Mars Attracts combines the Mars Attacks IP with Rollercoaster Tycoon to create a very strange and captivating zoo management game. When I tried this at The Mix, I found it was a pretty interesting idea. Aliens want to capture people from different time periods and put them into a zoo for other aliens to look at. To make this more of a fulfilling attraction, aliens also can do experiments on the humans to see if they would make good rides. The feel of Mars Attracts is very much like any other zoo management style game. You can design your park, research new rides and attractions, hire different people to work jobs, see if aliens visiting are happy, etc.. There are a lot of different items to place and choose from, as well as tons of freedom when it comes to where you want to put stuff. You do need to place things like septic systems to plug into toilets and the like, making the game pretty in-depth when it comes to management. The unique parts of Mars Attracts is both the use of the IP and the fun experiments that you can do on your people. The humans that you collect are from different places at specific time periods. Instead of having different types of animals or monsters, this is what divides them. You can make their new zoo homes like where they came from so that they feel most at home. Inside each of their pens, you can also put research labs which can contain aliens that will do research and experiments on the people inside. These aren’t the most human at all, but the other aliens seem to really like watching and seeing exactly what happens! It’s also quite interesting to watch the animations and see what sort of rides they want to turn humans into. Mars Attracts is currently in development, but in the meantime, you can grab a demo from Steam and add it to your wishlist. About The Author

Red Finger sees you using an elevator and carrying out strange work in a facility filled with dodgy wiring and mechanical monsters. It’s your first day on the job at an old research complex, arguably the safest of places to find yourself working. You just know there definitely isn’t anything wrong when you have to take an elevator deep underground so you can input some weird codes into strange terminals. And there’s certainly nothing strange about the elevator having a working sink built into it. Still, you probably paid for an expensive ride to get yourself to work, so you’ll end up making negative money for the shift if you don’t complete the night. So, let’s get to it. This elevator is your main means of getting to the stations you need to locate throughout your shift. You have a paper list of all the codes you have to input at the various terminals. It’s not technically hard to go down the elevator, but it does sting like hell. The wiring in the buttons for the elevator have something wrong with them and they get extremely hot when you press them. You also have to hold the button down to move, resulting in a badly-singed finger as you work through the night. A little cold water from the sink will straighten you right out. If the mechanical monster in the shaft sees you, though, that’s another story. The switch that turns off the light to keep you safe from that critter is messed up, too. This results in having to take care as you work through Red Finger. You need to keep making steady progress toward the basement and the end of your work tasks, but you need to take care not to burn your finger so bad that you can’t keep the lights off when the monster arrives. It’s simple, but deviously tense when you’ve over-burned your finger and you see that machine beast rear its head. Red Finger is available now (for free) on itch.io. About The Author

ZOE Begone! is a frantic bullet-hell with a bunch of hand-drawn enemies all attacking you when you just want to have a rest. Your character, a little triangle, wants to get some rest. However, an animator has made a bunch of different frames of characters that you will need to eliminate before you sleep. These looping arenas of film are full of enemies that you can shoot at and dash through. However you do have a set amount of energy that depletes when dashing or flying. This means that you need to manage the time you are flying and dashing with the enemies that are coming at you. However, there are blue orbs at the bottom along with health orbs that you can dash and collect to keep yourself going. Everything in ZOE Begone! is one of those games that sort of becomes muscle memory, but I really do like how the arena changes over time. Some of your dashes remove color from the background and destroying enemies takes away from the frames of the animation that are currently being created. There is an interesting and exciting view of the world that seems like so much fun to dive into. I got the chance to play a demo at The Mix, which, even for someone that doesn’t play a lot of bullet-hells, felt really engaging. ZOE Begone! is currently in development, but in the meantime, you can grab a demo from Steam and add it to your Wishlist. About The Author

Midnight Mansion sees you trying to solve murders in a former lab/escape room filled with boxes that are more dangerous than they seem. You’re Agent Milla Yang, and you’ve been sent to... The post ‘Midnight Mansion’ Dodges Killer Boxes in a Creepy Place appeared first on Indie Games Plus.

Cozy Dungeons is a game about clearing monsters out of crypts and castles, then renovating them for new folks to move in. There have been a lot of games that have mixed different play styles and genres. Often, when you are destroying everything in a dungeon, leaving piles of slime and blood behind, you don’t really think about who is going to end up living or using the space afterwards. Well, this game has you defeating enemies then putting the rooms back together to complete specific requirements so that everyone can be happy in their home. The actual dungeon fighting in Cozy Dungeons feels simple and fun. You can use your sword to destroy all of the enemies in each room, clearing it out. Some rooms also have block-pushing puzzles or button puzzles like you’d see in most dungeon crawlers. Where this game then feels different is through the decorating. Rooms have different requirements to be sold, which you might only really figure out through listening to the NPCs that are currently trying to live in the room. They’ll give you hints as to what they want. You will then need to design the room, adding in specific items they want or getting rid of things that have grown old and tired in the rooms. It’s quite fun to decorate and there is a lot of freedom, especially as you unlock new items to place and mess around with. Some rooms, from moving items, have secret doors into new areas that you might have not even discovered if you didn’t take the time to fix the place up. I got the chance to play through a few rounds of Cozy Dungeons at The Mix, where I found these two very different concepts of fighting and designing fit together perfectly. The cutesy graphic style also makes it all link up, even if there are puddles of slime that need to be swept up before you are able to start decorating! The dual phases mean you do not have to worry about enemies when trying to design, which is another plus. Cozy Dungeons is currently in development, but in the meantime, you can add it to your Steam Wishlist. About The Author