Grassfires of Veldstar
Porpentine's Grassfires of Veldstar (that's a direct download link) is an action puzzler, a series of suggestions of stealth with a rude timer, a crystal hunter masquerading as an avoidance simulation. It's really fun, in that immediate reset upon death, you're really just memorizing (intelligently constructed) arbitrary bullshit, goddamn this is cute kind of way.
I can expand on that bit that seems less than enthusiastic here: it's only arbitrary bullshit insofar as I consider all puzzles arbitrary bullshit. What Veldstar does is make each "life" last ten seconds; you start a level, the clock starts to count down. Your moves are entirely based on cues: the fire starts at the top of the level, so you run down. The bombers' shadows enter house left and move horizontally, so you do as well, vertical movement to avoid the shadows that become dropped bombs. The tiles themselves are relatively clear as to whether or not they are impassable, and if there is a lack of clarity you test them and die and reset and try something different.
This last is, in practice, what the game actually consists of; you see the fire above, you run down. A wall below, you try left, it's blocked you die, you start over, do the same but go right, the timer runs out just before the crystal, you don't run down quite as far this time, make it to the crystal, repeat. The gamey hook is those frustrations, but also how you are holding up right as time runs out and you let go but the inputs have a bit of lag so you respawn and immediately, unbidden, rush directly into the fire and die again and push through.
More complicated obstacles are introduced as well, hidden bombs and laser pylons, the latter of which provide a fantastic little set piece. Mostly it's just fun to die again and again and work through these microfrustrations. Also it's really cute.
Helix
I'm pretty garbage at all of Michael Brough's games, though none I've played more so than Helix. It's where you're an almost Osirian eye who circles other things which pops them, which gives you points. You don't want them to touch you. If they do you lose all your points and have to start over.
The catch, of course, being that this is an iOS game, is that to move you must trace little circles on your tablet or phone. As the game opens, it shows a finger in the bottom right corner and suggests that you touch anywhere to begin. Once you do, an indicator shows up, some arrow letting you know something is coming from offscreen right there. It does, you dodge it, and a little line appears. If you fill the line around, it pops. It's the kind of game that's perfectly great to while away with, but that also hints at it's own existence within an oeuvre.
Given that the game is legitimately gated by skill -- though I feel compelled similarly to say that the joy of it is immediately apparent -- I can make no particular claims as to how it progresses or where it might resolve. Helix does feel, however, very much as fascinated with abstraction and space as the other of Brough's games I've played (namely 868-Hack and Corrypt. All three use touch controls in abstracted ways; where the latter two are tile-based, however, the subject at hand is fluid. The circle motion seems, in certain ways, a natural progression of the "flick a direction wherever" input methodology of a game like Corrypt. If any part of the device can emulate a button or a joystick or a pointer, why not let it? And, more importantly, if the fundamental input method is going to be one of emulating, of recapitulating former control schemes, why not run with that in ways that incorporate the abstraction of the collapsing of the visual and tactile space?
Which is also why that visual space must be metonymized. The little arrow that signals the first enemy once your finger touches the screen is a suggestion. The black background with its patterns is unchanging, but it is also in (a) space, part of a larger whole. But then, too, the boss(es) problematize this even farther, materializing as static that fades in to the screen without movement. There is movement from the outside in, which also passes through, but there is also movement inside. Static movement, in a sense; the metaphoric incursion of another dimensional plane into the two in which this is played.
All of which gels, in a way, with, especially, Corrypt, which (seemingly) functions at least partially as the clef to his work. Without knowing much about how the game goes past the first boss, it's hard to say whether Helix is in a way "about" that hidden space or that extra dimension, but it very much seems to be. Or, at least, that is a read based on the impressions I have given that assumption.
Chain Blaster
In Chain Blaster, you fight the same six or so waves of enemies repeatedly, each time through making them slightly faster, adding a few bullets. It's an hour of attrition to get to the minutes where the points even matter. For a vertical shmup, this is one (facet of the) Truth; the faster the scrolling, the more apparent the lie, the stasis.
It's a series of fifteen minute chunks, repeated mindlessly until it isn't and then it's over. And then another hour or more if you were close enough. The aesthetics are the blandest of cyber, the frustrations macro. Everything, even death, wiped out by persistence, until persistence is the cause, and then an hour fifteen and you aren't even on the board. I love it.