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

Screenshots

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

Screenshots

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

Screenshots

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

Screenshots

Lyssandra and the Amplegores

A lab accident has caused an outburst of Amplegores, a mutated species consisting entirely of their own blood. You're Lyssandra, aka "Dog". Get in the GunCycle and manage the population!

The game contains 30 different weapons with defining characteristics, such as the ability to burn, drown, electrocute or poison foes. You can choose to play two gamemodes. Arcade Mode gives you a full clip of any of the guns at random - when you empty it, you get a new one at random. Or Challenge Mode sees how good you are with individual weapons by giving you infinite of that and 1-5 star target kill counts. There is also an Arsenal where you can read up short descriptions on each of the weapons you've encountered.

Music is by dtrx creations, sound effects are from multiple royalty-free sources. Everything else - all programming, graphics, font work, design etc is by me.

Lyssandra and the Amplegores was an entry into GMC Jam #9, where it came 6th.

Information

System: Windows
Price: Free
Music: Petriform (as dtrx creations)
Fonts: Allison James (Vermin Vibes Redux, Vermin Vibes 1989)

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Reviews

“It controlled well, looked great, and had so many guns... I don't really see any flaws in this game.“ - speedchuck
“This game had so much replay value for a jam.“ - Monstr Gaming
”Great music/graphics, and many interesting weapons.” - greep
”Love this game! Amazing that it was made in a single weekend! Awesome job!” - RekNepZ
”Very well polished, and a great entry.” - Feerple
”Gloriously violent, and deceptively simple looking.” - Oracizan
”Quite a fun shooter. I especially liked the diversity of guns in this game.” - imef
”Really good entry - nothing less expected from NAL.” - Diptoman
“Polished and fun action game. […] I liked the ample supply of firearms and all of the visual effects.” - Mr. RPG
”The intro was funny. Nice selection of guns.” - dadio
”The best use of Memes I have ever seen.” - Mr Magnus

Screenshots

Aardvark Cwm

Take Nergar the Icelandic Aardvark through the Welsh valleys, solving people’s problems.

This was an entry into GMC Jam #6, where it came joint last. I did, however, win Best Devlog. Since the GameMaker Community that #6 was held on is gone as of December 2019, here it is for your benefit:

Saturday
01:08 Started game!
01:25 Wondered if maybe I should sleep before continuing...
01:32 Still wondering. Still drawing things.
01:52 Title screen made. Bed heavily required.
01:59 I'm going to wake up and wonder what the hell I was thinking. I'll roll with it anyway.
02:00 1/72 hours elapsed. Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep nowwwwww
05:00 (approx) Dreamt about turtles
11:00 Woke up
11:30 Started font for game
12:00 Skype call with parents. 80 minutes long!
14:00 Finished the font
14:28 Basic dialogue popups made for game. See new screenshot!
14:32 Listened to El Chombo: Chacarron. Inspirational
14:35 Now ELO: Mr Blue Sky. That synth bit should be the whole song, screw the singing
14:51 First mission complete. Dadio makes a cameo
14:59 Added cameo from '90s Britcom "Bottom"
15:38 Proper actual mission system in
15:40 Achievement system in. Just Ctrl-C+Ved the mission system
15:53 Hot policewoman added
15:59 Mission 2 added. The bush has eyes for a reason.
16:32 Some achievements added. Pretty arbitrary stuff
16:52 Game now contains a third mission. It centres around an aardvark in a bikini
17:02 Added the fifth achievement.
17:04 Went into the living room to intimidate Nocturne with my game's content so far
17:09 BBQ-flavour Llama Baked Bites. Tasty
20:40 Found some lovely background music by band Snack Hour on Soundclick
20:59 Finished! Six missions, 10 achievements. Also has speedrun tracking

Information

System: Windows
Price: Free
Music: Snack Hour
Fonts: Allison James (Aardvark Cwm Type)

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Reviews

“Strangely addicting game, I liked it.“ - CaptainLepidus
”The funny awesome one” - TheUltimate
”This was actually fairly entertaining. A lot of the humour is pretty ridiculous though, and much of it I just don't get.” - fyaopo
”This one is great if you're looking for a good laugh.” - brighteyes
“The text seems to be filled with British inside jokes that don't make any sense to someone like me.“ - RekNepZ
“I really am not sure how I got some of the achievements, but I got them.” - Follomania
”Figured I'd get this one out of the way first since it looked a bit offensive.” - Spydog
”I ended up just walking around apparently solving problems that I didn't know I had.” - Rusty
”The game was funny, vulgar, self-referential, oddly drawn, and reeking of low effort.” - speedchuck
”You're a terrible person. I am too, so I had a couple of chuckles.” - Zeddy
”*reads warning* "Oh it can't be THAT offensive..." *plays game for a minute* "..." *chucks truckload of bricks at NAL*” - 11clock

Screenshots

Innoquous 4

The fourth in the series of gravity-flipping platformer games, Innoquous 4 is over four times the size of its predecessor! 75 levels with five distinct game modes adding challenging twists to already challenging levels, not including the added Speedrun mode – complete the entire game as quickly as you can!

Also includes stat tracking, options, and help.

Information

System: Windows
Price: Free
Music: Rolemusic
Fonts: 4th and Inches, Georgia

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Reviews

“This game is perfect” - taha_sbt
”This game is Cool! Not to mention, a bit Awesome!” - Ace-Pointer

Screenshots