GDC 15: Listing off the best of The 4th annual MIX

or four years running now, IGN has collaborated with people at Media Indie Exchange to host The MIX; a community mixer filled with people and indie developers who raise drinks and booze in hand in to celebrate the same communal kind of charm that you’d expect out of GDC.

I had the privilege to be invited to this fine event yet again, and as I strolled past the offerings booze and appetizers, I strolled the aisles in search of any game that caught my eye; especially something that I wouldn’t be able to see at GDC.

Here were all of my personal highlights from the event, and it’s safe to say that I left feeling a degree of anticipation for new games that I haven’t quite felt before.

It isn’t every day that we get to see an upcoming shoot’em up title that doesn’t derive from the land of the east, but that honestly isn’t the only factor that makes Jetpack Squad from Vapgames so special, not by a long shot (no pun intended.)

The vividly stylized environments of a futuristically war-torn city never looked as beautiful as they do in Jetpack Squad. Taking on the role of nameless, yet undeniably adorable critter, players will navigate through a traditional horizontal shooter scheme with some special nuances that focus on accenting the frenzy and speed that the genre prides itself on.

Sporting an arsenal of three very distinctive attacks aside from the normal attacks, players can choose a dodging shot burst that works as a fast attack and evasive strafing maneuver, melee blade attacks that can also deflect enemy fire, or a long-range grapple that can grab on to foes, and then launch them back out as a projectile against opposing forces.

The mechanics of know when to use what is incredibly satisfying within itself, but the beauty of the game is that the action on screen doesn’t give you a whole lot of room to breathe, allowing players to get rely on being instinctive in their tactics, through a natural flow of pacing that satisfyingly pulls you in.

The current status of Jetpack Squad is still really early, but you can catch all the updates made with the progress of its development at Vapgames Twitter.

It’s no secret just how much I love Metroidvania styled games, and Axiom Verge may just be primed to lead the pack of these cult-classic styled games that are planning to hit us in 2015.

What really sets this sci-fi venture apart from its contemporaries is just how self-aware its design is—it’s a veritable love letter to culture that’s grown out of the genre over the years.

While the key to these sort of affairs has always been progressive exploring and the respective player development that drives that, the speed-running aspect has always focused toward locating ways to exploit the game, in order to work around this established formula; Axiom Verge indulges this approach into the very core of its gameplay.

Hidden through the game are specific glitches that are used for the sake of progression, giving this meta-sense of exploiting what isn’t a technical exploit—the takeaway manages to be bigger than fan service, as it distinctively incentivizes players into thinking outside of the box when it comes to engaging these glitches for themselves.

The expanded arsenal of guns also add a layer to the gameplay as their specific types of enemies that are more susceptible, or some cases, uniquely weak to one of the particular weapons you’ll pick up.

Setting up the premise of the typical scientific genius who got in way over his head, the dialogue and exposition of the adventure pays homage to the likes of Out of This World, and Quantum Leap as it delivers an engaging plot filled with all the right sci-fi fiction elements to sell the gritty quest that it aims to be.

Axiom Verge will be heading out to the PS4 in late March, be sure to catch it.

As I mentioned earlier, the appeal to improve upon the ever-growing potential of the Metroidvania genre continues with a title called Season After The Fall. While this instance is a bit more faithful to organic game progression, it is by no means conventional.

The nuance of Season After The Fall’s world is built around the properties of the environment that it takes place in, and the effects of the natural element and weather that each respective season of the year has on it.

Every obstacle is presented with a solution that will react differently to the season that’s active, and players will control a fox who gradually gains the ability to instantly transition to whatever season would best fit the current situation.

A flower for example may show no reaction during Summer, Spring or Fall, but come winter, it will be able to come budding with a bloom that will react with a bark that you can command out of your fox hero, or a fauna that will only grow large leaves in summer, which can then act as a platform that are able to ride the intense winds that come out of the fall season.

These points of contest are scattered through numerous areas of the overworld, allowing players to initialize various operations or functions that will assist players in advancing to the next course of the forest inhabits the game’s grand setting.

The visuals are inspired by the art style of classic illustrations of children’s books from the past ages of European culture. Featuring an exquisite palate of water-brushed colors and tone, the animation and graphic design consistently aims to raise the bar higher towards delivering a delightfully whimsical display of graphics with every passing area you explore.

There are no release dates in the work as of yet, but Swingswing Submarine is working towards getting it out by the end of 2015.

When you think of a game like Trials, it typically elicits this knee-jerk love/hate reaction, but what if there was a game that was very similar, only it was engineered around a mechanics that thrive off of the agency of players instead of merely intimidating them?

The fine folks at Milkbag wanted to do just that with their stylized techno stunt-racer, FutureGrind

As the screen transitions to the starting point, you’ll be given control over a strange astro-bike that feature two distinctive colors; it’s not long before you learn why it does feature these two colors. The track is littered with a variety of rails for your neon vehicle to grind on, some are neutral rails, and then there are colored rails that that complement the two different colored wheels on your contraption—which means if you cross the one colored wheel with different colored rail through any contact; you can consider your shit toasted.

Utilizing similar physics to the popular Ubisoft racer that it muses from, FutureGrind offers numerous improvements to the dynamics that keeps the adrenaline and challenge of the system intact, only without as much frustration. Everything from a spanning camera that covers multiple angles and perspective that allow for a 2.5D view of the course that players will grind on, to intuitive level design that enforces a difficulty curve that’s reasonably acclimates players who initially pick up and play it, FutureGrind features a solid foundation that’s looking pretty good so far.

Milkbag is hard at work on the build they currently have, and aren’t far enough along to determine a release date, but will definitely do so when they can on their Twitter or Facebook.

In spite of all the desire to advance the medium of video games, there are a few times when we forget that it’s ok for them to be stupid, and dumb. Ben Esposito endorses this philosophy which is what lead him to create the insane concept of Doughnut County.

Set in a free-roaming world, through a first-person perspective, Doughnut County is an absurd and surreal fever-dream of environments that players will swipe and tap through.

The object of the game is maneuver around this ACME-like cartoon hole on the ground, steering it under objects that are small enough to fall into the personal abyss that you command. The more stuff you send plummeting down the hole, the bigger it gets, and once you’ve veritably swallowed up everything on screen, the view and stage expands itself into a much larger level for you to wreak holey-havoc in.

Insanely simple, yet whimsically fetching, the sights and sounds that make up the world and gameplay of Doughnut County already have the makings of an instant classic. While there isn’t a set date, Ben Esposito promises that the title will definitely release in 2015.