This week's roundup is all about time. In TIMEframe, your time – in fact, the world's time – is slowly running out, while Speed Warp starts with 0 and goes from there. Other developers have toiled under the challenging conditions of the Indie Speed Run , to create memorable experiences in just 48 hours. It's been a particularly good week for browser games, all told, so be sure to make time in your busy schedule to get stuck in.
Mond Cards by Ryan Melmoth
You find yourself sitting at a table with an eyeless Devil figure, playing a rigged card game that's never fully explained. Behind him are two creatures: a horny Cthulhu-thing sporting an alarming posing pouch, and, like, an elephant or something. To save your soul from an eternity of servitude, all you have to do is win...yeah, good look with that. Ryan Melmoth's wonderful Mond Cards is a sorta text adventure with all the destablising weirdness of a Cactus game. It won't take too long to play through, but it will likely linger in your mind for quite some time.
inventor by Jack King-Spooner
Oh yes. Jack King-Spooner, one of my favourite indie developers, now appears to be making browser-based games, freeing his garish, gorgeous, hilarious works from the restrictions of RPG Maker. inventor is a collage of sorts; a car game, a Mario title and more collide in a short story about an inventor who ruins the world.
Pixel Being by Valdemar Schultz Andreasen
Essentially Thomas Was Alone, only without the story, without Danny Wallace and without a bunch of rainbow-coloured personalities. In their place: a collection of devious puzzles, revolving around the shapely hero's ability to contract, expand and...actually, to tell you the rest would slightly spoil the game. Some of the later ones aren't implemented entirely smoothly, but this is nonetheless a minimalist, block-based puzzle game that managed to surprise, and I didn't think I'd be saying that again. (Via Free Indie Games )
Speed Warp by Tom Medley
Candy Box. A Dark Room. Cookie Clicker. And now Speed Warp, the latest in the burgeoning leave-them-running-and-occasionally-click-on-stuff genre, which could admittedly do with a better name. The excellent Speed Warp is far more interactive than most, its early stages revolving around an arcade machine that simulates old...arcade games, only with ascii symbols in place of spaceships, bullets, paddles and blocks. Before long you're crafting and alchemising your assorted components/winnings, as you gradually unlock yet another mysteriously time-based and interface-driven world. (Via IndieGames )
TIMEframe by Tyler Owen, Clark Aboud, Alex Senechal
The world is going to end in exactly ten seconds time. (Sorry for the spoiler!) What do you do? It's not quite enough time to find and hug your loved ones, to come up with some good final words, or to flip off your most annoying enemies – but what if those last ten seconds were stretched out into ten whole minutes? The exceptional TIMEframe does just that, placing you into a world on the lip of destruction, and giving you ten minutes to take it all in. Everything except you moves at a crawl, so you have plenty of time to explore this strange location, to say hello and goodbye to the world, and to find the cause of its imminent demise. Can you do anything to stop it? A better question would be, if the world was about to end, where are you likely to get the best view? (Via Indie Statik )
