It's Thursday, and that means new free games on the Epic Store. Between now and February 20th there are two quite fight-y games up for grabs. The first is Kingdom Come: Deliverance, a rare medieval RPG that focuses more on historical stuff rather than the fantastical. Next up is Aztez, a side-scrolling brawler set in Aztec times when the only colours they had were red, white and black.
]]>Maybe you heard the story. An indie darling in 2012, eventually released into a changed world in 2017, commercial disaster and, at least, widespread coverage of said disaster after the fact.
I played Aztez; I gave it a few paragraphs in our weekly Unknown Pleasures round-up, genuinely unaware of how bright its light had once been and thinking of it as just another cool under-the-radar 2017 game. It was pretty good.
]]>Aztez [official site] blends two genres that wouldn't normally mix: turn-based strategy and beat 'em up. The strategising happens on a hex-based map – you control an elite combat unit of the Aztec Empire sent out to kill "warriors and mythological foes alike". When you invade another tile it switches into real-time brawling, with a hand drawn black-and-white art style where there only colour is the red of your enemies' blood. And there's plenty of that.
It came out this week and it looks pretty promising, actually. Alec has played a bit of it for Unknown Pleasures and enjoyed the combat with all its flashy, fluid mid-air stabbing. But in case you missed that, here's a reminder.
]]>Welcome back to Unknown Pleasures, our weekly selection of the best lesser-hyped games on Steam that you've almost certainly missed.
This week: walking simulation, horse simulation, hang-gliding simulation, Aztec combat simulation, dog-in-a-dungeon simulation and Portal recreation.
]]>The unlikely combo of hexy turn-based strategy and real-time beat 'em up will coalesce in Aztez [official site] this summer, developers Team Colorblind have announced. Sure, you might have strategised as the Aztec Empire before but probably not also taken to the battlefield yourself to shred enemies and shower in blood with mid-air mega-combos. It's a curious idea, though it does seem relatively tame after you remember Team Colorblind were formed by core members of Off-Road Velociraptor Safari and Minotaur China Shop team Flashbang Studios. Here, look at Aztez in this trailer:
]]>We first mentioned monochrome side-scrolling brawler (with strategy bits), Aztez, back in the dark times of July of last year. It seems it's take another year and half to spool itself to release, with the game now due in early 2014. As Adam noted when we first saw this, artist/designer Ben Ruiz seems to be a gentleman who knows his fighting-game talk, so this could well be an impressive beast - what we see here is excruciatingly stylish as it is. Take a look.
]]>Aztez is a game in which men hit one another with swords, a stab and slash 'em up made by a man who has thought deeply about fighting games, written down those thoughts, and then created a system of his own. The detail of the mechanics isn't in overblown special moves but in the length of animations and the timing of button presses. With visuals that invoke the black, white and crimson of Madworld and a turn-based conquest game atop the combat, it's shaping up to be a very lovely thing indeed. New developer diary below.
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