pon writing this very intro to my coverage of this year’s piece to the Indie Mega Booth, I’ve realized that this is my eighth time covering this spectacle. While this may not seem like much in hind sight, it’s incredibly fascinating to me that this exhibit continually manages to not only get bigger with the subsequent event it visits, but by each and every venue that it’s hosted at as well.
It never ceases to amaze me just what I’ll find at the Indie Mega Booth either, I’m always reassured with this sense self-fulfilling prophecy of relief within the industry that I’ll come away with these new fresh. And innovative experiences that’ll be sure to impress me.
Here are some of the games that gave me that sort of feeling at the IMB.
While video games are proven to be excellent form of escape from the various toils of real life, they have also proven to be excellent tools for storytelling, playing off of the interactive elements offered as a bride of investment for players to cross.
Culture Shock’s We Are Chicago aims to do this as it drops you into the rough end of Chicago’s Southside, where you’ll contend with the teenage struggles and trials of the setting and the dangers they pose. Taking on a narrative choice-driven outline of exploration that’s somewhat similar to Gone Home, you’ll be tasked with making decisions in your day to day life that can not only threaten your safety, but those of your family and loved ones—scenarios that were largely inspired from the testimonials of real people who actually lived them from the setting of the game.
The authenticity of the game’s presentation is what really sells the intrigue to this story as something as mundane as say, inviting a friend over to a family dinner for instance, can lead to either strengthening or deteriorating any given relationship with the characters you interact with. These certain acts of decision will determine the trust that characters will have in you, affecting certain moments where these factors are crucial, and may significantly impact how the story may be told from there on out.
There’s no release information currently available for We Are Chicago, but you can follow any updates from Culture Shock at the game’s Twitter which is @WeRChicagoGame.
Balancing the levels of convention and innovation for a new game is a growing challenge that developers face within each passing generation of games, and creating something that can be comfortingly familiar versus something that’s excitingly new is pedestal that both player, and developer alike, must weigh their time on.
That’s why something like Oneshot from Team Oneshot is so intriguing as it plays around with the player perception and expectation towards its dynamics, and challenges these preconceptions with puzzles that extend beyond the in-game logic of the title itself.
The premise is engineered around a familiar top-down view, where you’ll guide the main character Niko, and explore various environments filled with a multitude of different characters and items you’ll need to interact with, as they all play some sort of role that’ll fit into one of the many different puzzles that Oneshot has to offer. Combining certain items with others will create entirely new items that’ll react to new set of context that come in handy in some way, and while the fundamentals are intuitive enough, the solution and the means to reach it can be bizarre and intriguingly unorthodox.
For instance, coming across a weird roll of film in game, opening the item will actually boot you out of main executable running the game, populating an entirely different window on the desktop instead that’s running the game. The content of the window is a graphic what appears to be undeveloped film, and directly click on the graphic, or mashing any of the action buttons won’t have any effect; however, by deciphering some of inconspicuous clues that were dropped earlier within the in-game text, the answer lies physically clicking up on the window itself, and holding onto your mouse-button so that you can drag it across the edge of where the desktop screen ends, developing the parts of the ‘film’ that you beyond that boundary in the process.
The looks, sounds, and dialogue of the game are equally as cheeky and sharp as it’s puzzles are, as Niko will often break the fourth-wall of the game, and offer a narrative that wonderfully works as a piece of social commentary towards one of the many subjects of games or life in general.
While the game has found a publisher with Degica games, there’s no info on release date, but any new updates to the progress of the game and its release can be found at the Twitter handle @NightMargin.
The concept of multitasking is one that will eternally demonized and praised by people till the end of time; whether it’s sense of satisfaction and efficiency it can offer, or overwhelming sense of stress and dread, everyone will always have a different feeling towards it, especially when it comes multitasking in gameplay. Semispheres is a unique example where it’s designed around pacing players through an intuitively accessible median on the principles of multitasking, and the execution of the mechanic is done surprisingly well.
Opening up on setup of two, side-by-side stages that are nearly identical with one another, the objective is to guide two different spheres of light to the end points of these two stages simultaneously, as one cannot finish without the other. The navigation isn’t always so straightforward however, as there can be obstacles that’re unique to one stage, yet cannot be overcome unless it’s confronted through a sequence of actions that can only triggered from the opposite sphere.
Obstacles can range in anything from game-ending enemies wandering the map of the stage to environmental traps that can block any or all routes without the right approach; the puzzles behind these mechanics can range anywhere from easy-peasy to head-scratchingly brutal, but not a single one of them seemed unfair in any way in my time with the game.
The game is slated for release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows, Mac, Linux, and maybe even Wii U later this year.
If the internet has taught us anything, it’s that we really love strange mash-ups and crossovers of genres and properties. Whether the pair could be considered a hybrid of star-crossed levels that wonderfully complement one another, or a combination of strange bed fellows that you never would have imagined a match between, experiencing a melting pot of some of your favorite things can be kind of neat sometimes—and C-Wars from Onipunk Software is an excellent example of the sentiment.
Mashing together dynamics inspired from RPG classics like Mega Man Battle Network and Final Fantasy Tactics, the flow of combat is action oriented like that of MMBN, where attacks and evasive maneuvers can be inputted in real-time against enemy forces on an isometric tiled grid-like level.
The gameplay will drop into a map of mini-stages that you can choose from, each randomized in a rogue-like manner, where players can deploy a selection of playable heroes they can select from, each possessing their own distinctive strengths and weaknesses, like faster character, or super sweet Assault Mech that’s excellent for heavy crowd control.
The presentation of C-Wars is a giant love letter to the 16-bit aesthetic of retro gaming, and the charming attention of detail on the unique animation and visual effects make it real treat to look at as well.
You can buy an early-access copy of the game right now on Steam.