SpecialEffect's accessible GameBase

The Gamma IV competition has seen the creation of 154(!) new one-switch games. For the moment only some of these have been made publicly available. Here's a list (with thanks to "newton64" the TIG Forums) that is as complete as I can make it today:

Gamma IV Games (78 of 154)

The Six Winners:

• Silent Skies by Spyeart
• Poto & Cabenga by Honeyslug
• 4Fourths by Mikengreg
• B.U.T.T.O.N. (Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally OK Now) by Copenhagen Game Collective
• Gamma IV: The Game by CACTUSQUID.com. SPACE bar to turn 90 degree angles. Hit the target game with unique visuals. Excellent game again requiring a high-degree of skill. Can be slowed down considerably using CPU Killer.
• Faraway by Steph Thirion

See IndieGames.com for an in-depth write-up of the six winners, as played at the GDC expo floor. It seems that some of these games will not be publicly released for some time.


Some of the best available games:

• Bejeh! by Mehdi Bahrami. SPACE to drop/catch. Fun rag-doll physics game where you need to get through simple mazes by catching and dropping a man to get him to a target area. Pretty good!
• BUDDY-ROCKET by Delaney. Z and M for left and right thrusters. For one player able to control two buttons or two players using one-button for co-operative play. Very unusual exploration game that will take a lot of skill at the players own pace. No sound.
• Dracula Cha Cha by Infectious.com. SPACE to jump, dance, karate chop, play stone paper scissors! Huge fun!
• Dr. Sanjay Gupta's Wacky Adventure Inside of a Human Body by The Chen Brothers. SPACE to rotate body 90 degrees (to affect the pull of gravity on Dr. Gupta). Requires swift pre-planning and a lot of skill.
• Eastwood by tso. Two joypads for two players (any button from 1-4 aka A,B,X or Y). Highly stylised fighting game. Fun but sorely lacking sound at present.
• Fish Face by Tecknopants. "Z or Down to swim towards the depths. When you let go, buoyancy will be the primary force against you, and you will be launched upwards. Go deeper to clear higher jumps!" A Very challenging game but likeable.
• Flydrill by Axcho (not currently available). SPACE bar or LEFT MOUSE CLICK to flap / drill. Great game but presently requires a very high degree of skill to play well.
• Half-PI D Mini-Golf by Super Sidearms. Joypad button one to choose your strength of shot. Very good golf game with unusual physics. Strength of shot indicator is quite fast and can not be slowed down. Lacks a keyboard mode.
• High High Rockets by James Montagna. SPACE bar and SHIFT for Player 1 and Player 2 (or if joypads connected button 1 on each controller). Really sweet co-operative platform game that is amongst the most accessible games here. Really nice.
• Impulse by JPH Wacheski. Q, P, Z and M for one to four player game. Really unusual competitive space game where you battle to collect the most power-orbs(?) and can affect gravity by turning stars on and off by crashing into them. Lacks sound.
• Lovely Lovely Lasers by TCKsoft.co.uk (not available). SPACE bar, RETURN, 1 and - for players 1 to 4. Cross between Pang, Hungry Hippos and Space Invaders. A lot of fun although requires excellent tracking skills to play well.
• Malco Monogatari by Sergio and Liam. SPACE bar to thrust up and shoot-out a burst of fire. Sideways shoot-em-up that requires fairly quick presses but great accuracy is not needed to complete.
• Men on the Flying Trapeze by Kloonigames. LEFT SHIFT (Player 1) and RIGHT SHIFT (Player 2). Hold to affect the speed of your spinning. Tap to let-go of your trapeze. Tough but fun remake of The Amzing Flying Brothers.
• Pax Britannica by No Fun Games. A (Blue), F (Red), H (Green) and L (Yellow). Superb strategic shoot-em-up. Decide whether to deploy different attack ships or to increase the production power of your Battlestar Gallactica like craft. Hugely atmospheric and excellent fun for one to four players.
• Press Button To Live by Iain Hendry. SPACE bar to choose to do what is written on-screen. Do nothing to do the opposite. Live a variety of lives. Text only and requiring good English skills and quick reactions. Interesting!
• Rocket Frog by Ominious Developments (not available). Left Mouse Click or joypad button 1 to leap or rotate. Very likeable work in progress.
• The Night Balloonists by Spooky Squid Games inc. 2-4 player inky-balloon battle. Requires accurate visual tracking and quick switch skills.
• The Underground by Albey Amakiir. SPACE bar to switch direction. Cerebral grid based game where you try to get as many arrows travelling on your underground network as possible without crashing. Not fast, but very difficult once the grid begins to fill up.
• War and Peace by Stéphane Bura. SPACE bar to switch between War or Peace to try to see your country develop. Curious game.
• Wheelchair Curling by Scott McKay. SPACE bar for one or two players. Excellent version of Curling with some useful accessibility features.
• ZagiZigi (PC and Mac) by Girl Flash. SPACE bar to change direction. Highly polished race through a maze game, although requiring very quick reactions at the moment.

More games:

• Bibababoa (Mac only). No idea. No Mac to test this with.
• BiBimBap Arcade by imwill. SPACE to steer. Fun idea but very hard and unfair at times. Three old-style arcade games stand next to each other (Pong, basic driving game and a basic shoot-em-up) which you can move between.

• Boogie Woogie by Bobby Frye. SPACE to aim/release. Abstract game of skill. Get to the top whilst avoiding red blocks. Needs fast reactions.

• Girlfriend VS Boylfriend by team Miko. SPACE to block. Very simple retro styled game where you try to block the various items your angry girlfriend throws at you. "F" for fullscreen. Lacks sound. Requires fast and accurate taps.
• Ghost Planetoid by Awkantun. 3D space-marine vs. wierd alien craft battle on mini-planet. SPACE BAR to play. Needs fast reactions and high-button skills.
• C4Ke by Alec. Player 1 - Q or W; Player 2 - Z or X; Player 3 - O or P and Player 4 - . or / to fire. Four player castle battle game. Presently very tough to play.

• Convey, Or: The Countdown by Bob Clark. SPACE BAR to flip. Very buggy platform game. Some good ideas but unfinished and unplayable at times.
• Dark Matter Engine Race by Attribute Clash. Joypad only (button 1 and 2 on up to two joypads for a one to four player game). Shame not to have keyboard play. Press to stop your spinning directional cursor, hold then release to boost in that direction. Avoid-em-up game. Lacks sound.
• Inner Weather by Dom2D. SPACE bar to cope with mood. Lovely graphics and idea but too little variation in play. Tough.
• KTA by Andrew Marrero & Aaron Williams. Would not work.
• Laserback by Ted Martens. Tap SPACE bar to shield your monster, hold then release to fire a laser at the attacking helicopters. Fairly tough game.
• Meridian (PC and Mac) by Philippe Ajoux, Felix Park, and Patrick Sutton. SPACE bar to climb. Somewhat odd system timing system for climibing a mountain. Quite fun, but very difficult to reach the peak.
• Moon Harpoon by The Cube. Z, X, C and V to jump and run for players 1 to 4. Competive spearing game where your main battle may be with the controls. If mastered however, this is quite an enjoyable multi-player ZX Spectrum style game.
• Offa my lawn! by Captain_404. SPACE bar to bark orders. Great idea and graphics, but not very responsive nor fun in practice.
• Playing With Humans by Chris Zamanillo. SPACE bar, RETURN, Left CTRL and Right ALT for players 1 to 4. Various mini-games where you attack the human race. Tough to control at times.
• Radio Rover by 8cylinder. SPACE bar to select a movement from a mad Dance Dance Revolution inspired choice of directional icons. Original thinking for control but something of a nightmare to play.
• Reap (PC and Mac) by Tyrone Henrie. SPACE bar or LEFT click to move and jump. Unusual slow paced game of skill.
• RingRun (Mac only) by Kalio. Fine looking game, but no Mac to test this out with.
• Slither by pixlpoet. SPACE bar to slither left and right. Encircle the blobs to break them up then collect the contents. Nice feeling controls once you get the hang of them. Not half bad.
• Spite by John Flynn and Kevin Gadd. SPACE bar to interact. Micro RPG game with a small number of rooms to get through. Promising idea.
• String by Scattle. SPACE bar to veer anti-clockwise. Challenging game of skill, very much like Mind Winder.
• The Amazing Adventures of Super Dolphin by Revolutionary.com. Sideways scrolling game of skill. Hold to jump higher out of the water and later to fire lasers. Likeable game, but lacking sound.
• The American Dream by newton64. Z or X to play. Adult content. Very basic retro game. Not an awful lot of fun.
• There's No I In Team by David Koontz. Four player only co-operative space exploration game. Tricky.
• To The Moon! by Nick Sheets. SPACE bar. Pretty dull space-ship game. Needs some rapid taps and quick reactions.
• Toad Brawl by Toni Räsänen & Mika Karkinen. Left CTRL, SPACE bar, Down Arrow and 0 for players 1 to 4 (you have to press all four controls whether or not you want a four player game). Bizarre fighting game where you flail about with little control down the bottom of the screen.
• Tunnel Fission by boehmz. Hmm. Hold Z and M to start then use Joypad button 1 for UP and M to go DOWN. Two player co-operative game that's so-so.
• Velocity by Christoffer Hedborg. SPACE bar to steer left and right. Stunning TRON like graphics in this race to the finish but unnecessarily confusing control method. Frustrating.
• Verteidiger by nihilocrat. Missile Command with awful controls and another unnecessarily forced four player game. See Missile Strike for a much better one-switch version.
• Wake Tembac Up By Tembac. SPACE bar to play. Very tough game of skill with great 8-bit style music.

On-line web-browser games:

• ALIEN FALCON by Team ALIEN FALCON (Jason Rosenstock, Scott Anderson, Andy Nealen, CJ Kershner) - web-browser game. Requires Unity installation. SPACE bar. Tap to climb hold to dive. Some swearing. Difficult to catch birds, but no pressure if you don't.
• Five Seconds to Destruction by Refuge Zero. SPACE bar to hook and release a swinging rope. Tough!
• Globetrotters by Broken Radio Games. 1-4 Players using Q, X, O or M to boost their space-man towards planets. Requires excellent tracking skills, and fast reactions.
• Monster Monster Monster Party Party Party by Ludoko Studios. SPACE bar to turn invisible. Confusing game with irritating starting sequence that can not be skipped.
• One Button Tortoise Toaster by Kingbaggot. Original fun idea. Hold SPACE to toast your bread, the longer you toast, the higher it flies when you let go. The tortoise rocks constantly to help you adjust the angle you fire the toast at.
• Orbit by Rick. SPACE bar to thrust. Absurdly difficult mix of Lunar Lander and Gravitar.
• Winner vs. Loser by Foddy.net. Z or M for Player 1 or Player 2. Bit of a joke version of Track and Field hurdles. You'll fall over a lot, but it's only against the clock or a human opponent so anyone can play (badly!).

Some of the mentioned games, but ones I'm yet to see a download for:

Chop Chop Runner; Flea; Glorg; Lamp Bottle Pants; Obligatory Ninja Game; One Foot in Front of the Last; Orbit One; Oscilliobros; Shuttle; Spikeball Party; Time and Money; Vertical Anomaly, Walnut 4D.

Hard to digest? Don't worry. The best and/or most interesting are getting reviewed in the GameBase (albeit slowly).

And my favourites so far are:

Dracula Cha-Cha, Half-PI D Mini-Golf; High High Rockets; Pax Britannica and Wheelchair Curling.

So many of the games in and out of the best of list could still be made so much more accessible by making some simple tweaks and following this Gamma IV Accessibility Help Guide:

http://switchgaming.blogspot.com/2009/12/gamma-iv-one-switch-help.html

Would love to hear how any of you out there get on with these games. And the exciting/scary thing is. Tons more to come!

Last word for today from me. You can keep an eye on the missing games being announced here:

TIG Forum: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?board=32.0

and here:

Kokoromi: http://www.kokoromi.org/gamma4/

Night!

Glad to hear you liked Half-Pi D Mini-Golf! The latest version includes keyboard support (spacebar). We didn't want to release it with keyboard support for the competition, but now it's there :)

Ha! Just been looking for you on the web and failed until I saw your message. Yes, it's a great game! Thanks for writing it! One extra feature that would be lovely and would boost accessibility for players with slower reactions would be to have an option to slow the power bar down.

Three reviews just up in the GameBase for some quality Gamma IV games:

Half PI D Golf - 9 hole one-switch golf game like no other.
High High Rocket - 1 or 2 player super cute platformer with techno Eurobeat track.
Pax Britannica - 1 to 4 player strategic shoot-em-up.

Just added... Dr. Sanjay Gupta's Wacky Adventure Inside of a Human Body by The Chen Brothers. Malco Monogatari by Sergio and Liam The Night Balloonists by Spooky Squid Games inc ...to the top list. All three fine games.

The six winners have been announced:

http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2010/03/gamma_iv_games_announced_playa.html

Thanks for mentioning Playing With Humans, I just posted the final version which includes AI and audio. I also tweaked the controls a bit which you happened to point out. Drop me some mail if you have any further feedback.

Hello,

In-depth write-ups of the winning games over at IndieGames.com:

http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2010/03/indepth_gamma_iv_winners_at_gd.html

We just released a new version of Half-Pi D Mini Golf with the ability to choose the difficulty level between easy, medium and hard (using up/down on the DPad or keyboard).

Let us know what you think!

Fantastic update. Thank you!! I think this will open the game up further. Great work.

Just tried Half Pi D Mini Golf with the new update. Fantastic!

Download with the link above or at: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=11246.0

Great game Chris r.e. Playing With Human. Crazy but fun. Love the visuals.

My entry "The Amazing Adventures of Super Dolphin", now with Mouse, Joystick or Keyboard control. Free to download and play at:
Retrolutionary.com
If anyone knows where there is a list of all the games entered, please let me know, I would like to play the other games too!

Thanks for the update, Ian. Do you think you might add sound one day?

Re all the missing games, I'm wondering where they all are too. I'll contact Kokoromi to see if we can get the lot marked up here. Watch this space.

GlobeTrotters on-line and iPad game: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=11959.0 added to on-line part of list. Not a bad little game, but requires very quick reactions.

Winner vs. Loser added. Silly Track and Field game that can be quite fun in two-player mode:

http://www.foddy.net/WinnervsLoser.html

Set your switches to Z or M

One Button Tortoise Toaster: http://www.magneticboots.com/tests/OneBut.html - fun - but has a swear word on screen, as pre-warning.

Poto and Cabenga, one of the Gamma IV winners, has just been released on-line:

http://www.potoandcabenga.com

hold SPACE bar to dash / don't dash tap
SPACE bar to jump release
SPACE bar to jump (I think that's right!)

Much clearer in play. Click to give the game focus then use SPACE BAR - Use 'F' for full screen (seems to slow down a fair bit on my machine) and ESCAPE to return to windowed version. Very polished left to right scrolling jumping game.

Men on the Flying Trapeze:

http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/flying_trapeze

Player 1: LEFT SHIFT
Player 2: RIGHT SHIFT

A remake of The Amazing Flying Brothers:

http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/tafb

Gamma IV now available: http://cactusquid.blogspot.com/2010/08/norrland-gamma4-separate-downloads.html

One of the 6 winners, 'Poto & Cabenga,' reviewed here: http://www.gamebase.info/magazine/read/poto--cabenga_340.html

Flabby Physics, another GAMMA IV straggler. A good one though:

Reviewed here: http://www.gamebase.info/magazine/read/flabby-physics_677.html