When there's a treasure chest of goodies waiting to be pilfered, there's no better way to pull off your heist than by dropping in on a cord and nabbing the loot while hanging from the ceiling. It also helps if you can bounce around like a ball and flip the entire world upside down. The world's slyest slimeball returns in Swindler 2, a follow-up to Nitrome's Swindler released earlier this year. Your green thief wants to collect the treasure chest at the end of each level, but you'll have to dangle your way through a maze of vicious enemies and unforgiving spikes to get there. This physics puzzler takes a fresh twist when you gain the ability to let go of the rope!
As before, you can raise or lower Swindler on his cord with the up and down [arrow] keys. Swindler always dangles with gravity, so to go around a bend, you can use the left and right [arrow] keys to rotate the world around your current position. Occasionally, you may need to pick up a boulder or bomb using the [spacebar]. However, in certain levels, you will be able to grab onto a hook, detach yourself from your cord, and roll freely around the room until you find another hook. Swindler doesn't like being unattached though, so you'll have to hook up again quickly or roll into a green slimeball to prolong your run.
In these 25 new levels, you've still got to find a way to the treasure chest hidden in each level, wrapping yourself around corners as you go. Some doors may need to be opened by pressing buttons, either by holding them down with your cord or getting an enemy to press them for you. As a rule of thumb, always try to avoid anything orange or yellow, as they tend to mean quick captures for your fiendish friend. Swindler 2 is also the first new game to be compatible with Touchy, a premium mobile app that lets you play some Nitrome games in your browser using your device as a controller. In this case, the ability to tilt your device to rotate the screen is a very natural fit for the game, and the large on-screen buttons give you comfortable control when raising or lowering yourself along the cord. Like other Nitrome sequels, you may notice that the difficulty level ramps up somewhat quickly (as though it's to be assumed that you've played the prequels), but don't let this stop you from jumping in right now and discovering the twisted world of the evergreen bandit.
Thanks to Donald for sending this one in!
This was great time spent, as usual with this company. In this game (and almost all of Nitrome's work), there is original and intuitive gameplay, excellent graphics, catchy music, and natural feeling controls. With Touchy, this has become equivalent to a console game.
Is there anybody who can rationally dispute that Nitrome has become the best indie developer on the web?!
Nitrome the best indie developer on the web?
Well you made me laugh at least, if best indie developer means stealing gameplay from 20 year old games then yeah, they are up there with the best "indies". Maybe PopCap can give them a run for their money.
@rc
Nitrome's games do feature intuitive gameplay. They deliver plenty of original concepts executed to near perfection. You can't steal 120+ gameplay ideas from old games. Almost all their best games wouldn't be able to be executed for a game 20 years ago. Such as Ice Breaker, Fault Line, Chisel, Rubble Trouble, The Bucket, take your pick.
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