While it’s always fun to see games like Titanfall, Knack, The Wolf Among Us, and Dying Light, my favorite time at PAX is always spent at the Indie Megabooth, where the unsung heroes of the video game industry are hard at work with new surprises. There was a lot of impressive games as part of the booth at this year’s PAX, from platformers to beat ‘em ups, horror to comedy, there are exciting things coming out of the independent community. Here are my highlights from the expo.
Tengami
The last thing I expected to see while walking around the megabooth was a game that was making its exclusive console debut on the WiiU. Sure, Tengami is also coming to iOS platforms, but the game has a natural fit for the Nintendo platform, showing off the WiiU touchscreen in a way that should be demonstrated more often.
The game’s developer, Nyamyam, is made up of a couple Rare veterans who were looking to stretch their legs after a developing Kinect Sports on the Xbox 360. It is safe to say the duo has stumbled onto something intriguing in their puzzle game. Inspired by a love for pop-up books, Tengami is a puzzle/maze game where players guide their character through a series of origami-esque settings. Playing the ocean setting, there is a serene quality to the game as japanese flute helps set a calm tone, perfect for making your way through the brain-teasing maze each frame contains. There’s a beautiful layering of the paper in Tengami, helping structure the setting, lending the game its origami look.
In Tengami, puzzles are solved by lifting different pieces of paper or dragging pieces from one place to another, much like a pop-up book. While the game has a peaceful quality, it can be quite the challenge. The puzzles take patience, persistence, and a good amount of wit to be solved. Tengami does not have a release date, but you can learn more about the game here.
Contrast
I first saw Contrast at PAX East and it instantly grabbed me with its shadowy noir-style. Riffing off of an aesthetic that pays homage to German Expressionism and old films like the Secret Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Contrast drips with its collision of dark and light, hence its name.
The first release from Compulsion Games, Constrast tells the story of Didi, a young girl who creates an imaginary friend named Dawn to cope with her unstabel home life. Players take control of Dawn and watch over Didi as she works her way through the games mysterious setting that riffs on burlesques, jazz clubs, fairgrounds, and more. As Dawn, players platform their way through the city, flipping between 3D and 2D as Dawn can transform into a shadow, jumping atop of other shadows to reach places that are hard to get to.
During my time with the game, I helped set up jazz club spotlights, then used the shadows of a lounge singer and her backup band to sneak backstage with Didi. Here, I learned that the singer was Didi’s mother who was now engaged a heated argument with Didi’s father about money the man wanted. Didi then led Dawn behind the cabaret club, where I was forced to assume my shadow form again and platform my way across the shadows of spinning carousel horses.
The game is inventive, fun, and gorgeous. Compulsion Games have a great combination of elements for their first game and appear to have a clear vision of their final product. Look for Contrast in late November on Steam, PS3, and Xbox 360 and learn more about it at Compulsion Game’s website.
Apotheon
Another game dripping with style is AlienTrap’s follow up to their first game, Capsized. Featuring a similar control layout as their previous game, Apotheon feels tighter and cleaner, not to mention more inventive.
Apotheon features silhouette characters, set against a brownish-clay background, an art style not uncommon in ancient Greece, the game’s appropriate setting. In the demo available at PAX, players take control of a soldier whose home is being attacked by Spartans. Starting with a simple sword, the main character battles his way through enemy soldiers, picking up armor and weapons along the way. Players can choose between a handful of weapons, from axes and clubs to ranged spears and arrows. Each weapon feels different, with varying weight and damage, meaning you will want different weapons based on the type of enemies you are fighting. Sometimes you will want ranged weapons to deal with enemies from afar, sometimes a knife will help you strike first, or an axe is required to break through some heavy armor.
Much like Capsized, Apotheon feels pretty unforgiving. Players are asked to block, throw, stab, dodge, and run early in the demo and combining all of these skills is more cumbersome than you would think. The game also has a background map you can toggle on and off, making navigation a bit easier than it was in Capsized. While defending my town, I was required to find different elite members of our village, then defend the Oracle. At the Oracle, I faced off against the general of the Spartans, who seemed to have an endless supply of spears he was relentlessly hurling at me. Apotheon is fast paced and ruthless, you will have to react quickly and accurately. For more on Apotheon, check out AlienTrap’s website.
That Dragon, Cancer
Most of the time video games are a pretty safe medium. When pushing the limits, game often do so in the name of gore and sex, pretty easy sells to the public. When we say a game is mature, it is often referring to how many times someone yells “fuck” or how graphically someone is mutilated. When immersion is discussed, it is normally into fantastical worlds or parallel universes. It is really rare that we see something brave, something that puts a game designer in a compromising position.
That Dragon, Cancer is all about the voyeurism of the player and looking through the eyes of the creator. Ryan Green is the lead developer of That Dragon, Cancer allows us to look through his autobiographical recounting of his one-year-old son’s battle with cancer. The game is Green’s fragmented internal-monologue as he witnesses the disease torment his baby boy. Standing beside the game at PAX, Green represents more than just a developer with a game, he represents someone trying to communicate a personal and haunting experience to an audience. Sitting next to the monitor players demo the game on is a picture of Ryan and his son, Joel.
In the demo, players enter Ryan’s frame of mind as he watches the sunset. His internal thoughts start by dissecting the colors of the setting sun, then turn to the room he is in, his son’s bedroom. There’s a crib in the center of the room, and though we can not see him, we are assured that Joel is asleep inside. This is confirmed as Joel starts crying. Desperate to stop his son’s pain, Ryan picks up the baby a rocks him gently. It does not work. Ryan attempts to diagnose Joel’s unhappiness, giving him juice, burping him, but nothing can help the baby boy, nothing can stop the pain caused by the baby’s cancer.
Finally the baby cries himself to sleep. We are left with Ryan’s thoughts as he reflects on another day facing the hardship thrust upon his family and his son. The subject is heavy, it is moving, it feels unlike anything I have played before. Ryan admitted to me before I started the demo that he did not know if he was brave or crazy. As I walked away from the demo, there was no doubt in my mind that he was the former. That Dragon, Cancer is still in the early stages of production, but promises to be an experience that will be extremely difficult to get through, not due to its gameplay, but due to its unflinching look at a parents worst nightmare, a reality that Ryan Green lives every day. Follow the game’s progress on their website.
Whenever people get down on video games, when the public condemns their violence and their generic qualities, I go back to games like this. Games like Contrast, Apotheon, Tengami, and That Dragon, Cancer are leading the way to prove that while we all love blockbuster gaming, there titles, a sliver of size, doing things just as–if not more–important. Anyone who goes to PAX owes it to themselves to check out the indie megabooth and discover what the future of video games really looks like.
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