Capsized is an awesome first effort from indie developer AlienTrap Games. You fight aliens as a spaceman (nothing new) but the game has some beautiful artwork and mood-setting music, and features lots of fun physics-based action and platforming. It plays a lot more like Quake than Metroid, as you rely on plenty of vertical movement and mouse-aimed ranged combat. The campaign is short but there are some arcade modes to tackle once you are finished. Someone said it's a like a mix of Abuse's aiming, Bionic Commando's grappling hook and Half-Life 2's physics. I would throw in Quake's pacing and you have a pretty solid idea of what to expect.

If you like action games, you should give it a look. There is a demo, too.

downloading right now =)

Rock Paper Shotgun has posted their review of the game:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/05/05/capsized-review/

It's now available DRM free on Gamersgate. Glad I waited!

Really good game. I got it from Steam.

Only draw back is that the levels are about five mins long and there are only twelve of them.

Haven't tried the mini games but I think they're all multiplayer only.

Hmm, I just did the first two... didn't know there were only 12. I like my indie games short and sweet but that sounds a little too short. Oh well, we'll see how it goes.

I think the developers were aiming at platformer fans whom are speed run freaks. The original Castlevania was only about forty-five minutes long from beginning to end but it took about two weeks to master being able to complete that forty-five minute run successfully.

Capsized is a lot more forgiving and you can crash, clunk and bang your through it in one sitting but it's anticipated that people will replay many times to master achieving a clean run.

Right on.

I always bring up the old platforms when people say today's games are too short. We used to pay $50 for games that took like 30 minutes to complete!

Exactly and they were artificially extended by either forcing the player to memorize patterns (Castlevania) or walk back and forth repeatedly, in one area, farming and spamming (Old School RPGs).

So is it one big, uninterrupted world like Exile? Or is it a stage progressive (i.e. Beat Level 1 to go to Level 2, but get everything you can because once you've completed it there's no going back, except through the "Select Previously Completed Stage" menu) game?

I played Super Mario World about a year ago on my friend's old SNES, and I did a speed-run and finished in about 8 minutes with no deaths, after having not even touched a SNES controller for like 12 years.

I haven't quite decided whether that's awesome muscle memory or highly terrifying. Ahh, the olden days.

Broken into twelve separate stages each selected from an overhead static map screen. Replay value comes from going back into the separate stages and attempting to earn better scores.

There are several mini games as well but I think they are all multi-player only.
Yeah, man - you burnt hose patterns into your memory pretty good. XD

For Super mario world that's really good I'd say. I can't even clear the first castle by that time.

Boughted.

it looks pretty interesting and unusual