Playing Every Game in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality
PEGBRJE: ‘They Came From Uranus!’ and ‘DYO’
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They Came From Uranus! is an infinite space arcade shooty created by Projector Studios, an indie team in England. Players are the defenders of Earth, hoping to stop these invaders that are presumably from Uranus from destroying our four moons.
Hang on, when did we get four moons?
Regardless of our acquisition of satelittes, the game revolves around the player’s ability to fire off their limited rockets to blow up the various ships. Tapping/Clicking a specific location on the map will cause one shot to go out, followed by an explosion at that point. Any enemy that touches the explosion at any time will immediately be destroyed. This allows for clever rocket management, as the explosion can easily take out multiple ships at once if planned properly.
Of course, this comes with the caveat that too much thought can lead to the ships getting too close and possibly taking out a moon with their body. The issue is that the rockets can damage Earth if the explosion is too close, so destroying the ships before they can get within a certain radius is crucial for self preservation.
They Came From Uranus! is designed to be a quick little game, portable in any way and endless in its scaling. There is no end in sight, only a possibility to beat your high score through ending levels with as many rockets possible and, well, ending the level.
As you might be able to tell it was made with mobile in mind, and if you need something to kill time while commuting or just want to fight endless aliens, this might be a good game to grab.
DYO is a co-operative puzzle game created by Team DYO, a former indie team in Germany comprising of Josia Roncancio, Maximilian Warsinke, Ragnar Thomsen and Fabian Golz. Players will be taking on the role of a pair of minotaurs that are stuck in a series of labyrinthian mazes, hoping to escape and using some strange magics to do so.
Like most 2D ‘platformers’, DYO starts off relatively simple with players being able to move and jump around the map. The goal is to get both minotaurs in to either their own exit or to a shared exit.
After the first level, however, two pillars block each path to the exits, and only one can hop on the other to get over. This is where the first secret power kicks in; screen manipulation. Seen in a few games in the bundle prior, the puzzle is to use the map state for each minotaur and ‘lock’ it in place, creating two static halves of the map. Now the minotaurs can walk to places previously inaccessible because of walls or get around obstacles as if they had always been there.
It forces players to think about the labyrinth as less of a maze and more a malleable connection of floors, brought together through the power of ‘screenshotting’ as it were. The screen lock does have a stipulation, however, as one minotaur must be in each half when ‘undoing’ the lock — at least, at the start.
This core mechanic will drive players through most of the levels, even when other mind-bending mechanics are introduced, like being able to flip the locked ‘halves’. After so many ‘easy’ levels, the game splits in to three paths where the mechanics may remain, but the setting and situations become even more brain melting. Imagine if the perspectives of the two minotaurs changed and the screens were locked — what would happen? I’ll let your mind wander.
DYO is not a game I was expecting to fall in love with so fast. Its charming and sleek art style caught my attention, but it was the sheer brain-destroying co-op puzzles that kept me going. The fact that another person is subjected to the same confusion as you are is what makes it so much fun.
If you’ve ever done the co-op of Portal 2, it has the same feeling as that: chaotic attempts to solve problems, calming the other person down after you definitely didn’t screw up their plans, and the sheer elation to finishing a level only to realize that you are nowhere close to ‘winning’. If you don’t mind grabbing a guide at times, then you’ll adore this.
Oh, and it’s free. Yeah, the game and the collector’s goodies are free on both itch.io and Steam as of 2019. The fact that this game is free is absurd for the quality that you get; seriously, grab it.
