Debug Indie Game Awards 2024 Highlights feat. a playable pop-up book

On Friday I went to the Debug Indie Game Awards in Nottingham. I had a lot of fun playing games, talking to devs, watching some talks and of course attending the awards show itself!



Some personal highlights from the event floor:

- Lumi: Starbound Adventure (Coming Soon)

I tried out this upcoming action platformer and it instantly won me over with its great look, fun character design, and solid gameplay that closely aligns to my particular tastes. The overall feel is that of a PS2 platformer, the path forwards laid out with an abundance of collectathon-y star bits, and with harder to find badges hidden around corners and on ledges. Occassional enemies require some simple Zelda-like slashing, but the influence of that series is most obvious in puzzles that require you to lift and manipulate stone platforms and springs in a familiar Tears of the Kingdom fashion. What I most enjoyed though was the level design itself, for the most part linear but with enough scope for alternate approaches and platforming off-piste. I snuck back later in the day to have another play and started searching out shortcuts, managing to bypass some of the puzzles and paths in a way that felt both rewarding and intended, or if not intended at least in scope of the mechanics. Suffice to say the game is now on my wishlist!

- Full Void (Out Now)

I hadn't heard of this narrative puzzle platformer before the event, but trying it out sold me straight away. It's Flashback style clambering with a huge amount of visual polish and an appealing (and threatening) apocalyptic setting. In my mixed up experience the flow of try-die-repeat feels very Limbo, where you'll often have to fail to learn what to avoid, and it pulls that off with entertaining (and succinct) death animations, instant restarts and generous checkpointing. I'm going to be picking this up and playing it through properly very soon I think!

- A Playable Pop-up Book by Lowtek Games

Imagine a pop-up book, laid flat to open vertically at 90 degrees, with a projector hooked up to transform the 3D scenes of each page into a playable game. You can see it in action in the link above, but in person it's properly mindblowing. One of the coolest things I've seen in quite some time!

Full Void really is excellent. I got the Evercade cart, but might well buy another version once discounted.

That popup book reminds me a bit of the Riddler boxes from Batman Forever. I always wanted one of them

Right, so OrangeRKN recently setup a thread about his visit to the Debug Indie Games Awards 2024. It's well worth a look - so click here to view it!

Orange mentioned that he'd seen a new idea called "a playable pop-up book":

OrangeRKN wrote:A Playable Pop-up Book by Lowtek Games

Imagine a pop-up book, laid flat to open vertically at 90 degrees, with a projector hooked up to transform the 3D scenes of each page into a playable game. You can see it in aciton in the link above, but in person it's properly mindblowing. One of the coolest things I've seen in quite some time!

Now, I couldn't quickly find this entry in the two-hour show vid and so I did some digging... and it looks bloomin' incredible! Check out this vid by the creator, Alastair Low, that he published in June 2023:



Not only does this look genuinely fun and fresh, but it gives off a vibe of something I could imagine Nintendo making. There are questions, of course - what styles of games could be made? How durable would the pages be? Could the fun last? - but there certainly does appear to be a huge amount of potential here and I really would like to see more of this system.

Thanks, Orange-san, for highlighting such a cool innovation.

It is genuinely brilliant.

Anyway I've merged your new topic into this one, it's not like there's an unmanageable number of posts!

jawa_ wrote:Now, I couldn't quickly find this entry in the two-hour show vid and so I did some digging...

That'll be because it wasn't in that vid, but in the link...

OrangeRKN wrote:- A Playable Pop-up Book by Lowtek Games

Imagine a pop-up book, laid flat to open vertically at 90 degrees, with a projector hooked up to transform the 3D scenes of each page into a playable game. You can see it in action in the link above

The award event looked really fun. The indie scene seems like it has such an enthusiastic, supportive and dedicated community. Skimmed the awards but they all seemed so passionate and happy to be there.

The games featured and how they were presented in those reels before and after seemed more interesting to me than Nintendo Indies Direct. Never got into steam / twitch and stuff or PC gaming in general, perhaps I should. Those games featured are definitely my sort of thing - sometimes simple games but fast paced, colourful retro aesthetic, high-intensity techno soundtracks etc; specifically I see there were some nice platformers there and some of them coming to Switch / PS.

Lumi OBVIOUSLY looks incredible. I'm a big fan of Inside so I may try Full Void sometime. Intrepid Lizzy and Berserk Boy look fun too.

.