Taking it easy this week because I worked six days in a row and I was too tired to play any game for a long period of time. This week are a couple of sweet little indie Metroidvania/platformers: Vapor Trails and Friendly Fire.

Vapor Trails is a Metroidvania-style game from sevencrane. It is currently in development, is being worked on during nights and weekends, and is free.

You are Valentine, a generation zero candidate whose main concern is exacting revenge within the confines of Vapor City. She is searching for a goofy-ass-looking mob boss robot named Richter.

Vapor Trails is your standard Metroidvania. Scour a large map, and gain those sweet abilities to make traversing the map even easier. Val is extremely fast because of her boost. She is so fast that it is sometimes incredibly difficult to platformer properly (Not the game’s fault, I just wanna go FAST). Regardless the movement is crisp and super fun.

Combat is nothing special. Val has a kick, a punch, and a health bar. There are some bad guys running around the map that can hurt you but they honestly pose almost zero threat to you.

The game looks good. It’s pixel art and I like pixel art no matter what. Decent-looking animations coupled with the movement make for some clean movement.

The music is by Gray Heron and that shit is dope. I like listening to lo-fi as I shoot from one end of the map to the other.

Vapor Trails is quite a fun game. I really like the movement and the look of the game. I like the upgrade system, it seems extensive. Overall, cool game for being free, just make sure that if you do like it, throw the developer some MONEY.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Friendly Fire is a platformer from Edutastic Games. The game was released in 2020 for the PC and is currently free.

You are a man who has entered, unknowingly, into a realm with fantastical beings and apparently, the only way out is to do a bunch of interconnected side quests for these beings. The real story may or may not have something to do with the Life Flame wanting to devour all life in the realm. It is important to note that the game has five full endings, which is quite impressive because my first run lasted around thirty minutes, making the game last over a few hours.

Lots of witty NPCs litter the map offering you either a power-up or a potential ending if you do what they require of you. Everything works so well within the confines of the game because a majority of the NPCs understand that there is something beyond this realm and it is incredibly odd that a human exists in the same realm as a talking flame, a talking dog, and a few other talking objects.

Again, this is a Metroidvania, so abilities are littered throughout the map to help with the traversal. It is actually just variations of the double jump, where you just slap the space bar a bunch of times to “fly.”

This is another one of those pixel art games, and I still like the style.

Overall, I played both of these games in one sitting and I decided that I would talk about both briefly this week. They are both fun Metroidvania games that deserve some attention. Vapor Trails is a really good game that features fast-paced platforming and combat while Friendly Fire gives you decent platforming with a witty sense of humor.