Playing Every Game in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality
PEGBRJE: ‘Terri-fried’ and ‘Blood Bullets & Ballet’
Last one to round out this strange year.
Terri-fried is an infinite arcade survival game created by PolyMars, a solo game dev in the USA. In this title, the world has been wiped out save for a single entity; an egg. The only way to save the last hope is for this egg to not be destroyed, no matter what. At least, I think so.
In a strange twist of fate, this is not necessarily a ‘platforming’ game, even if it looks like one at first. The egg will fall from the top on the first platform, and players will try to hop between the platforms to collect the points and keep the run alive. This is done not with WASD but with the mouse in a slingshot-style by dragging towards a direction while drawing farther away to get more power.
It takes a bit of getting used to as the actual jumping is not a 1–1 comparison: the angle and the force created by the line that players are drawing is not the actual amount of force applied, nor is it the exact angle. I found that many instances of when I feared I would overshoot would actually get me exactly where I needed to go.
That’s kind of it. Terri-fried does not make any implications of being a game that is anything other than a challenge of survival. The more points you get the better, but there is no end unless you succumb to the lava below.
The unique part is more the amount of devices that it can work with, as there are DS ports for the game.
I still cannot believe that I typed that out with my hands. What a timeline.
Nevertheless, if you are unsure, the browser version of the game will give a great indicator if you want to sink in hours accidentally.
Blood Bullets & Ballet is a top-down single-stick shooter created by NebulaProjects, the studio we just talked about yesterday comprising of two indies. This time, players will take on the roll of Pavlova, a ballerina and detective hoping to conduct a mafia sting through her unique way of spinning and shooting.
As a ballerina, Pavlova has a killer pirouette — along with two coloured guns that she can fire at any time. The only input device that matters here is the mouse, as moving the cursor will direct Pavlova on where to go while she gets in to position to start firing.
While spinning, players can use either the right or left mouse button to fire the corresponding gun. Obviously Pavlova does not stop spinning, which means that angles are a tad tricky to figure out — and that’s before one needs to worry about remembering which button corresponds to which gun.
This leads in to the importance of the gun’s colours; the mafia members are also colour coded. Apparently there are two types of bullet-proof vests, and only the gun that matches that colour is able to pierce it. That means that those wearing white need to get shot by the white gun, or nothing happens. This creates a strange balancing act as the player needs to get Pavlova in to position and wait for the right rotation in order to shoot, all while dodging the bullets of those firing at her constantly.
Once a single gun runs out of ammo, both are reloaded immediately to add even more complications to the formula, although there are no limits to the bullets used. After all, the mafia are seemingly infinite so you might as well have ‘seemingly infinite’ ammunition.
Similarly to their last project, Blood Bullets & Ballet is a small yet intriguing game that uses its single mechanic to create a solid experience. Unlike BackFire, there is a stronger focus on the setting and aesthetic thanks to the very nature of a ballerina performing mass murder of mafia members.
Bullets and bodies will litter the ground, along with the broken table pieces and the shards of glass from missed bullets. It’s all a silly yet fun time that is also weirdly difficult thanks to the constant rotations.
If you like this style of game then you might be right at home trying it out.
Note that not only is the entire game in Spanish (not a problem, its relatively easy to figure out the controls), the game also could not be installed through itch.io’s client. It’s small though, so just download it from the website!
That is a wrap for 2022. I’m going to be taking off next week to celebrate and sort out a few things before the New Year officially begins. I’m uncertain if I’ll be back exactly for January 2nd, so I hope you all have a Happy Holidays!
