Shadow Covenant

Hi again!

When you’re reading this, I’ll probably be playing “Cataclysm”, getting my awesome mage to level 85 and raid ready! 🙂

Anyway, I’ve prepared this beforehand, and I probably posted on that before this goes online.

So, let’s get down to it: the last part of my IGF2011 showcase… I’ll still do a wrapup post aswell, with some last impressions on this IGF…

Nimbus

According to the creator, “Nimbus” is an open ended puzzle-racing game. The player controls a ship that doesn’t propel itself, instead relying on the stuff on the levels to increase it’s speed (and mainly to go up).

“Nimbus” has already been released (through Steam), and seems like a fun game… unfortunately, haven’t had the time to play it yet, but I’ll be sure to take my turn at it!

Overgrowth

Another known name in the indy community, “Overgrowth” is a game by Wolfire Games. Although I’m not a big fan of the game itself, their toolchain and marketing abilities are impecable and well worth taking a look into, to learn “how it’s done!”. The game features is a Rabbit on Rabbit action… Kung-Fu-wise, that is!

Proun

“Proun” is a racing game of sorts… the objective is to avoid the obstacles by rotating a sphere around the tube it is travelling on… Some stuff on the trailer is insane, and it looks great.

Q.U.B.E.

“Q.U.B.E.” is a game that kind of reminds me of “Portal”. It plays as a first person game in which the player has a glove that enables him to extrude or push blocks of the same color as the glove, and has to use that to solve puzzles and progress further into levels. Looks sweet!

Ray Ardent: Science Ninja

This one has the Silly Factor crank way up! Best way to explain it is that it’s like Cannabalt with more stuff in it… 🙂

Player has to control “Ray Ardent” in a scrolling environment, avoiding obstacles and bad guys without loosing pace… Simple, yet addictive, if it’s anything like Cannabalt.

Retro City Rampage

If Grand Theft Auto was done in the 80’s, this is what would come out… An open-ended sandbox-y game with 8-bit graphics (that look totally awesome). ’nuff said, I think!

Retro/Grade

This is one of the most original twists on a shoot’em up I’ve ever seen: you play the game backwards in time… This makes the game look more of a rythm game than a shooter, to be honest, but the result is impressive nevertheless… Basically, the player has to position himself at the correct position where he was when he fired his lasers… weird, hum?

In the video, it’s easier to understand, but I fear this mechanic might be too strange to get acceptance, since it involves a mental paradigm shift to accomodate for the time-is-backwards thing… The execution is also a bit weird, since there are lots of glowy things to confuse the player and misleed him to the wrong position. Still, it’s very impressive!

Shield the Beat

Another mix between a rythm game and a shoot’em up, in this one, the player has to use the analogue stick to control the shield’s position around the ship while changing the color of the shield to reflect the incomming bullets… This all in a “on-rails” shooter context…

It’s pretty neat and innovative, which is always good to see!

Snapshot

Another original one (seems I can’t use any other word to describe most games I’ve chosen for my IGF2011 overview)… In this platformer, the player can take “pictures” of areas of the screen and then move them around the play area to solve puzzles. It’s really weird and wonderful…

Spectre Spelunker Shrinks

Although it has a terrible name, the concept behind this platformer is quite nice: play with the characters’s size. Although plenty of games have done in the past (for example, “Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap”), this is the first time I saw this mechanic applied to a platformer, and to such a good effect:

Spiral Knights

Co-op action RPG? I’m in! 🙂 Specially if it reminds me of “Darkstone” (an old game I really loved!). I’m curious on what the creator means by “clockwork world” that changes over time…

Strength of the Sword

This one is impressive for an indy game… top-notch graphics and animation, which is rare these days (animation being so expensive to produce, compared to the other parts of the tech/art). The gameplay seems to be a bit too “arena-based” for my taste, but each to his own, to be honest… “Heavenly Sword” was arena based and it was enjoyed by millions… 🙂

Swimming Under Clouds

Physics-based platformer… The awesome part is that it looks beautifull and includes fluid simulations, which is something I love… The weirdness of the main character (a fish in water travelling through a world) is just the strawberry on top of the cake!

Symon

This graphical adventure got me curious because of it’s procedural generated puzzles… I’m extremely curious on how this will work in practice, to be honest…

The Line

Looks good and seems to have an interesting gameplay going on… Just draw and erase lines to get the player character from one place to another. Another game that seems to be a good match for the iPhone.

Trainyard

Another interesting puzzle game, it seems to me this one will drive me insane (if it would come out for Android)… Just lead the trains from start to finish, avoiding collisions… seems simple, right? 🙂

Vizati

This is an interesting puzzler, and I wish it would come out on Android (since I don’t enjoy these games so much on PC as on that kind of devices, not sure why)… A puzzle game in which you shift the game world to move pieces together. It’s available for PC, iPhone, iPad and WindowsPhone 7 (an impressive feat by itself, with just one tech guy working on the game, in a short while).

So, that’s it… now back to levelling (well, technically not, since I posted this on Monday, but you get the general feeling!) 🙂

The Independent Game Festival (IGF) is the equivalent to the Sundance Festival for games… It honors and promotes games by independent developers (the definition of independent developer is a matter of heated debate, best left for another article), and it is not uncommon for a game that wins some of the categories to go to bigger things (publishing deals, better sales, etc).

On it’s 13th edition, it takes place at the same space and time as the Game Developer Conference.

There are 391 entrants this year, and I’ve decided to do some featured articles on the ones I found more interesting, plus an article at this series end with my thoughts of the IGF in general… Note that my analysis of these games is done on the most part by looking at the information at the IGF site. Some of these I actually delved a bit deeper, but mostly I stuck with the information provided… This has the disadvantage that I may have skipped some worthy entrants because they lacked videos or demos of their games, or that I got swindled by nifty videos! 🙂

But in an indy game, presentation is everything, since you depend on the internet’s mass-judgment to get your game out there…

So, without further ado, here’s the first part of my list (which has more than 50 games on it):

A Mobius Proposal

While the game presented in “A Mobius Proposal” seems to be very neat (puzzle/co-op sort of thing), the motivation for it is what actually caught my eye: the game was designed as a marriage proposal… That for itself is very cool, but the game also seems interesting, with two characters going in diferent sides of a Mobius strip, helping one another progress in the levels.

Achron

This game will either be a revolution in RTS games, or a huge failure… and it all boils down on how complex is playing around with time is.

The premise behind Achron is the same as in all RTS games, with the difference that in this one, you can go back in time with units and manipulate the events in the “present/future”. This means that you can go to the past with a unit, and destroy the facility that’s creating all the units that are currently beating the crap out of you, before they’re actually built!

Of course, this lead to paradox (if you “go back in time and destroy the factory that created the unit that you sent back in time”-sort of thing), but the way Hazardous Software is dealing with this problem is also interesting… Check out the video below for more information, it’s pretty enjoyable:

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

This game was developed by Frictional Games, the people that have brought you Penumbra. This one has actually been already released on Steam, and it’s already on my wish list (I’ll get to it as soon as I can find the time… lots of games to play!).

The game takes a bit of a Lovecraft vibe, in terms that you can’t actually do anything against the enemies. You just need to avoid them (because looking at them, and being around them will make you go insane over time), and try to stay in the light (since it will restore your sanity). Your character wakes up in the dungeon of a castle and doesn’t have memories, and the game is a mixture of exploration and puzzle solving, while avoiding the monsters. Pretty good atmospheric stuff, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Amoebattle

Not much info on this one, but I’m a sucker for unconventional RTS… In this one, you control an army of amoebas, fighting for the primordial soup! 🙂

Ancients of Ooga

To be honest, this game seems like standard platformer fare, but I really liked the visual style… it has an old-school pre-rendered sprites vibe to it, but vibrant colors and some humor that made me want to mention it.

Atooms to Moolecule

This one seems one of the most interesting arcade/puzzle games on display on this years’ IGF. Looks hard as hell, though! 🙂 Basically, combine atoms to form complex molecules, according to some predefined level goal.

Bastion

Beautiful is the only word that comes to mind when I look at “Bastion”. Everything in the game looks so polished and pretty it hurts… It comes from Supergiant Games, which apparently is a company founded by ex-devs of the Command & Conquer series. Seems like a huge departure from that, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing… From what I could gather, this is a isometric semi-RPG game, with some co-op (which is awesome, love that kind of game in co-op), with everything hand-drawn (which leads to the amazingly beautiful visuals!).

Bo

Another nice puzzle platformer, in this one you can draw and erase blocks for the player to stand inside… watch the video above, it does a much better job of explaining the key mechanics than me…

Cave Story

If you’re familiar with the indy scene, “Cave Story” (and his developer, Daisuke Amaya) isn’t a stranger to you, since it’s one of the most known titles in indy history. Although the original PC game goes back to 2004, the version on the IGF is the Wiiware version that’s been released earlier this year.

Although it is a “generic” platformer, the balancing and the gameplay makes this a title that stands way above most.

And that’s it for this first part… I’ll have part 2 up soon… Until then, you can explore the entrants yourself, or just wait for it… 🙂

Don’t forget, people, support indy games! They’re usually cheap for all the fun they have inside, and most just need some dollars/euros/qwanzas/etc so they can keep doing that!