Best Of Indie Games: We Need More Heroes

[IndieGames.com: The Weblog co-editor Tim W. rounds up the week's top free-to-download and commercial independent games, news and more from his sister 'state of indie' weblog.] This week on 'Best Of Indie Games', we take a look at some of the top independent PC Flash/downloadable titles released over this last week. The goodies in this edition include a Japanese mech combat game for both Windows and Xbox 360, a mysterious platform game with a spooky atmosphere, a freeware horror adventure game full of suspense, an action puzzle game with a nifty gimmick, and an exploration platformer rendered in shades of black and white. Here's the highlights from the last seven days: Game Pick: 'Shining Blood' (Teasoft, freeware) "Shining Blood is a mech combat game with five stages to play in the main campaign and a versus mode that is limited to duels with the computer AI only. There are up to six robots and tanks that you can choose from, either as your main vehicle or as support to help you out in the heat of a battle. The objective of the game is basically to clear the entire area of enemies before proceeding to the exit area that will appear somewhere on the map." Game Pick: 'Fetus' (Ted Lauterbach, freeware) "A puzzle platformer in which you play as a blue character lost in a strange world, seeking to exact revenge on the party responsible for trapping him there in the first place. There is no screen scrolling and your character cannot jump, but Ted still manages to construct one or two surprises to catch the player off-guard. Made for GameJolt's Minimal Competition." Game Pick: '20 Heroes' (H. Inada, browser) "20 Heroes is a puzzle platformer with a unique twist, where players are assigned twenty characters to control separately, in a group, or all at the same time. Puzzles in every area are designed around this theme, and the creativity of the designer really shows after the fifth stage or so." Game Pick: 'The Marionette' (Team Effigy, freeware) "A full-length 2D adventure game viewed from a first-person perspective, where you play as a sculptor named Martin who is in the middle of completing his latest work when a mysterious package arrives in his mailbox. He loses consciousness just moments after opening the plain-looking envelope, and wakes up much later only to find himself standing outside an unfamiliar house. Unperturbed by the strange turn of events, our confused protagonist heads into the house to seek for answers that will explain how and why he was brought to the spooky estate in the first place." Game Pick: 'Umbrella Adventure - The Castle of Cake' (HiVE, freeware) "A monotone-coloured platformer created by the developer of the popular Game Maker RPG, Ark 22. The story is about a gopher who was rudely awakened by the smell of sulphur to find his stash of more than a hundred cakes stolen in the middle of a rainy night. Curious about the disappearance, he sets out on a quest to find his delicacies, even if it means travelling all over the land to retrieve every single one of them."