Frogbone Games - Bodnár "Thrall" Gábor

Must I confess, even us magyars can have a piece of the Game Maker action... and Mr. Bodnár Gábor, callsign "Thrall", is one of them, being the exec of his own indie game studio: FrogBone Games.
Now, Mr. Thrall may be new to the GM business, but already he has garnered positive consensus and was regarded as, to quote Sammy Friedman, the "3D Master". Well, don't I heartily aggre with him - Thrall's 3D GM games are beyond any other I've played in my life. Don't believe me? Take his latest creation, "Sky Strategy", for instance. Imagine if you will: what will we get if flight technology has evolved to a point wars are now fought in the skies? The answer's simple: Sky Strategy (or Stratogy, as I call it). Spread your wings and fly to battle as the heroic Skyknights, fighting with jetpack soldiers, birdplanes and Zeppelins (Schwartz Dávid would be proud), or join the cause of the evil Empire with its fleet of jet fighters, helicopters and stealth fighters, in their war for air superiority and the fate of Mankind as we know it. Will the skies be damned to the eternal reign of the Empire? Or will the Skyknight rebels put an end to their tyranny for time immemorial? Find out by playing Sky Strategy.

And let's not forget about "Galaxy at War", another top-down 3D space blastfest from yours truly. Seems like the centuries-old Galactic Empire, promoter of justice and peace throughout known space, has come under attack by Separatists who wish to replace the Empire with a designer-tyranny of their own... so the Empire sends in its best warriors to beat those demonic dissidents senseless. YOU are one of them, flying an Imperial-issue H-Wing Fighter, so feel free to bonk some heads the space warrior's way.

All in all, in spite of his inexperience, Thrall does excellent work with his 3D Game Maker creations, from his oldest creation Warmaster to the latest Sky Strategy. If you want to take a look and play some Frogbone games, then head on down to http://frogbonegame.extra.hu/
and see for yourself. After all, Sammy didn't call Gabi the "3D Master" of Yoyo Games for nuttin'.

Total Annihilation - Spring Engine

Make no mistake, fatal even, femmes 'n mechs - Total Annihilation is, simply put, the ultimate in futurisitic, firepower-packed and explosive RTS Games made by that Canuck Chris Taylor, the man large 'n in charge of it, also responsible for its equally explosive spiritual sequel, Supreme Commander. This one's got it all: 2 sides (Arm and Core) in an extragalactic fight to the death, hundreds of robotic military machines thrown into battle, crashin' smoulderin' hulks o' metal, explosions, mayhem and victory - to paraphrase Taylor. What's even sweeter, TA's even moddable, just like SupCom is. Take Talon for example - a 3rd faction consisting of the Core's betrayed cyborg clones filled with hatred, ready to tear the other 2 to shreds with their advanced military technologies... but our Arm 'n Core friends have some new techs up their long, metal-covered, nanolathed sleeves too.

But sometimes, 3D troops on 2D enviorments just won't make the cut. Something more... full-scale, in a completely 3D enviroment, ready to adapt to ANY kind of war, anything, anywhere, anytime, is in order. And take a wild guess what would fill the bill...

That's right, femmes and mechs:

Nanolathed by them Swedish Yankspankers folks and licensed under the GNU GPL, Spring intends to bring the gameplay experience of Total Annihilation (TA) into three dimensions - and guess what, it's even fully moddable. From the most innonatively active Complete Annihilation to fresh originals like P.U.R.E. to the completely at balance Balanced Annihilation, no 2 battle's EVER the same in the Spring Project - and no 2 enemies are spared the agony of having themselves rained upon by barrage after barrage of heavy fire.

But there are some battles where strategy alone just won't be enough to bring your enemy to knees. What last choice leaves you? You guessed it... go into FPS mode in one of your units and charge into the white-hot middle of the battle in 4 millenia of war, gunz'a'blazin' and full steam ahead! If you thought Machines, BattleZone and Urban Assault are the only RTS/FPS games on the block... too bad for you.

So what are you waitin' for like an idle Construction unit? Report to http://springrts.com/, grab the Spring RTS Engine and hit the frontlines, soldier - clone or pattern!

TAGAP - The Apocalyptic Game About... PENGUINS?!

What do you get when you mix a penguin with cybernetics, bio-engineered drugs and arm it to the... err... beak with enough heavy weapons to turn an army of enemies into gibs? That's right - you get Pablo the Cyber-Penguin, the star in Jouni Lahtinen's
and his team Penguin DT's freeware Soldat-Turrican hybrid sci-fi/action game...

TAGAP - The Apocalyptic Game About Penguins

As far as Jouni and PDT's concerned, we adore penguins - but testing experimental military stimulants on animals like them is SICK enough stuff, and this game, boils and gargoyles, is a worst-case-scenario of pyrotechnical sorts.

[Pablo - one mean lil' penguin, armed to the beak]

Here's the rundown on this said scenario, accordin' to Recon:

A short time ago, a certain military supplier has succeeded in connecting a living brain into a computer. This was done with the aid of Dr. Glowenko's design-drug, TAGAP (Tissue-Augmenting, Green, Addictive Pill). Glowenko then, without warning, went insane and decided to get his death-grip on the world with an army of (guess what?) cybernetic PENGUINS!

One of the penguins, codenamed "Pablo", wasn't too happy about being used in the "mad scientist" act and revolted against Glowenko, who soon decided to put a TAGAP-price on Pablo's head and sent his penguin army – led by the fearsome "Pedro" – after him.

This is where YOU, as Pablo the Penguin, come into the world of TAGAP.

'Sides, if someone has the guts to actually try penguin world domination, we're all up for it. But wait, femmes and mechs, there's more:

TAGAP 2 - Meaner penguins, bigger guns and more pills!


According to sources, the story about this sequel takes place a couple of months after the events of TAGAP. It seems that Dr. Glowenko was actually hired by an international organization, Random Evil Pharmaceuticals (REP), to build the cyber-army. However, Dr. Glowenko soon went nuts with his cyber-penguins and cut his connections to his REP benefactors, leaving them with nothing but a step-by-step guide for creating killer penguins. When Pablo and Pedro track the supply-trail back to the remote warehouse, they stumble on an even bigger cyberzombie penguin army, leaded by general Primo, the latest and most advanced cyber-penguin ever. More advanced and better equipped, Primo and his troops are going to finish what Dr. Glowenko’s own private army once started:

To conquer the world!


Here is Surveiliance information about REP, straight from the blog:

Aptly named Random Evil Pharmaceuticals (or REP for short) is the fabric that ties everything in TAGAP 2 together. While concentrating mainly on drugs and health care products, being a massive multi-sector, multi-national enterprise, REP has subsidiaries all around the world. One of those happened to be Glowenko Industries, the REP CEO's own pet contracted to create an invincible army of killer cyborgs. Unknown to the CEO, Dr. Glowenko (being the nutcase he was) abandoned the proper research and went on for a "penguin apocalypse".

Their genius Dr. Glowenko going AWOL and solo, REP finds themselves left with perfected blueprints of a cyborg army... of penguins. Still eager to continue the project, but lacking a visionary leader able to adapt the technology for use with other species, REP restarts the project creating a new penguin army – and a new general, Primo.

And when Pablo and Primo stumble upon it all, the game is on.

And one more thing: this is why I LOVE indie, freeware games. I HIGHLY recommend TAGAP for all those freeware, sci-fi and action fans - includin' Soldat and Turrican ones... not ta mention the penguin-lubbers.

Trust me - you'll be addicted to those green bio-modifyin' pills in this indie fragfest. Just don't overdose, right? (One more note: judging by the names in the Office level, is Jouni a DooM addict, or is it just me?)