Liked what I read, though I had to skip the Darkwood section because it's been on my short list for longer than I can remember. Wanted to mention my two favorite scalp-cams.
First, Notrium. This now-ancient game was one of the first true modern indies to catch my eye, and holds up as a surprisingly deep and complex survival-crafting-shooter-thing that really hasn't been emulated enough. You spend most of your time running out to grab bits of wreckage to turn into pipe shotguns and radar units, with your goal being one of a few ways of getting off the planet, including building a strong enough distress beacon or repairing an escape shuttle. Then there's alternate modes where you can play as an android, some kind of psychic alien, or one of the thinly veiled xenomorphs inhabiting the planet, all with their own playstyle and goals. And, importantly for this new genre, the completely perpendicular camera angle makes the action tense, the open-air scenery almost claustrophobic, and the visuals readable but still alien and off-putting.
The second, and maybe even more bizarre, Devil Slayer: Raksasi. It's a roguelite brawler that is much slower and more methodical than Hotline Miami on top of having downright gruesome gore, but it's also incredibly engrossing. There are a variety of characters to pick, all with their own abilities and starting weapons, and every weapon option feels completely different to wield, including having particular sweet spots that force you to manage your positioning and timing very precisely. It's also one of the few roguelites I've played where it feels like you genuinely have more control over your fate than the random number generator does, and it has some boss fights that are more tense than almost anything FromSoft has achieved. If you can get over some control frustrations and the fact that every death is punctuated by a giant splash screen of your heroine with her clothes mostly torn off, it's worth a play.
Honorable mention here for Cryptark, which despite being a more standard side-on perspective, I would argue captures a lot of what you seem to be grasping at in your attempt to canonize the scalp-cam. You start each raid with a full blueprint of the target derelict, and can plan out your attack by noting the entrances, major components, some of which are shielding or wired as alarms to other components, and others which can simplify other parts of your assault if you take them out, and all the enemy spawners, but once you launch, the whole thing plays out in real time as you struggle to actually hit your targets without getting bogged down by reinforcements. Again, the perspective means that despite having prior proper planning, you're still constantly getting jumped by things that, logically, your ship should have had vision on for a while, but as a player you're only noticing as it gets into firing range. I think it's a big part of why the developer's next game, which was basically a remake of Cryptark but in 3D, didn't succeed.
Finally, I'm curious if you've played Intravenous or its sequel. Like Darkwood, it's been sitting on my get-to pile for a while, and I've heard good things, especially now that the sequel has apparently applied some of it's quality of life adjustments to the first game's campaign.
Wow, I *cannot believe* I haven't heard of these. Intravenous and Devil Slayer: Raksasi in particular look like they're evolving the formula in ways I haven't seen yet, so you can bet those are moving to the top of my backlog. I think you might be right about Cryptark, too — the side-on perspective offers a lot of the same opportunities for selectively distributing information to the player. Notrium also looks right up my alley and I'm delighted to see it only costs a couple bucks.
Thanks for the insightful response! There's a lot of food for thought here.
Darkwood mentioned!! It's one of my favourite games ever, and certainly the most unique top-down I have seen. I loved that details in your peripheral appear not only obscured by shadows but actually 'wrong' in terms of detail, e.g. unseen building interiors tend to look much more orderly and less dilapidated than when you actually look at them. It's as if the protagonist is trying and failing to impose order on the chaos around him and make sense of things, proceeding with the assumptions of his former life.
Also liked your point about using the top-down method to create tension and maintain psychological distance between the player and the character, which was particularly suitable for Darkwood.
Liked what I read, though I had to skip the Darkwood section because it's been on my short list for longer than I can remember. Wanted to mention my two favorite scalp-cams.
First, Notrium. This now-ancient game was one of the first true modern indies to catch my eye, and holds up as a surprisingly deep and complex survival-crafting-shooter-thing that really hasn't been emulated enough. You spend most of your time running out to grab bits of wreckage to turn into pipe shotguns and radar units, with your goal being one of a few ways of getting off the planet, including building a strong enough distress beacon or repairing an escape shuttle. Then there's alternate modes where you can play as an android, some kind of psychic alien, or one of the thinly veiled xenomorphs inhabiting the planet, all with their own playstyle and goals. And, importantly for this new genre, the completely perpendicular camera angle makes the action tense, the open-air scenery almost claustrophobic, and the visuals readable but still alien and off-putting.
The second, and maybe even more bizarre, Devil Slayer: Raksasi. It's a roguelite brawler that is much slower and more methodical than Hotline Miami on top of having downright gruesome gore, but it's also incredibly engrossing. There are a variety of characters to pick, all with their own abilities and starting weapons, and every weapon option feels completely different to wield, including having particular sweet spots that force you to manage your positioning and timing very precisely. It's also one of the few roguelites I've played where it feels like you genuinely have more control over your fate than the random number generator does, and it has some boss fights that are more tense than almost anything FromSoft has achieved. If you can get over some control frustrations and the fact that every death is punctuated by a giant splash screen of your heroine with her clothes mostly torn off, it's worth a play.
Honorable mention here for Cryptark, which despite being a more standard side-on perspective, I would argue captures a lot of what you seem to be grasping at in your attempt to canonize the scalp-cam. You start each raid with a full blueprint of the target derelict, and can plan out your attack by noting the entrances, major components, some of which are shielding or wired as alarms to other components, and others which can simplify other parts of your assault if you take them out, and all the enemy spawners, but once you launch, the whole thing plays out in real time as you struggle to actually hit your targets without getting bogged down by reinforcements. Again, the perspective means that despite having prior proper planning, you're still constantly getting jumped by things that, logically, your ship should have had vision on for a while, but as a player you're only noticing as it gets into firing range. I think it's a big part of why the developer's next game, which was basically a remake of Cryptark but in 3D, didn't succeed.
Finally, I'm curious if you've played Intravenous or its sequel. Like Darkwood, it's been sitting on my get-to pile for a while, and I've heard good things, especially now that the sequel has apparently applied some of it's quality of life adjustments to the first game's campaign.
Wow, I *cannot believe* I haven't heard of these. Intravenous and Devil Slayer: Raksasi in particular look like they're evolving the formula in ways I haven't seen yet, so you can bet those are moving to the top of my backlog. I think you might be right about Cryptark, too — the side-on perspective offers a lot of the same opportunities for selectively distributing information to the player. Notrium also looks right up my alley and I'm delighted to see it only costs a couple bucks.
Thanks for the insightful response! There's a lot of food for thought here.
Darkwood mentioned!! It's one of my favourite games ever, and certainly the most unique top-down I have seen. I loved that details in your peripheral appear not only obscured by shadows but actually 'wrong' in terms of detail, e.g. unseen building interiors tend to look much more orderly and less dilapidated than when you actually look at them. It's as if the protagonist is trying and failing to impose order on the chaos around him and make sense of things, proceeding with the assumptions of his former life.
Also liked your point about using the top-down method to create tension and maintain psychological distance between the player and the character, which was particularly suitable for Darkwood.
I will gladly sign the petition to have the term 'top-down' replaced with 'scalp-cam' in all video gaming discourse going forward.