Great Downloads: Award-Winning Indie Games

Inflict enough damage with a single blow and you'll send body parts flying -- the game is in fact quite fond of blood geysers, though it's worth noting you're maneuvering bundles of simplistic geometry as opposed to anatomically realistic people. Moves run the kung-fu gamut, inviting sophisticated tactics, including everything from "punch" and "kick" to exotic stuff like "aerial body breaker," "good arm removal," "overhead body split," and "super duper simple decap." It's even possible to engage in different fighting styles, from kickboxing and judo to "taek kyon" and "wushu."

Download Toribash(Price: $20; Feature-limited demo)

In this futuristic IGF 2008 finalist, twin American pilots with distinctively armed space ships and special sixth senses blast off to battle a pair of evil eyes (yes, eyes, as in "the eyes of mankind") responsible for toppling countries in Asia like Thailand and New Korea. China opts to battle the eyes themselves and shuns help from the rest of the world, which is where you come in with those two pilots, who've designed special space craft capable of dealing with the threat.

Maneuvering dot-like ships around a vertically scrolling landscape, your modus operandi entails pulverizing enemies, then interacting with the debris, which you relate to differently depending on which ship you're piloting. The first can employ a special thrust move to destroy pieces of an enemy, suck those pieces up like a magnet, then fling them at subsequent opponents. The second has unlimited ammunition and upgrades its bullets by collecting enemy debris to cumulatively release seismic blasts. Can you beat the game's three largish levels -- crawling with dozens of enemies and fourteen bosses -- with both ships?

Download Clean Asia(Freeware)

Possibly the most exhilarating music game to materialize since Guitar Hero, IGF 2008 finalist Synaesthete combines the rhythmically complex beat-matching mechanics of the latter with the simplicity of an isometric action game and wraps it all in a pulsing, grooving, funked up universe of light and sound. Take on denizens like the Voxel King, who rules "a machine world made of funk and rhythm," or the Viper Vizier, "master of an endless plane of trance," all by tapping out simple or complex rhythms on the keyboard with your right hand while guiding your Synaesthete out of harm's way with your left.

To create those rhythms, you have to match falling "notes" that rain down the middle of the screen and correspond to the J, F, and K keys. When you're strike on the beat, your Synaesthete automatically fires laser-like beams at encroaching enemies. When you're off, enemies pounce and whittle away your health. Clear a room and you can move to the next one by way of adjoining staircases; clear an entire level and you advance to increasingly psychedelic venues. Eventually you'll fight boogieing polygonal bosses in blistering rhythm-jams that on the highest difficulty settings should set all but the nimblest fingers fumbling.

Download Synaesthete(Freeware)

Empyreal Nocturne

With a wink and a nod to Sega's Panzer Dragoon, IGF 2008 finalist Empyreal Nocturne expands the aerial action genre by giving you control of a flock of birds. Your enemies are living geometric configurations and your goal is to knock out orb-like segments glued to your enemies' appendages. As the "god" bird, you don't directly engage anything, but instead command dozens of bird-like subjects that can attack on order, rush to your defense, or sacrifice themselves to restore your health.

Getting around in the air can be a little tricky if you're wed to your keyboard, and a game controller is almost mandatory (the game supports the Xbox 360 gamepad). But once you've got the kinks worked out of your up-down and left-right vectors, you'll be able to charge these fabulist monstrosities weaving and winging their way through the clouds, isolate their weak points, then unleash your flock of aerial havoc.

Download Empyreal Nocturne(Freeware)