Super Crate Box

(Image courtesy of RockPaperShotgun)

Super Crate Box was developed and released by Vlambeer for the PC. A single player moves their character around the screen, collecting boxes to gain points while also avoiding enemies.

This may seem simple and easy, but it is far from it. Though enemies are constantly pouring from the same place at the top of the screen, boxes can be spawned anywhere, requiring the player to move carefully to them. But the true difficulty is only revealed when a player gets to a box: their weapon is switched to a random different one. Not knowing what weapon you'll receive next can make planning ahead difficult, because the weapons usually only work well in specific situations. For example, one weapon's bullets can bounce off walls, harming the player if they hit them on the way back (which could mean instant death if they fired while facing a wall), while another is a flamethrower that does a large amount of damage over time (which is troublesome if the player has no room to do enough damage). No two weapons are quite the same, leading to hectic gameplay that requires split-second thinking, especially since the player loses if they're hit even once! Thankfully, even though the player can choose what stage to play on, they are all more or less the same, with a hole on the top and bottom and platforms in between. These similarities provide the player with some fimilariaty when trying a new level, so they are not completely defenseless. As mentioned before, enemies spawn from the top hole, but if they reach the bottom hole (which will kill the player if they fall in), they will respawn from the top and now will be "angry", turning red and moving even faster than before! This means that the player must try to kill enemies before they reach the bottom, adding even more difficulty to the game.

Of course, one might think that with all of this, Vlambeer is a professional game studio. In reality, Vlambeer is in fact a small independent game studio based in the Netherlands. Independent game studios are run in a way that is a significant deviation from the standard studio, with their games usually being self-published and often free. Games by such studios are generally known for being innovative, unique, and sometimes "artsy". They also usually only have a few members, or in some cases, only one. In Vlambeer's case, there are two: Rami, who works as the game's developer, and business manager. His job is to code the game, and handle any issues involving money that the studio has. The other member is Jan Willem, the game's designer. He comes up with ideas for Rami to make into games, and also works with him to make sure everything turns out as planned. While they both worked together on the game's art, they worked with a 3rd party musician to make the game's music. Vlambeer is funded by the Utrecht School of Art & Technology, where both of the studio's members studied Game Design and Development. It is their hope to "bring back arcade gaming", and after Super Crate Box's success, gamers everywhere will be waiting to see what they cook up next.