Eurogamer ’10: Indie Games Arcade 2010 Round-Up (Part 1)

At last year’s Eurogamer Expo, the Indie Games arcade was tucked away in a side room which seemed to get its biggest traffic from people tromping through on the way to listen to Important People talking about their Big Games. This made me feel rather sorry for the little guy, so I resolved to do my bit to make sure the Indie Arcade got some coverage, at least on Nukezilla.

Happily, this year is different: the Indie Arcade found me rather than me having to find it. Sure, it was a little toward the back, but on prominent display and I came across it before I had even thought to look. And what did I play? Well, I’ll tell you.

Frozen Synapse
Mode 7

If there’s anything that my favourite indie games have in common, it’s the way they iterate on basic ideas just enough to make for a great experience, without overdoing it. They’re focused, precisely designed things and from what I’ve played of Frozen Synapse for PC, it’s an excellent example of just that.

The thirty second video above shows the entirety of a game I played against the AI. A very, very short match, you might think, but you’d be wrong. What the video doesn’t show is that for every five seconds of action there is a few minutes of planning, which is where the heart of the game lies.

Players are tasked with telling their fighters where to go, whether to stop to attack enemies or keep moving, which direction to aim in or whether to duck behind cover, all via a series of waypoints. Both players plan simultaneously, which produces an fascinating mind-game between two human opponents: What is he planning? What does he think I’m planning? What does he think I think he’s planning? To explain the intention behind the game, I spoke to Ian Hardingham of Mode 7, which you can listen to below.

You can pre-order the game at the official website now, which will also give you access the beta.

B.U.T.T.O.N. (Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally Okay Now)
Copenhagen Game Collective

A little after lunchtime last Friday I was furiously trying to wrestle an Xbox controller out of the hands of a complete stranger who was playing me at this game. Far from this being a display of unsportsmanlike behaviour, I was simply playing B.U.T.T.O.N. just as it should be.

Participants in this game might be called upon to do all sorts of random tasks at the behest of the on-screen text, from jumping up and down on the spot to singing “Happy Birthday”, but all of this is a prologue to the real action. You might be told to press your button a certain number of times, or make sure your button isn’t pressed at all, and just how far you are willing to go to make this happen is up to you. More on the genesis of this game from Dajana Dimovska from the Copenhagen Game Collective:

This game won me over with its whimsical charm, but a significant worry remains: it seems to me this is a perfect recipe for a pile of broken controllers (if not broken ribs). While I didn’t particularly care about tugging on the pads provided at the Expo (sorry, Eurogamer), in my house I can imagine that I might quickly become a party pooper for suggesting that my friends are getting overenthusiastic in their attempts to win.

Anyone willing to take that risk can may have to wait since, according to the website, they’re still figuring out how best to release it.

Scoregasm
Charlie Knight

Scoregasm is a twin-stick shooter.

Revenge of the–

Okay, okay, I’m not quite being fair on Scoregasm; I’ll say a bit more. Play takes place in multiple stages inside metallic arenas which gently bob around the screen for no discernable reason apart from to cause disorientation. The title refers to the score multipliers that can be enjoyed from killing plenty of enemies, although my own didn’t get particularly high since I kept dying. A difficult game isn’t a bad thing, but I did feel at times that I wasn’t getting visual cues anywhere near as clearly as in something like Geometry Wars 2.

That isn’t to say that it felt like a bad game and with its level progression and arenas, Scoregasm isn’t a Geometry Wars clone by any means; the video should also attest to that. However, after trying a few stages I struggled to think of reasons to want to play it over one of its many rivals, and that’s why I find it difficult to write about. The full game may prove me wrong, and I hope it does because what we have here is fundamentally well-made, and by one man at that.

Revenge of the Titans
Puppygames

Tower defence games are as much of a staple of the indie community as the twin-stick shooter. Since Revenge of the Titans doesn’t immediately jump out as a fresh take on it, you’d expect my reaction to be similar to Scoregasm. However, while the latter pushed me away with its busy graphics and unforgiving world, I found myself drawn in by Revenge‘s simple, clear pixel art and gentle learning curve.

What I played was nothing greatly original by tower defence standards, though a surprisingly sprawling tech tree hinted at hidden depth to come. Whether it will deserve a place in a game collection which I feel only has -so- much room for tower defence remains to be seen when the game launches. In the meantime a demo and discounted pre-order with beta is available from the website.

Gemini Rue
Joshua Nuernberger

Oh, how my heart sang when I saw what appeared to be a traditional point ‘n’ click adventure hidden amongst the games of the Indie Arcade. With accessible tools like Adventure Game Studio, indie adventure games aren’t exactly rare these days, though they do vary wildly in quality.

Gemini Rue looks very promising. The detailed but lo-res visuals wouldn’t have appeared out of place alongside the best of adventure gaming offerings circa 1994. Its gritty future-noir setting evoking a more down-to-earth Beneath a Steel Sky among other things.

The story was impenetrable in the short time I had with the game but its sinister organisations and memory manipulation intrigued me enough that I genuinely could have continued for some time longer if I hadn’t got stuck. The writing seemed good enough to support the setting, too, with the exception of a rather hackneyed “you two blokes” during the intro (presumably to indicate that the character in question spoke with some variety of British accent).

Still, there was enough there to make me excited to see more when the time comes. Exactly when that will be is difficult to say, as there is precious little information on the internet. The post on the AGS forums seems to be the place to go.

So that’s it for now. Join me next week for part two, where I’ll be talking about the rest of the games I played.