Indie Games Thread

[pheonix561 2080]

It struck me that we didn't have a thread for discussion of indie games, which was pretty strange to me because that seems to be something a lot of us talk about. So here's a thread for that.

I'm gonna start off this thread by mentioning a game who's development I've been following for a while, who's team I was lucky enough to meet at GDC: "Earthlock: Festival of Magic," by Snowcastle Games:

 

They successfully funded the production of their game last year over kickstarter, and they also got a grant from the Norwegian government to make their game. Things are looking up for the team, though when I spoke the creative director/producer he said he was still pretty nervous about their plans to release the game in the fourth quarter this year. I told him I was interested in being a creative director/producer one day opening up my own studio like he was doing, and he said he pitied me.

 

That said, for an indie team, what they're doing is really impressive. This is supposed to be the first in a trilogy, the second of which will hopefully be funded by the success of the first game. He broke it down for me as a simple tribute to JRPG's of the late 90's/early millenia, with a simple "you guys attack/they attack" combat mechanic. There's a few changes to the combat mechanic, though. Every character has what is called a "stance." The guy with the gun in the art, for example, is a thief. He can take either a thievery stance or an "I have a gun" stance, and I have no idea what the stances are actually called because I didn't play the demo but that's what he said so fuck it I'm not bothering to proofread what I'm writing right now, fuck this I didn't actually expect to write anything I was just casually making a thread for indie games discussion. When you've got your gun out you're dps, doing decent damage but that's it. When you've got your gun put away you're a thief, stealing enemy items and so on, but you do much less damage.

There's also a friendship mechanic, where characters who spend more time with each other become better allies with each other in combat. He said there was no cap on how many people in your party your characters could be friends with, so it's a good idea to swap characters out with each other often in order to make them all work with each other better. I think it's also a clever gameplay mechanic because it encourages players to experiment with different party builds, so if a player's go-to party build is having a difficult time beating a boss, they already know how they could change their strategy to beat it.

 

Anyways, That's just a game I've been following that I thought I'd share with you guys. What about you guys, though? I'm sure lots of you have been following lots of indie games that you want to share here? Post em' below!

[Aethix 129]

There are a couple of indie games I've backed on Kickstarter. One is Tadpole Treble, a musical side-scrolling game that revolves around the idea of obstacles and collectibles being based on the musical notes for the stage's BGM. It's being developed by the guy who wrote the Brawl in the Family comics. The other is Nefarious, a game about being the villain and kidnapping princesses.