Now, what makes the game special isn’t so very special at all anymore, but still special enough to mention: You have to interact with your past self. You are so alone that nobody but yourself can help you. The Company Of Myself. Braid showed us how possible that is, yes. It is nicely implemented, though, the dialog keeps you playing, and soon you will be stacking your current selves on top of your past selves that have faded away for the good cause.

Your task is to keep them on the ground, living a happy, flowery love life without drama and excess. You are the cupid of reason and advance level by level keeping the romance sterile and the lovers away from heaven.

But things start changing. Your physical strength decreases, you start to become more aware of all the barriers and obstacles you have to overcome, and things that were once important for you start to lose colour and significance. Now all there is left for you to do is think about what you’ve missed. Things I Never Did. And you will never be able to go back and do them.

On this journey of life in 2:00 minutes you are accompanied by a pretty gawky string soundtrack that bears a slight reminiscence of the popular Jeopardy “time is running out” theme. Don’t feel mocked.

Francis Coulombe has built a simple platform game, reminiscent of the good old days of labyrinth treasure hunts, around the idea that virtually everything costs money, except walking left and right. You start with a small budget and should immediately go for the really valuable stuff and not waste your time on copper and bronze. Shooting costs money, jumping costs money, enemy collisions cost money.

And, due to those times of global economic instability, Recession has been equipped with another feature that will make you want to make money quick: As time passes, the exchange rate goes down, and soon all those glittering prizes and shiny treasures you collect are not gold anymore.

Recession is currently work-in-progress, once it is finished, I will update sceenshots and links.

Bean’s grandfather remembers things a bit differently. Even more differently than you might have expected. In the cardboard WWII plane epos How My Grandfather Won The War, you make the world good again. Simply by removing or killing evil? No. You paint over it. With your rubber-cord-plane.

A beautiful allegory to rose-colored memories: You are the one who has to rose-colour the past you don’t even remember correctly anymore. Were there really squids?

In The Marionette by auriond, you play Martin, a sculptor, who is not all too you or aspiring anymore, and who matches the above description pretty well. Focused on nothing but his work, alienated from the outside world, proud. These character traits can serve you well if you are on your own, but if someone else gets in the way, somebody will get hurt.

Your task in The Marionette is to learn. You are sent on a symbol-heavy and surreal journey through the past of the one person that already got hurt – now it is up to you, do you want to make things worse, do you want to save what’s left to save? Do you want to change?

If Salvador Dalí would have been executive producer of a Beat ‘em Up, this is what it would have looked like. The level design often contains human body parts. Level bosses have (with some exceptions) exaggerated genitalia and use them to attack you mercilessly. On your way through the levels you fight giant floating heads, controlled by miniaturized people. There are enemies with huge surreal animations and contraptions to fight you, but there are some who just don’t have any animation at all, but rather glide through the level awkwardly without moving their feet.

The greater purpose of our fighting gourmets remains unclear, but as usual, it involves a mad scientist with a fancy hat, some vials, some green liquid, cloning and generally evil biomechanic experimental menace. This has to stop, no doubt!

So, what’s with the power up and the health, crucial elements of every decent fighting game? Is it pizza, or burgers? No, because this is the Gourment Squadron on the way to, well, on the way to victory. Some of your opponents carry ingredients such as garlic, soybeans, lobster, seafood or tofu, and after you have given them the pounding they obviously deserved, you can collect them. But! To draw maximum health and power from those ingredients, you also have to combine them in a proper way after each level by feeding them into your robo chef. If you haven’t spoiled it, you’ll have a healthy seafood salad, regain your strength, and then on to the next level of sexually charged ass kicking and mushroom foray!