Synaesthete is an action-rhythm game created by four students at DigiPen. It was the winner of the Best Student Game award at the 2007 Independent Games Festival (IGF).

Synaesthete, at first glance, looks far more complicated to play than it actually is. It follows familiar principles that we have come to know in the mainstream rhythm games; watch for “notes” to descend to a certain point, typically denoted by a button, and then hit the corresponding button at the appropriate time. Missing a note in Guitar Hero, for example, will cause your music to skip and it won’t pick up again until you’ve gotten yourself back on track. In Synaesthete, however, missing a note does nothing to disrupt the flow of the music.

In Synaesthete you control an avatar called the Zaikman. The objective is to navigate the Zaikman through a series of rooms. Enemies spawn in these rooms, and Zaikman will be locked inside until he defeats the enemies. You help the Zaikman accomplish this by hitting “notes” successfully; this will fire energy beams at enemies based on his proximity to them. The Zaikman can be damaged and his health is indicated by a meter that is located just below your “note bar”. You don’t have to hit every note, but since the notes are your weapons, you don’t want to miss too many.
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From Xbox to Xbox 360, from there to the PC, Wii and DS, this week’s cheap game has made the rounds. Despite its rather pronounced presence, it’s still good, still cheap, and still worth a look.

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved was released originally as a mini-game within Project Gotham Racing 2 for the Xbox. Chances are good that you’ve played at least one iteration of GeoWars. However, you may not have known that it is available on the PC, and for less money than anywhere else.
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I felt it appropriate to share this here. If you remember back to yestermonth, I recommended that you guys check out Gish in one of my cheap gaming features. There is a sequel on the way, and today we have been blessed with some wireframe mesh physics footage of Gish 2. Enjoy, and check out Gish if you haven’t yet.

[Their audio is a bit loud, you may want to adjust your volume accordingly]

Painkiller is a first-person shooter created by Polish developer People Can Fly (now a subsidiary of Epic Games), and released in 2004. In November of that same year, the Painkiller story continued when an expansion titled Battle Out of Hell was released; it would later be bundled and sold with the original game as Painkiller Gold Edition and Painkiller Black Edition.

Painkiller has all the qualities one would expect in a worthy successor to games like Doom and Quake: a constant sense of urgency driving the player forward; a powerful and satisfying arsenal including such mainstays as the shotgun and chain gun, as well as such exotic, proprietary creations as the Electrodriver and (my personal favorite) the Painkiller itself. With this adherence to tradition in mind, it’s only natural that Hell (and its denizens) would play a part in Painkiller’s narrative. The game opens with a cut scene showing the game’s protagonist, Daniel Garner, driving with his wife to her birthday dinner. It’s raining heavily, Daniel looks away for a moment, and they’re killed in a head-on collision. Although his wife was admitted to Heaven, Daniel has been relegated to Purgatory. After spending some time there, he is approached by a messenger and is given an opportunity for atonement, an opportunity to reunite with his wife. Here, the objective of the game is revealed: kill the four generals of Lucifer’s army, and on the way, “destroy everything that moves.”

Painkiller also has a strong multiplayer component that, for a while, was a pretty big deal in the competitive scene. Its popularity waned, however, so while sparsely populated servers can still be found, it can’t be counted on. Regardless, the singleplayer campaigns of Painkiller and its expansion are worth the $9.99 to Steam or Good Old Games.

Today’s game is again, not a freebie, but it pays for itself quickly via Awesome Express. The game is called “Eets: Hunger. It’s Emotional.”and it was developed by Klei Entertainment. Not to be confused with its counterpart that was released last year for XBOX Live Arcade, Eets: Chowdown, the 2006 version I’ll be covering here is for the PC.

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See what I did there? No? Well, you might once you start reading about the game I’m going to be talking about today. It is from a developer called Cryptic Sea and it won awards for Innovation in Game Design as well as the grand prize at IGF in 2005.

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