This Brilliantly Creepy New Indie Game Is A Strategy Puzzler With A Gruesome Sci-Fi Horror Twist
A writhing mass of toxic, sentient slime oozes menacingly towards a village. This foul red substance—the titular Xenospore—consumes anything it touches, leaving a trail of crimson-coloured devastation in its wake. The pixel art in this indie puzzler may be simple, but you can almost smell the sickly, bubbling alien gunk as it squirms across the map hungrily devouring entire towns and cities. Worse yet, the only thing standing between it and the end of the world is you.
Not enough puzzle games are sinister. That's why I love Xenospore, which you can play for free in any web browser. Created by solo developer AvivL, it's a wonderfully simple game, played entirely with mouse clicks or taps of your finger. It's replayable, deceptively challenging, and deeply satisfying—everything a great puzzle game should be. But it's deliciously disturbing too, with a dark, moody atmosphere that reminds me of grimy '80s sci-fi horror films.
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As the infestation creeps gruesomely across an isometric map, you have to strategically destroy tiles to stop its spread. Every time you make a move, the Xenospore grows and infects more tiles. If it manages to reach a settlement, you can sacrifice a turn to 'cleanse' it—at the risk of the spores spreading further. Keep at least one settlement from being destroyed and you win, but the real skill, and satisfaction, in Xenospore lies in saving them all.
Things get even darker when you find yourself being forced to sacrifice one settlement to save another. Sometimes the only way to pass a level, if you've backed yourself into a corner, is to let a city be eaten by the creeping rot. Occasionally text floats above settlements in the
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