The new year is well underway and like clockwork, Flippfly has launched the second round of their Prototype Showdown. Flippfly’s Prototype Showdown is a chance for their development team to get some feedback on game prototypes they have in the development pipeline. Back in December of 2015, we covered the first round of the Prototype Showdown, the winner of which was Taxicopter, a mission-based flight simulator. This month sees puzzle-strategy game LaserPawn face up against tactical action game The Last Colony.
LaserPawn is an intriguing little, chess-inspired puzzle game that challenges you to move your pawn to the end of a booby-trapped dungeon corridor. You’ll alternate between using the diagonal-shooting bishop pick-up and the straight-shooting rook pick-up to take out chess piece turrets placed in your path. LaserPawn‘s puzzles are well-laid out, though the additional pressure of the floor collapsing does currently feel a touch at odds with the other aspects of the game. There are also some issues with the current sound balancing, so we highly recommend you turn down your audio, lest your eardrums burst when you slip up and are subsequently zapped into oblivion.
The Last Colony is a rapid-clicker, tower-defense-style game where you control a colony of ants as they attempt to survive wave after wave of invading insects. The Last Colony has a fantastic atmosphere. The ant hill nestled amongst the bamboo reeds manages to be relaxing in spite the tactical, trench warfare feel to the gameplay. There is a certain amount of strategy involved in later levels, where you’ll need to match the amount of ants you send out to the level of the enemy. This is part of where the game slips up, as it is not immediately obvious which enemies require more attack power. You’ll also be able to send out ants to pick up food stuffs, but whether the food has any effect on your ant numbers is a bit unclear. Going forward, The Last Colony would benefit from adding more polish and complexity to the game, juicing up its interactions, tweaking its UI, and adding more layers of control over the ants.
Just like last month, in order to vote for your favorite game, you will need to create an account on Flippfly’s website. If you can’t decide which game to vote for, the developers have helpfully included some gameplay descriptions, future plans, and a list of known issues for each game as links on the download/voting page.
Download And Vote For LaserPawn and The Last Colony Here