Relevant links: complete version, enhanced edition


First off: do not confuse this with Dungeon Defenders, with an s. That is a 3D multiplayer game with some vaguely tower defense styled trappings, and which has gotten a lot of press. This is a straight tower defense game, done in flash, which never got any press.

dungeon defenderThe shtick is that you’re a villain in your lair with a bunch of pesky “heroes” coming to get you, so you set up defenses and traps to stop them. You lair is underground, so you can also dig tunnels and find treasure and precious ore.

It’s not the most polished game, and graphically it’s a little simple, but there are a few things I still like about this one: the digging mechanic is great. It allows for pathing manipulation and a means of earning bonus resources and a way to diversify the level design, all in a single mechanic.

This is also the first tower defense game that I know of which implemented melee units for stalling enemies in a particular spot. I’d never claim that it was the first, I play a lot of tower defense games but my knowledge is by no means complete. Never the less, I give this one credit for implementing that mechanic three years before Kingdom Rush popularized it.

Finally, there’s the protagonist unit which functions much like a hero unit in, again, Kingdom Rush. That’s fine and all, but what I really like here is the fact that the protagonist gets equipment (i.e.: loot) over the course of a level. This can really add something when you’re focused on defense but also running a side campaign to reach that tantalizing treasure chest juuust a little out of reach.

There are two versions of this. The original version is here, and is complete and fun. There’s also a Dungeon Defender Enhanced Edition with some extra features, along with some paywalled content. Which you decide to play is mostly about how tolerant you are of microtransactions, though it’s worth pointing out that the Enhanced Edition also has online saving. I find that to be pretty valuable with flash games.

words warriorThere isn’t a whole lot to Words Warrior, but the concept of taking words from a paragraph and using them to overcome other words in the paragraph is a little novel.

The whole thing will only take you 5-10 minutes to play though, and what game isn’t worth at least that much? I can think of a few. Don’t answer that.

Relevant links: game


There’s a movie called Dark Star. It’s a little boring, it moves slowly, but it’s a deserved cult classic for being uniquely weird. In it, a small number of sorely under qualified crew members putz around a spaceship – sometimes goofing off, sometimes trying to fix this or that, sometimes trying to convince their cargo, an overly smart bomb, not to blow up and kill them all. It’s written and directed by John Carpenter and the characters have a style that seems to be common among movies in which he’s involved: they’re not all that likable but at least you can recognize them for their flaws.

I hadn’t set out to talk about Dark Star, but you should watch it if you get the chance. I’m told you’ll enjoy it more if you’re high when you do so.

on the edge of earth 5000On the Edge of Earth: 5000 takes that concept, “poking around on a spaceship is fun,” and makes a video game out of it. (Yes, that is a picture of a guy sitting on a toilet.) It doesn’t move very fast and you don’t do very much, but it manages to be a good time anyway. It does have an actual objective, and that does involve blowing something up, and the developer said that the game was movie influenced (though without specifying which movie(s))… Well, you’re free to draw your own conclusions. What matters is that it’s an amusing little game that’s paced well, and manages to turn boredom into entertainment.

I’m putting this in the point and click category, despite no pointing or clicking. That’s not so unusual, there are quite a few games like this, but they don’t have their own genre and there’s really no need. In every other respect they are point and click games.

Relevant links: fansite, download


cave storyBy this point Cave Story isn’t exactly obscure. It’s the game that everyone points to when they talk about how great indie games can be, and they’re not wrong. I can’t offer any new enthusiasm for this title, but I’m going to post it here for the sake of completeness. Maybe there’s someone out there somewhere who never pays any attention to anything, but is for some reason one of the two people who comes to this site. It’s possible. If you are that person, you should play Cave Story.

In short: it’s a sidescrolling exploratory platformer which does the exploration part very well, the action part pretty well, and the story part… is just very well presented. Plot-wise it isn’t anything remarkable, but it puts you in an environment on a small scale, with a limited number of characters, and allows you to grow attached to the people and the place that you’re in before it starts to tear that down.

The original game was made by a single person, Daisuke Amaya, over a five year period and was released in 2004. For those of you who can read Japanese, that’s available here. For everyone else the best resource is likely cavestory.org – a fan site with loads of information in English as well as an extensive list of downloads, with the game available in many languages and for many platforms.

Click here if you just want to watch the thing and don’t feel like reading.


dragon ball z abridgedIf you’ve never watched Dragon Ball Z, that may be for the best. A little background: Dragon Ball was a cute show about an odd little boy with a monkey tail and a gift for martial arts. He goes on an adventure to seek out the magical dragon balls, which will grant a wish when all are gathered together, and along the way meets and befriends a comical cast of interesting characters. It’s a story loosely based on a classic Chinese novel, Journey to the West.

Dragon Ball Z is the successor to that show, and where it all goes weird. It turns out that the odd little boy is actually a space alien from a brutal race of space mercenaries, and he was sent to earth to exterminate all life. We discover this when his adult brother lands on earth to do just that and the odd little boy, now an odd grown man, must kill him in defense of the planet. And… also the next alien who comes along and wants to do the same thing. And the next one. And the next one. Naturally each villain has their own plot device, but the show is mostly about fighting. Lots and lots of fighting. So very much fighting. It’s infamous for that and a few other oddities, but above all for dragg i n g   t h i n g s    o  u  t. . .

Each fight with a main villain lasts for multiple episodes and the more the character gets built up the longer this takes. One particular villain gets a whole season’s worth of hype and bringing him down takes the entire season after that, with just the final fight between villain and protagonist stretching on for, I am not exaggerating here, fully nineteen half-hour episodes. That is not including all the episodes that the villain spends fighting the show’s minor characters before the protagonist arrives.

That said, Dragon Ball Z does have its moments. It can be funny at times, usually in the very brief periods between fights, and the fights themselves are kind of neat in concept if not in execution. The conceit is martial artists who are so very good at martial arts that they gain super powers, eventually learning to shoot fireballs and then learning to fly, and as the series goes on this snowballs exponentially. TV tropes calls this process plot leveling (or sequel escalation, or serial escalation), but I’ve always referred to it as the Dragon Ball Z Effect: late in the series the characters have grown so powerful that they need to make a gentleman’s agreement not to destroy the planet that they’re standing on over the course of their fight, something that they can do with casual ease. From a storytelling perspective this is awful and silly, but if you have an appreciation for just throwing the storytelling rules out the window in an effort to make something as ridiculous and over-the-top as possible then this can be kinda fun. For a while. For a little while.

We come back to that problem of dragging things out… You might enjoy something like this in principle, but chances are good that even if you like the concept you are not a time lord and willing to sit through hour after endless hour of dreary repetitive fight scenes. Well now you don’t have to: a group of fans got together and started re-cutting and re-dubbing the original episodes, removing an awful lot of cruft and adding a lot of their own humor. Dragon Ball Z Abridged (Youtube link) is not just a vastly improved version of the original series, but is great all on its own. The shell of the same story remains, they hit all the high points of the plot, but the characters have been satirized for comic effect and what used to drag on interminably is now reasonably paced. The aforementioned fight which lasted for nineteen half-hour episodes now takes only three, each about ten minutes long.

The abridged series is less serious than the original, clearly preferring comedy to drama, but to be perfectly frank the original had emotional impact more-or-less on par with professional wrestling: they needed excuses to fight, and that’s about it. The abridged characters are probably better described as caricatures but in that respect they have more character, and this gives the few tense moments a little more weight. Not a lot, it’s still a comedy.

At any rate, fans and others who have watched the original show certainly have the most to gain from the abridged version, but it does tell a complete story and so should be accessible to anyone. If you’ve never heard of Dragon Ball Z before now, this is still the version which I would recommend.

In recognition of the fact that I talk too much, I’m going to start putting relevant links up at the top of the longer posts. Just so you all don’t have to wrestle with a wall of text if you don’t want to.

I’m also going to try to do more and shorter posts. I feel this obligation when I’m posting something that I really enjoy – I feel the need to talk it up, to convince you that it’s something you should try. I have a list of things to post that is literally hundreds of items long though, and at this rate it’s going to take years. So more walkey, less talkey. At least most of the time. (I reserve the right to blather on about crap you don’t care about on an occasional basis.)