Indie Gaming Highlight: OLYMPIA RISING and DIADRA EMPTY

Olympia Rising

Olympia Rising is a charming action platformer where your goal is to gather enough coins in each level to bribe Charon to escort you out of Hades, the land of the dead. You gather coins by breaking pots and slaying foes as you run, jump, and fight your way through the stages. As you progress, you get upgrades — like more health and different spells — to help offset the increasing difficulty.

The core mechanic of the game is slaying enemies for the coins you need, and you get a multiplier for the numbers of kills you get without touching the ground. Killing an enemy also resets your character's double jump. The result is combat that feels almost like a puzzle or rhythm game where you are trying to bounce along a line of foes, killing them one at a time so you never have to touch the ground. Once you get the hang of it, the combat is fun and rewarding, especially when you pull off a crazy combo.

Some of the levels have an artificial time limit in the form of a rising sea of acid which kills you instantly. The acid levels can be frustrating but most of the time it adds a good level of tension until the controls backfire. One of Olympia Rising’s weaknesses is the controls. They generally work well, allowing you to jump around, fight monsters, and cast spells, but the wall grab is really sticky. Sometimes you will find yourself desperately trying to free yourself from a wall only to be stuck, a vulnerable feast for the rapidly approaching Hades-spawn.

Since the game is fun to play, it is sad that Olympia Rising is so short. A skilled player could plow through all of the content in two hours or less. It took me around 4-5 hours to beat since I had to replay certain stages and boss fights a lot. The game is still worth picking up for $5, but I caught myself wanting more after I completed it the first time.

Olympia Rising is an entertaining action-platformer. While not perfect, it provides a good enough experience and is worth picking up if you are a fan of games like Dustforce or Cave Story.
 

Diadra Empty

Diadra Empty is a side scrolling shoot-em-up that tries to take the genre in a whole new direction, literally. Unlike your standard SHMUP experience, enemies will come at you from the right and the left and then you can choose to TURN AROUND. It doesn’t sound like that big of a change, and in practice it isn’t either.

The controls are fairly simple. You have your standard shoot and bomb buttons, but also a burst option that lets you move quickly and changes your attack pattern, and a button that allows you to turn around. Instead of having the button switch you from facing right to left, it lets you face the direction you are travelling. It feels weird at first, but become functional with some practice. Besides enemies coming from two directions, Diadra Empty is more of the same.

You shoot lots of things, get experience, level up your character and try to play through the levels again. The game's difficulty is its main source of replayability since you are going to die a lot, which is a staple for the genre. Your progress is maintained through your various playthroughs, so you can grind a bit to get a better attack or faster movement speed if you are having a difficult time with a level, but more important than stats is just practice. Learning the boss fights are key to success.

Diadra Empty is a decent shoot-em-up. It’s well made (except for the stats screen not updating), has a decent art style, and works well enough, but I just don’t see the draw for anyone outside fans of the genre. The difficulty curve increases so rapidly that many might get discouraged, and having to replay the same five levels over and over again can get old after a while. Pick it up if you are a fan, but if you aren’t, you’ll probably get bored quickly.