Insomnia 53 – Indie Showcase

I attended i53 this weekend and although being the third, smaller event of the year, it’s always a great place to find a selection of unknown, up and coming indie games. What I love especially is the fact is the fact that the developers are at hand to talk you through the game and discuss their plans for it, the process of developing it, whatever you want to ask they will try their best to answer. Upon seeing my shiny Press badge, they jumped at the chance to sell me their game and I have to say, a few shone through that I’m going to tell you about and give you the links to see for yourself!

 

Now Red Awakening was actually the first game I came across at the event and my oh my I feel like even after 30 minutes of discussing the game with the developer he still had more ideas and plans for the game. There was a playable version of the game, which despite not having a lot of content, worked pretty well and gave you a good idea of what the game will be like, but it was everything that had been thought of that really impressed me, especially as this is an indie title. The game has a quirky visual style almost mixing The Wolf Among Us and Borderlands styles into one 80’s style arena shooter. The game will have a single player campaign featuring different characters with their own back-stories, comedic dialogue, multiplayer modes, and who knows what else. Even though Red Awakening is an FPS with a very quick kill-or-be-killed system such as the old Quake titles, it has a heavy focus on Stealth with a combination of Horror. It features around 27 weapons, most being melee weapons, to be used to sneak up on the enemy and slice them up before they get you! Although there are guns you can pick up, there are absolutely no ammo pick ups throughout the levels, so once you’re out of bullets your only choice is to throw it away. This does have an advantage if you’re playing online, as you can throw your gun to your teammate if they don’t have one. You also don’t have a HUD, your ammo is displayed on the gun itself which you can view by pressing a key and your health/lives and any other statistics are displayed on a heart sensor you carry with you. You also have the ability to run along walls and grab onto them to shoot from, you can turn invisible or use a predator-like vision to see movement around the map, characters have different skills and so much more. Definitely looking forward to see more from this game, and you should be too, you can follow them via their website or twitter.

–https://twitter.com/Red_Awakening
–http://www.red-awakening.com/

Another game I ran across is the portal-esque first person puzzler, Stand Point. Stand Point is all about the manipulation of gravity, with the ability to rotate the point of gravity by 90 degrees throughout the square tunnels. It is currently very simple in terms of graphics and content, but the puzzles are relatively unique and although are usually quite quick to figure out it’s still one of those puzzle games that make you go “Ah, so that’s how that works, clever”. A great start and a possible diamond in the rough, otherwise Stand Point looks like a pretty average puzzle game to waste some hours on and -if released cheaply- would be  a nice little indie title to pick up.

–https://twitter.com/PlayStandpoint
–http://standpointgame.com/

Now Lunar Tides is a game where I felt like I should’ve seen it before or it’s been made before, which is possible, but this was the first time I’ve experienced a game like it. Lunar Tides is a futuristic strategy game in which you control a space fleet from inside the bridge of your own ship. You have a 3D plan of the space around you in which you can move your ship or command your fellow ships to attack the enemy fleet with a simple point and click of the mouse. Your fleet is AI controlled (at least it is currently, I believe the dev told me he’s very interested in adding multiplayer support in the future) but you have full control over your own ship, using the map to move and target an enemy ship before using the screens on the bridge to choose your weapon of choice. Another screen displays your ships health, and you can watch the entire battle happen before you right outside the window. The dev also told me he made the game in just over a week, and although it was simple and half of the assets were free one’s in unity, I was still impressed and found it pretty fun. There’s not a lot about the game so far but you can follow Ben to keep tabs on it!

–https://twitter.com/MrBenjammmin
–http://www.damaged-games.com/

 

The last game that caught my attention does not yet have a name, but I’m going to call it Light of Sound. Light of Sound is a AudioSurf style rhythm game in which you control a colour spectrum and have to highlight the correct colour that corresponds with the colour the child you are controlling passes over. I’m not sure how I threw so many C words in there but it worked. Oh and each colour block is placed in time with the music, again in the same way the AudioSurf levels are set out. Nice and simple, and controlled with either a Wii controller or a motion controller such as a Kinect. Nothing special but it was a nice game to see although currently it’s rather difficult, as early developed games usually are.

Those are the games that stuck out to me at Insomnia 53, hosted in my city of Coventry. If any of them interest you, make sure to check them out and tweet to them saying Bago helped you find them!