Shadowmage's Indie Game Corner: Gang Garrison 2

It is often said that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." The team behind Gang Garrison 2 has taken this to heart in many ways while creating their game. Gang Garrison 2, a Team Fortress 2 'demake', is an online, team and class based, 2-D, side-scrolling shooter made in the spirit of Valve's cartoonish FPS. The game started as a contest where contestants were to take contemporary games and 'demake' them; creating games which would be more in the vein of games found 15 years ago. In this theme, the visuals of Team Fortress are lovingly deconstructed down to simplistic 8-bit inspired graphics. Each of the nine similar-but-legally-distinct classes are instantly recognizable and even play similarly as in the game's big brother. The game, supposedly made by "Faucet Software", even loads from the "Smoke" program, mimicking Valve's name and Steam program.

While the game is similar in several ways, there are a number of very distinct differences which are quiet refreshing. Primarily, the game is almost painfully simple; Only five buttons are used for basic game play, and some classes don't even use all five buttons.  Basic movement and jumping are controlled using W, A, and D with shooting and special abilities activated with left and right mouse clicks. This simplicity is also reflected in the inventory system: there is none.  No hats, no unlockable weapons, nothing but the basic equipment. While that does not sound terribly exciting, it is extremely refreshing to simply find a server using the server browser and just play without having to think about one's load-out.

In the end, I find Gang Garrison 2 a welcome, and simplistic reprieve from an age where games are often judged by graphics quality or the number of features they contain. Instead, the developers of this game forced themselves into a box and then proceeded to think outside of it.  All of this, on top of a fairly active community and developers who still update the game, patch bugs, and add features fairly often, makes this a delightful game that would be foolish not to try at least once.

Gang Garrison 2 can be found here for your gaming pleasure: http://www.ganggarrison.com/