Playing Every Game in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality
PEGBRJE: ‘Dinos in Space’, ‘Zeph’, and ‘Fusion Shift’
Technically 2 games.
Dinos In Space is a puzzle game by Jon Saba that is exclusively for Mac. I do not own any Macs, and while I could run a virtual machine to attempt it that would somewhat fly in the face of my ‘no emulator’ policy. So if you have a Mac system, try this out if it looks appealing.
Zeph is a 3D puzzle game created by Grannus Games, an indie team in Ireland that came together while in university. Players will follow the titular Zeph, a solar being tasked with recovering mosaic pieces that will hopefully allow them to restart the very sun they came from.
Players will jump right in to a world of possibility as Zeph tries to navigate a world foreign an strange. Movement is floating and effortless for a being that came from the sun, but that does not mean they can go through everything and solve their problems. Instead, players must use the three abilities of Zeph in order to solve the puzzles of the land to find the portals leading to the mosaic pieces. These are based around three elemental types that many associate with a sun; fire for burning and heat, wind (‘gravity’) for control and movement, and life (‘light’) for creation. Each of these abilities can only interact with certain areas, which are all marked by the same glowy marker to give players some assistance when navigating. Thankfully the ‘wrong’ elements do not interact with the puzzle, so no need to worry about accidentally lighting the tree bridge on fire.
The key to Zeph is discovery and intuition, as you’ll be navigating across different biomes that do not always give a straight answer as to what the mechanic for the level is. As above, some times you’ll find yourself altering the direction of gravity without truly realizing that it would occur until it is ‘too late’. It can be a bit tricky because of this, and your choice of input device may heavily affect your experience, but if you want a relaxing game that has no expectations except for eventually finding a solution, this is a good game to chill to.
Fusion Shift is an action game created by halvardo13, an indie dev in Norway. Players are a cute little alien that preys on those that have guns — specifically, the enemies of each level. Armed with powers beyond our understanding, this little alien will go to work eliminating every person they come across.
As just the alien, players can move throughout the 2D space without a care for gravity — but with a major care for bullets. The enemies will zone in on the alien quickly, and it only takes one shot to ruin an entire level.
Thankfully, the alien has two abilities that allow them to survive, with the most important being the ‘Fusion Shift’ in question. By pressing LShift, the alien can take over the body of an enemy that is within proximity and turn that enemy against the others.
Now one might wonder; if the alien dies in one hit, how does one get close enough? That is where the second ability kicks in: time stop. By holding down SPACE, time can be stopped to allow for the alien to move and take over someone without threat of death.
Taking control of an enemy alters the controls slightly, as shift now ‘releases’ the enemy from the alien’s control (bringing the alien back to the world), space jumps for the enemy, and the mouse now aims the gun to fire. The enemy can also take more bullets than the alien can, so they can be a meatshield if need be. Shooting enemies and defeating them all will get players to the final step of each level: figuring out how to get rid of the last enemy.
Recall from earlier that the alien can hop out of an enemy? Well that’s the best part of the game; figuring out how to ditch the last enemy in a precarious position in order to actually finish the level. Since the alien has no weapons, they rely on taking out enemies with their own, but require the level’s hazards to delete the final person. This can involve leaving them in the ocean, dropping them in lava, throwing them off a cliff, and more. The thing is that the enemies may jump after the alien leaves, so do be careful that the enemy actually dies and doesn’t just hop back to safety by accident.
Fusion Shift is a strangely addicting game, acting more like a puzzle than an action game as you’ll spend most of your time figuring out how to send enemies off cliffs than playing the 2D shooting aspect. There are dozens of levels to go through, and the fun is trying to identify which enemies are the easiest to take over before getting mowed down while also being on the lookout for spiketraps to end the game in.
If you are a fan of those flash games of the past that involve a lot of puzzles in a shooter, then this might be a good game to grab.
There’s only one game left on this page, which has made this awkward . It would’ve been two and two but… well, you saw the one at the top.
