcore puzzle with stylish minimalist graphics and hundreds of challenging levels.” - Gold Bear Games
”Navigate 100 levels in this very difficult, fast paced, simple action game.” - Mixer Games
”The game will require full attention and excellent response.” - Earth in the Porthole
”Good levels and obstacles.” - Games Without Borders

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Ink Cipher

Decode the cipher in Ink Cipher!

Ink Cipher is a sleek take on the puzzle sometimes known as the "cipher crossword", "codeword" or "codebreaker".

You're presented with a grid filled with words... except all the letters have been replaced by numbers. Each number represents its own letter. Using your knowledge of the English lexicon, fill in the letters where you can recognise words and crack the cipher!

Free edition includes 11 puzzles. Paid edition includes over 100 puzzles and counting.

Game is touch friendly (requires no keyboard input, although it is optional in the free version), intuitive to play for anyone, and contains a help screen on how to play.

Information

System: Windows
Price: £0.99
Music: Joel Steudler
Fonts: Gotham

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Reviews

“Really rather good crossword puzzler. 104 crosswords taking an average of 5 minutes to solve = 9+ hours of fun for a dollar. Totally worth it!“ -pb

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Maddening Euphoria

Ever feel like you're running around in circles?

Maddening Euphoria is a unique, challenging arcade game with randomly generated level design, in which you control brother and sister duet Mason and Millicent Zane as they flee from their own imagined realisation of their troubles in life - an inescapable wall of death - while avoiding bottomless pits, deadly spikes and speed-reducing pools of thick goo. Keep within spitting distance of the wall to receive a short, colourful Second Wind speed boost and gain the opportunity to be one eighth euphoric.

Not enough for you? Don your favourite fedora, go for eight pieces, and enter the multicoloured rainbow world of Euphoria where time goes even faster, spikes disappear and your survival speeds up dramatically. Or tackle some of the game's 150+ challenges ranging anywhere from trivially easy to borderline unfathomable.

Meanwhile, choose from 36 game themes (or throw it on Shuffle), each with themed poetry telling tales of your demise with anywhere from innocent whimsy to incomparable filth, and ranging from surprisingly clever to embarrassingly hideous. If you're English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, German, Spanish, Japanese, American, or from Bristol or Norwich like we are, I apologise profusely. Also have the game mock your failures in one of 51 ways of varying levels of Britishness. And all of this while other people's highscores pop up and you wonder what some people do with their time.

This is the flashiest, fleshiest Maddening to date. It even has some diamondy bits. And you can turn those off if you're only in it for the circles.

Just don't buy it if you suffer from epilepsy. (Please.)

Information

System: Windows, Nintendo Switch
Price: £0.99
Music: Various
Fonts: Allison James (Front Page Neue), Sickamore, Last Paradise

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Reviews

“The concept of navigating through a never-ending ball-in-a-maze puzzle is such a unique concept that for just $1USD, it’s a no brainer to download onto your Switch just to experience what innovating level design can offer.“ - Switchaboo
“No brainer under a $1.” - Sysgen
”A solid leaderboard chaser. […] Everything is a little over the top, but I dig it.” - Scrumpy
”A unique test of focus and visual-spatial awareness.” - MrSterious

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NAL Is Alive

Over 13 years, and over 130 games. All made by one hobbyist-turned-full-time developer. And now, for the first time, available in one cohesive package in the form of NAL Is Alive!

NAL Is Alive is a compendium containing everything by NAL, released under the NALGames pseudonym between 2003 and today, wrapped up in a launcher that also universally tracks your statistics and highscores for each game*, the latter being compared against the world in Steam-exclusive online leaderboards*.

Containing the good - Maddening Relapse 2! Hi Me Ro Me! Innoquous 4! Ne Touchez Pas! Prisnhax! Frankenfirearm! Lab Wagon!

And the bad - Aardvark Cwm! Gemocide! Clickfire!

...and almost everything inbetween! Ever wanted to work it on a pogo stick? SohoPogoHo hears you! Fancy going around peeing on people? Signal Failure! You can assume the role of a redhead killing your opposers of the world in Infidels, or become a little robot fixing the big robot it resides in with Titan Tighten.

Need a rhythm game fix while also improving your touch typing proficiency? Bullet Hills sees you typing to the music! Need a music game that has instead has no rhythm? Melodika gets you to suck a stream of icons into a recepticle to any track of your choosing! Need to inject yourself to help forget the nightmarous legion of female stalkers planning on kissing you to death? Yeah, that's in here too with Overly Attracted Stalkers. So's the one where you're a dog in a ball unloading clips of everything from water pistols to rocket shotguns at mutant bags of blood - Lyssandra and the Amplegores. And the one where you get to play an interactive advert for a fictional Japanese dish cleaner while a man touts its superior viscosity to you, Japanese Infomercial.

All of these and more, being taken through an ongoing process to bring them up to spec* - dropping the MIDI music from the really old stuff in favour of more listenable MP3s, knocking every game's resolution and FPS up to 1080p/60 (potentially again up to 4K in the future), improving their gameplay and their graphics, adding the aforementioned Steam leaderboards... you name it.

It's presented in a somewhat light-hearted way, and many of the games are pretty silly, but this pack truly does represent a huge chunk of my life - everything I made independently from being an 11 year old kid that had to download Game Maker 5.0 onto a school computer and bring it home on 3.5" floppy discs thanks to the speed of my home internet, to a currently 25 year old making games and other stuff full-time.

*Please note: not all games will support the update features during NAL Is Alive's Early Access development. As of writing, approx 80 games contain Steam Leaderboards, and approx 40 are completely upscaled to 1080p/60.

Information

System: Windows
Price: £7.19
Music: Various (see in-launcher)
Fonts: Various (see in-launcher)

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Reviews

“A really electic selection of games crossing over almost every single gaming genre imaginable with fun platformers, weird FPS experiments, music and rythm bonanzas and psychodelic puzzles all combining to create an amazing collection full of surprises.” - jamesbuc
”Very interesting archive. I love collections like this and I wish more independent developers would publish their own variations.” - Bez
”Peek into the creative soul of NAL.” - Feared Alien Voodoo
”Over 130 games but most of them are garbage... Better play Neo Geo” - goribVirus

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Won't You Be My Laser?

It's a beautiful day in this laserhood.
A beautiful day for a laser.
Won't you be my laser?

In Won't You Be My Laser, storm your way through 25 varied levels! Radical!

Race to the finish, avoiding sentient dystopian gun turrets that are, quite literally, loose cannons! Way past cool!

Push conveniently-sized crates filled with hovering skateboards, new formulas of your favourite colas and synthetic mullet wigs into the line of sight of those turrets to sneak past undetected! Killer!

Grab the pick-up sticks in each level, because entertainment doesn't get much better than that! Tubular!

And win as speedily as your fluorescent running shoes can take you to beat each star rating and win up to 5 stars in each level, because there's no such thing as 3 star ratings in the 80s - mobile phones, as you all well know, are only for telephoning your home landline and making your pants fall down when you forget your belt! So bad!

It's all there for you in Won't You Be My Laser, the fun, inexpensive little diversion set in the distant year 2000.

So pick up Won't You Be My Laser for just 99 of your American cents today!

Or buy it off of this weird internet thing that everyone's talking about. I'm not sure what it is, DOS doesn't think "cd internet" is a valid function.

Information

System: Windows
Price: £0.99
Music: Pond5
Fonts: Broadway, Allison James (Digital Display)

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Reviews

“At $0.99 the game is a definite buy.” - Sam Radley
”Simplistic and very cheap, and gives a good hour or two of achievement-hunting gameplay.” - King Bee
”Level 18 was my vice for the longest time! Arg!” - Poyzo
”No.” - kijb

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Innoquous 5

Innoquous 5, the fifth in the game series that began with 2008's Innoquous, is a huge puzzle platformer... with a twist! Hit a gravity arrow or jump into a flipper and you can rotate gravity, opening new paths through each of the huge collection of levels!

Make your way through 175 levels (100 brand-spanking new to the game, 75 from Innoquous 4) riddled with alternative paths and shortcuts, encountering tens of obstacles, unique puzzles and a need to invent some bizarre strategies to finish them!

All 175 levels are playable in six game modes, for hundreds of hours of content:

• Standard: Get to the exit. That's it.

• Bunny Hunt: Find the hidden bunny trapped in a crate somewhere off the beaten track.

• Conditional: Obey a certain restriction in finishing the level that will force you to undertake new routes.

• Time Limit: Get to the exit as fast as you can to obtain a gold, silver or bronze medal.

• Fiery Floors: Complete the level with added flooring and obstacles to make your life difficult.

• Chaser: Complete the level while a deadly clone of you is always one second behind you.

On top of that, there are multiple groupings of the levels in both Speedrun and the new Permadeath mode, in which you either see how quickly you can complete the entire grouping, or see how many you can complete before you die.

Find the secret note in each of the new 100 levels. They're never clear - some will even require you to perish to obtain them!

Each one will unlock a line of a poem explaining how you found yourself in this bizarre world, who sent you here, and what happens next!

If you run out of levels, the game also comes with a full-featured level creator! Give your level a name, a creator, a description, and begin drawing! Place every obstacle found in the main game, give it a gold, silve and bronze time limit, a conditional objective, place the bunny somewhere, and generally do pretty much everything found in the main game!

You can then enter the Created Levels menu, where the game will display you all of your custom levels along with tracking completion, just as it does regular levels. Feel free to share your levels with others and build up a collection! (You can find your levels in %localappdata%\Innoquous_5 on Windows.)

Information

System: Windows
Price: £0.99
Music: See in-game
Fonts: Gotham etc

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Reviews

“This game takes me back to good old YoyoGames Sandbox days.” - Mors
”You can tell that the creators knew what they were doing and actually cared about making a game that didn't feel cheap.” - possessedCow
”I bought this on a whim, and I'm glad I did!” - sheab17
”Innoquous has clean visuals and many options available you won't find in similar games.” - h.barkas

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Maddening Overload

Maddening Overload is a fast-paced endless runner where the protagonist must escape from the ever-encroaching wall of his own insanity. Run as fast as you can while dodging pitfalls, spikes and dead-ends which all can prove fatal.

Ultimately you're doomed to succumb to the madness, but with 101 challenges to beat and 13 trophies to collect, you should try to outrun it for as long as you can!

And now, with the added dimension of multiplayer, the levels of insanity are more Maddening than ever.

Information

System: PlayStation 4
Price: £4.99
Music: Approaching Nirvana
Fonts: Front Page Neue (Allison James)

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Reviews

“Review” - Reviewer

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