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:
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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!
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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!
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A Playable Pop-up Book by
Lowtek GamesImagine 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!