Tag Thunderful Games

Planet of Lana

Planet of Lana

Planet of Lana is a side-scrolling adventure featuring playing hide and seek with robots that have no qualms about ending you!

The folks at Thunderful Games have delivered a side-scrolling adventure, full of hand painted environments. That game is Planet of Lana where the focus isn’t on just fighting, I mean there is some of that, but it features a plethora of puzzles to solve to reach your destination. Some of these puzzles or effectively games of cat and mouse, where others manipulate the environment around you to help you escape. The studio under Thunderful that developed the game was developed in 2018 and this is their first published title.

You play as a young girl who watches as her friend and village are abducted by robots. She must save both herself and the world while avoiding the dangers of the robots. Who sent them? Why are they capturing and likely enslaving the populace? What’s their end goal? Hopefully these questions get answered as you progress the story but so far they have not.

Visually the game is captivating and the attention to detail is quite impressive. When running through the fields and climbing the mountain you can see the wind blowing through individual blades of grass that are all hand painted. It feels like you are playing in a living painting, that is until the robots come. The beauty of the art draws you in and the story keeps you playing. Overall this was a great experience that leaves me wanting to get back to it to see where the story leads me next.

Swordship a highspeed delivery game

Swordship

Swordship is a high speed boat ride that will push your reflexes and driving skills to the max. Do you have what it takes to deliver the goods?

The world has essentially ended, polar ice caps have melted and almost the entire world has been flooded in Swordship from Thunderful Games. The areas that aren’t flooded are barren wasteland and megacities have been build below the surface of the water. This game is centered around threats showing up to try to kill you and prevent you from collecting containers that you are trying to deliver to outcast groups. Each container can be traded to those groups for a higher score or used to unlock abilities and give you an extra life.

During gameplay the graphics are quite simple using mostly three dimensional geometric shapes for many of the enemies. You don’t have any real weapons so speed and quick reflexes will be your saving grace. Technically this isn’t a bullet hell game but sure as hell feels like it at times. The game can get truly nuts at times but the challenge of the stages leaves you wanting to keep trying it until you complete the level. My only real complaint with the game is the level up system. When you earn your first 500 points you gain a level, the next 500 is another level. That’s pretty standard. What’s not is the fact that if you die and have to start over your next level in that life will be 1000 points. This means you must be really good to get to higher levels. Despite this I found the game to be a ton of fun and more challenging than I expected.

Togges

Togges

The Void threatens to devour the entirety of the known and unknown universes. In Togges it is up to you to save everything.

Thunderful Games brings a new 3d platformer that is family friendly and yet a real challenge with Togges. After completing the most basic of the tutorials you meat the King of the Togges. They are simple creatures made of yarn that love to be close to each other and be stacked. They also LOVE fruit. The first few areas you are tasked with collecting fruit to improve their strength.

Your end goal is to help the king take over the known universes. Sounds more like a villain but his goal is to do so to protect all life from the Void. Early on you don’t learn much about the threat itself other than the fact that it devours anything and everything in it’s path. Sounds like the Nothing from Never Ending Story. Along the way there are threats to these peaceful creatures but not really to the player. Falling to your death usually means the end of the character’s life but in this game it just places you back where you were before you fell. Spikes that will kill the creatures cause you no harm.

This is an adorable game you can let your kids play but I wouldn’t. As mentioned before there is a good deal of difficulty here but it’s not impossible. The complexity of some of the puzzles means I would only have older children play it to avoid their frustration and anger at them. Some of the puzzles simply require too much patience and critical thinking for younger children to complete easily. Overall I found the game to be challenging but adorable. Meaning you can play in front of the younger children but shouldn’t hand them the control.

Paper Cut Mansion

Paper Cut Mansion

Space Lizard Studio and Thunderful Games bring us Paper Cut Mansion- a horror game with Paper Mario graphics with a sinister twist.

Not many games give you the chance to expand on the story by getting yourself killed. Paper Cut Mansion does that and so much more. Sure each time you die you have to start the puzzles and the maps over but you get a slightly deeper look into the overall mystery when you do. The game features a paper/cardboard art style the is reminiscent of Paper Mario but with some cardboard thrown in. The music is subtle but when overlaid with the shadows that surround you there is an eerie sense of something dark around each corner.

Visually the game is truly captivating. The controls are quite simple to learn and only give you issues if you have a problem with a drifting controller like I do. Gameplay is full of tension and can be quite overwhelming at times but the mystery of the Mansion makes you want to continue deeper and further.

Lego Bricktales

Lego Bricktales is both an entirely original story as well as supplying entirely unique worlds to explore.

In Lego Bricktales you play as an adventuring minifig without a name who must help their grandfather. The grandfather also doesn’t have a name and is simply referred to as Grandfather. Who would have guessed it? All kidding aside I think this move was brilliant. Leaving the names out allow the players to fill the roles themselves, they can become the character. To further emphasis this, they are able to fully customize their minifig.

The story is centered around going to an abandoned amusement park where your grandfather is working on his inventions. He’s been tasked with restoring the park or lose it forever and his inventions have been distracting him from that role. He you come to save the day, put him back on task and restore the park. Can you do it? Like all Lego games this is not overly complicated but for once forces you to be creative. You get to build objects with Legos! I don’t just mean the classic Lego game builds where you hold a single button. I mean you actually choose the pieces and place them where you want them. There are limitations to the builds but it’s up to you to design and complete.

Controls are simple to learn and graphics are as good or better than most of the recent Lego games we’ve played. Overall the game is a ton of fun and the creative building features make this game so worth getting and playing and the best part is there is no risk of losing or stepping on Legos!