My public love affair with the Ouya continues this week with my second Ouya report on five games that have entertained me recently. With an ever-increasing 384 games available (at time of writing) there really is something for everybody, and at only £99 it’s a bargain! Sure, you get some games that would embarrass a flash games website circa 2000, but there’s plenty of interesting and enjoyable titles waiting to be played. Here are five you should take a look at.

100 Rogues

Possible my favourite Ouya game thus far, 100 Rogues is a devilishly addictive turn-based dungeon crawler in which one of four heroes descends into mysterious dungeons with the instruction ‘go kill Satan’. Whether you choose to play as the Bruiser, the heavy whose half man/half dinosaur or the Crusader, who will get out of a pickle by calling his big mate God over to lend a hand, you’re guaranteed a new, fresh adventure in each randomly generated dungeon. The charming pixel art graphics make it pleasurable to watch as your chosen character takes on a varied conga line of foes, ranging from rats to spiteful golden genies and beyond. With combat that requires more intelligence from the player than simply having them smash their way through adversaries with brutish force, it should keep you transfixed for hours as you attempt to make it just one level further than you managed last time before you got rushed by a group of robot cowboys. I’m just eagerly anticipating the touted forthcoming addition of local multiplayer, which should add an extra layer of icing to this delicious cake. So eat up, dungeon crawler fans!

TowerFall

The Ouya exclusive that everybody’s been talking about, TowerFall is a 2-4 local multiplayer game that elicits the kind of fun that calls for rematches upon rematches. You control one of four generic characters in a generic environment, and each character is armed with a bow and some impressive athleticism. You have to shoot, jump and climb your way to victory, picking off a rival with a well-timed arrow or imitating the Italian plumber and caving enemy’s skulls in by jumping on top of them. With a varied selection of interesting power-ups fuelling exciting, unscripted gameplay, you could play thirty matches in a row, which is very possible, and they’ll all be different. Personally, I had much more fun with TowerFall than I’ve had with any triple AAA multiplayer game in years. However, despite a rather token single player ‘trials’ mode in which you fight dummies, TowerFall is only really to be enjoyed with friends. Also, you get one environment for free, and I can’t figure out for the life of me why anybody would pay the rather hefty price tag just for an extra dozen fighting arenas, but if it supports developers with exciting ideas, then I’m game.

God of Blades

God of Blades is kind of like a more combat-orientated serious version of Wind-up Knight, which I covered in the first Ouya Report.  It’s a hack n’ slash side scroller in which the main character auto-runs across the screen using different swings of his sword to take out encroaching enemies. God of Blades is very well presented, but I get the feeling that more effort went into the background to each level than the combat mechanics, which feel over-simplified and uninspired. I got through most of the levels I played only using upswing and block. It’s a typical example of style over substance, in which the background visuals and brief story sections in-between levels are more exciting than the levels themselves. It is very pretty though, and cheap, so I’d still recommend trying out God of Blades.

The Bard’s Tale

The Ouya is the latest platform The Bard’s Tale has been re-released on, and it’s probably one of the more complete games available on the little console, guaranteeing 20+ hours of gameplay. Seeking to lampoon RPGs, The Bard’s Tale combines humorous asides and parody based humour with clichéd gameplay.  As an RPG, it’s average, with environments and mechanics similar but vastly inferior to Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance style top-down adventuring. The Bard is armed with a lute, which he can use to summon minions to aid him in combat. The problem with this mechanic is that if a minion is killed in combat and needs to be re-summoned, suddenly the game turns into a Benny Hill sketch, with the Bard running around enemies with a lute, strumming furiously and trying to avoid getting a sword to the chops. There are moments that made me genuinely laugh, usually deriving from the stereotypical Scottish aesthetic, and the standard RPG gameplay is well-executed enough to be entertaining, but the lack of loot takes away one of the essential elements of the genre. I included The Bard’s Tale in the Ouya report because it is fun, and for the price it is very reasonable. If you own an Ouya and have an itch for a generic RPG that will keep you going for hours, you can’t go wrong.

Don’t Look Back

I try to save the most interesting and affective game until last. Previously, it was American Dream, developed in-part by Terry Cavenagh, and this week it’s Don’t Look Back, developed by Terry Cavenagh. There’s a theme emerging here. The description for the game says that Don’t Look Back is ‘a game about fantasy’, or more accurately, a game about the most desperate and hopeless fantasy we all have when we lose somebody we love. It’s free to play and fundamentally, it’s a minimalist re-telling of the Orpheus legend in which the eponymous hero travels into the underworld to bring his beloved back from the dead. It’s amazing that such a dense and meaningful story could be retold using simple visuals and difficult platforming. You control a small featureless person who begins the game staring down at a grave. He then begins a short and miserable adventure to save his loved one. Gameplay wise, Don’t Look Back consists of timing-based platforming and shooting. The main character has to navigate obstacles and avoid, stun or kill enemies in order to reach his lost love. The game is challenging, but its right kind of challenge. In the same vein as Super Meat Boy, failure is momentary, and before you can get angry you’re back in the fray. The boss battles are all inventive and satisfying to beat and taken just on gameplay, Don’t Look Back is highly enjoyable. However, the concept, told with no words, genuinely upset me. It’s a visualisation of the little flights of fantasy we have when we’re in denial in the face of death and we think ‘if only I could reach them. If only they would come back. If only I could do something’. It’s as heart-breaking as it is simple, and the end of the game, both subtly understated and powerful, will stick with me for some time. Who knew anybody could feel so sorry for a little white pixel man?

So the second of my Ouya Reports finishes thus: it’s looking good out there for the little cubed console.

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