Hack, Slash, Loot, and Indie Gala 4

I finally finished my scheduled hour's worth of Hack, Slash, Loot. I just can't stop dying in this game.

I did finally manage to get a character to the second level, though! This archer guy found an enchanted pair of boots that regenerates HP, which apparently is game-breakingly absurd because normally you have so much HP and it basically never goes back up (you can find healing items but they're uncommon), but with regenerating health, all those minor injuries that would otherwise chip away at you until you're dead just get shrugged off completely.

Then I got poisoned. Poison is the opposite of regenerating health. If you get poisoned, you're screwed because unless there's a healing item within a few rooms of where you're standing right now, you are stone dead and there's nothing you can do about it. Since I had regenerating health, though, they canceled each other out until I could find a cure.

I beat the boss of the second level, some dwarf king guy, and then I went to level 3...

...and I got dogpiled by some Orcs and Uruk-Hai and they busted through my regeneration enough to kill me. So my archer is dead.

This game is frustrating because it feels like I have no control over what happens. Everything is blind luck. Hit or get hit in combat? All controlled by a roll of the dice. Get poisoned? Sorry, you're dead and there's nothing you could have done. Find a power-up? You got randomly lucky, good job. You can't stockpile items to save for a rainy day because there's no inventory system. You can't do anything meaningful to affect combat because you only have one attack and one set of gear. All you can do is cross your fingers and pray. I keep dying and having no idea what I possibly could have done differently. A couple times I died in the first room, to the enemy who spawned a few steps away. What exactly did the game expect me to do?

Is there any reason to play this when I could be playing Dungeons of Dredmor instead? Dredmor has deep, varied gameplay, far more appealing visuals, a more sensible combat system, a satisfying level-up mechanic, customizability through game mods (which I even know how to make myself, if I want to)...this game is just worse in basically every way. And by the way, worth noting, they're the same price in the Steam store.

I'm going to have to disapprove of this game. It could be worse, I guess, but I like it less each time I try it. I just feel like I have no control over the outcome of the quest.

Anyway, the Indie Gala 4 is out. I paid the minimum price for it. The beat-the-average games didn't look very interesting. There was some multiplayer airplane-dogfighting-thing which I doubt I would have ever played, and some strategy-type game or something...neither of them looked like they were worth an extra five bucks. But I got two games for a dollar and they're adding a third one at some point. That's a fair enough price.

A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda is a side-scrolling shooter of some sort. I dunno. Whatever.

 Alien Shooter is a top-down shooter where you shoot aliens. Straightforward enough, I guess. It was originally released in 2003 so it's pretty vintage.

• Alien Shooter
  
• Alien Zombie Megadeath
• A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda
• Astro Tripper
• The Baconing
• Ballistic
  
• Beat Hazard
• Defense Grid: The Awakening
• Depths of Peril
  
• Explodemon
• FlatOut
• Future Wars
• Gear Grinder
  
• Greed: Black Border
• Grotesque Tactics: Evil Heroes
• Hack, Slash, Loot
• Inferno+
• Madballs in...Babo: Invasion
• Plain Sight
• Slydris
• Sol Survivor
• Tobe's Vertical Adventure
  
• Trapped Dead
• Twin Sector
• Unstoppable Gorg