YES. Death Ray Manta (DRM) – the classic arena shoot-em-up game from Indie God, Rob Fearon, is out now for iPhone and iPad and iPod and also your eyes.

That’s probably Rob on the right, there.

Death Ray Manta is an arcade game about making stuff explode.

It is just 69 of your EARTH PENCE at launch. That’s like a dollar or something. It’s a steal, and a blast.

Death Ray Manta is an ARCADE GAME. Two sticks and a screen full of laser beams…Death Ray Manta does not waste your time. There is no guff, no IAP, no upgrades, just a videogame. Tap to start. Score higher….Death Ray Manta is a game about blowing up stuff. All the stuff.
(official DRM game site, with DRM vids and more words)

What is DRM? Why Santa? Why Fanta?

Take the mind-bending, tooth-melting, eye-searing slap in the face that is a can of cold Fanta.

Add the warm, fuzzy, soft-bearded Santa snuggle of your childhood memories.

DEATH RAY MANTA is what you get.

This awesome conversion of an awesome game has been brought to iOS by Jeff Murray of Psychic Parrot Games. That’s probably him on the right there. I couldn’t find a picture of Santa wearing a parrot.

Seriously, what is it?

DRM is a very pretty arena shoot-em-up that manages to be soft and brutal at the same time.

You control a little glowy manta ray. You’re in an arena, Robotron-style. Hordes of glowing bad guys try to kill you: you have a massive laser death ray and you shoot the glowy death that makes them explode into even more glowy shrapnel.

It’s hypnotic, relentless and very pretty. It sounds pretty groovy too.

How hard is your manta?

The most you can score is 64 (I think), but you’re not gonna get anywhere near that. The early levels welcome you with big glowing neon arms, but only so the hard ones can melt your teeth off later.

Your gums, however, will keep smilin’ through.

It’s a serious game that doesn’t take itself (or you) too seriously. One life, no saves: it’s a simple distraction or a serious challenge – it just depends how you play it. You don’t ‘lose’. You just get as far as you can possibly get, and then try again and do better.

Finding the tiffin

Oh, and the tiffin. There’s a thing called a tiffin on every level. Collect it and you’ll add even more power to your massive laser death ray. Makes things even crazier, which makes it a bit harder, but then your death ray is significantly more deadly, which makes things a bit easier.

Love your Manta, just like Santa.

Will you make it past An American Manta in London? Will you reach The Abominable Dr. Manta? Is there really a level called Debbie Does Manta? Only one way to find out…

Get DRM on the App Store now!

Spelunky - free, fun, evil and insanely difficult

A free roguelike platform game with snakes, spikes, traps and other evil.

Spelunky is a game of cave exploration (the clue’s in the name). You play a familiar whip-wielding, hat-wearing explorer character who has to delve deeper and deeper into increasingly dangerous caves in search of loot and secrets.

It’s a lot like Dungeon Crawl (and/or Stone Soup) in that regard, and for one of the same reasons: the game map changes each time you play.

I could probably bang on about procedurally generated levels or something, but I won’t because I don’t understand the technology. All that matters is that levels are different every time you play (strictly speaking it’s like all Roguelikes in that regard, but Crawl in particular for me in terms of style and deadly humour).

However, while the level layout changes for every game, the aim of the game and the insane, old-school difficulty remain the same.  It looks a plays just like the platformers I dimly remember from my 8-bit days. It has simple, functional, retro graphics; even more retro sound, creating using the very funky sound generator, SFXR; and very retro gameplay. It was made using Game Maker from YoYo Games.

There are a few issues (it’s still in Beta) and the control scheme isn’t quite perfect, although to be fair neither is my joypad. Regardless, Spelunky is a cute, compelling, evil gaming experience that reminds me  just how fecking difficult games used to be. Best of all it’s free, so go play it and worship the author, one Derek Yu.

Get Spelunky here: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=4017.0