IGF Judging's just about over so it's time for this year's IGF Games I Want To Talk About post!
For those who aren't familiar with this, this was a previously-twitter-exclusive tradition of mine where I bring up a selection of games I played as an Independent Games Festival judge during the competition that I thought were interesting and deserved further highlighting.
For those who pay close attention to the awards process, I'm going to note that the games on this list don't necessarily map to games I voted for awards - this list focuses on stuff I think is unique, might be overlooked, deserves signal boosting, or that just makes me really happy on a personal level. IGF awards tend to be in pretty specific categories and sometimes games I love aren't a good fit for them. It happens!
Anyway, this is all to sort of say that please don't try to intuit anything about the awards process from this list, because you won't learn much. These are not all the games I played - and I did not play all the games. These are simply some games I want to talk about! I hope they catch your interest the way they caught mine :D
(Also, they're not in any particular order)
Time Bandit
I literally wrote an entire post gushing about this game, but if you don't feel like clicking through to that one I'll summarize: Time Bandit takes the realtime elements of an Animal Crossing and leverages them for capitalist critique, block pushing, and metal gear solid parody in a way I found wildly compelling. How does the way you solve a puzzle change when it takes 30 minutes realtime (you can quit the game in the meantime) to make a single move? How about when your boss sets you (realtime) shift times and trying to solve puzzles off-hours (and take the money for yourself) requires you to stealth your way around the facility instead? How does your relationship with your OWN time change? It's brilliant and weird and there's nothing like it. You can find it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1481910/Time_Bandit__Part_1_Appendages_of_the_Machine/
Swordship
Really, really compelling arcadey run-based games are a precious gem, and this game is a shining example that I feel has gone direly overlooked since its release a few weeks ago. A shmup where you can't fire any bullets, your goal in every level of Swordship is to use your extreme mobility to cause all your enemies to kill each other while you steal shipments and send them off to your friends (or keep them for yourself). With an absolutely incredible visual style and a tasteful sense of when slowmo is warranted, this game will make you feel incredibly cool up to the inevitable moment when you explode into a million peices from getting hit. (And then it's time to see how much stuff you unlocked based on your score.) It's hard to convey just how tightly put together this game is in just words, but man, it DEEPLY carries the DNA of tight, minimalist and extremely addictive arcade games. You can find it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1804270/Swordship/
Astronaut: The Best
Yes, that's right, it's ANOTHER game I've talked about a bunch in the past! A run-based narrative game, struggle across multiple different wacky scenarios to try and ressurect the struggling space program of Flaustria, all while dealing with various cold war pastiches, wacky and dubious scenarios, and unreliable astronauts and politicians. If you're lucky you might even make it into space! Astronaut: The Best was originally the recipient of some funding from Inkle and you can tell the DNA is there because the writing is incredibly funny and the procgen narrative stuff is hecking great. I'm really excited for this one to come out. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1239950/Astronaut_The_Best/
Roadwarden
Maybe my favourite narrative-adventure-sim in a year absolutely packed full of them (Teenage Exocolonist, Citizen Sleeper), Roadwarden launches out the gate with incredibly strong and distinct worldbuilding and doesn't ever stop. Tense and fascinating, I marathoned this game for something like 9 hours straight and one point. It eats time. It's just that good. There's a reason a game this text-centric has 'overwhelmingly positive' reviews on steam. You can find it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1155970/Roadwarden/
He Fucked The Girl Out Of Me
To be honest, I sometimes don't know what to think about the fact that "trans trauma games" are kind of a genre to me at this point. I've played a decent number of them for IGF now. Sometimes they leave me feeling nothing, not out of lack of sympathy, but because, and this is an awful thing to say, once you've seen the same kind of trauma exposed enough times (and lived a bunch of it yourself) it starts to lose its emotional power.
...That was not the case here. This game is harrowing, enough that I feel like I need to place a serious CW here for any trans women considering playing this game. Whoof. That said, it does what it does incredibly effectively and I think it deserves to be seen. You can find it here: https://taylormccue.itch.io/trauma
Terra Nil
Another game I've raved about previously, the build of Terra Nil I got to play this year was near-complete and astonishingly fun. I had wondered how the gameplay from their demo would scale to new areas and the answer is "very compellingly". The core element of "bring nature back to a space and then pack your shit up and move on" is impossibly satisfying and it's really nice to see a non-capitalistic spin on a builder sim for once. Another game I'm very excited to see release. You can find it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1593030/Terra_Nil/
Sylvie Lime
What's goin' on this time? I've become a little green Sylvie Lime
I'm just going to say it: This unabashedly enthusiastic, tiny metroidvania has better level design than almost any metroidvania I've seen released in the last 10 years. It's smart, it's funny, there's tons of interesting secrets, the way the items you get can be used in strange and unexpected ways is a constant joy. This game is BRILLIANT. (It might be a littttle too hard with the boss fights but thankfully there are assist settings in the options for that.) It's also free!!! you can't really beat that. Go play it!!!! https://sylvie.itch.io/sylvie-limeBetrayal at Club Low
I had never previously been exposed to Cosmo D's games and this one instantly made me realize I need to play them all. A surrealist, sort of vaguely disco-elysium-esque dice adventure game, you build your faux pizza deliveryman and then try to find a way to infiltrate Club Low - facing all nature of obstacles, from a small puddle to a stubborn DJ. You'll solve all these problems in only the very silliest of ways using skills like "deception", "music", and "cooking". Maybe you'll punch a laser. Maybe you'll get through a locked door by sliding a polite letter underneath. The whole time you'll be serving very weird pizzas you cooked to absolutely everyone in order to get tips so you can raise your skills. It's wild and it's a fucking blast. I want everyone I know to play this game, seriously. You can find it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1885750/Betrayal_At_Club_Low/
Backbeat
A puzzle game with a twist - Backbeat introduces itself as a timing game where you try to get various characters with different move radii to different locations at the same time. Managing a bunch of simultaneous positioning puzzles is interesting, but it's not the exciting part - the part that fascinates me about this game is when it brings in the music.
You see, your team is part of a band, and that means they shouldn't just be moving whenever is convenient for you - they've gotta put on a show, too! That means incorporating timing to your movements. How often do you stick on the beat. Are your characters' actions offset just a little bit to provide a jazzy feel? These sorts of ideas have an explicit affect on your ability to perform actions and your end-of-level score, and add a huge layer of depth that I feel like I don't see in a lot of similar puzzle games. It's honestly super compelling, and I hope I see more games looking at what this game is doing in the future, because it's smart as hell. Find it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1585730/Backbeat/
Doomsday Paradise
I don't think I've ever seen a game quite try to be "literally everything" the way this one is. A session-based multiplayer dating sim slash raising sim slash JRPG slash party game, you (and 3 other friends') mission is to do whatever the hell you want over the course of the week before an apocalypse. Will you train yourself up to take down the final boss? Will you just party and try to get lucky with your favourite character? Will you just kind of wander around and collect weird garbage? Whatever you choose, you've only got a week to do it. I was honestly really impressed at how well this came together as a casual party game. It's easy for something with this many moving parts to just completely fly apart, and yet! I also appreciate the very low stakes - if you don't wanna date, you don't gottta. There's plenty to do! You can find it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1603420/Doomsday_Paradise/
Honorable Mentions
Here's a few games I really liked but was too lazy to do a writeup on:
- Against the Storm is a hideously addictive roguelike citybuilder that by all rights should not work and yet it's INCREDIBLY fun and works shockingly well. I am just going to go play this nonstop after I finish writing this post. It's anno for roguelike nerds. aka me. it's a game for me. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1336490/Against_the_Storm/
- Drainus is Studio Clover (Touhou Luna Nights, Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth)'s latest entry and is a fucking BLAST of a shmup. It's surprisingly newbie-accessible and the art is just astonishing. I love this game omg. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1975360/DRAINUS/
- RPG Time: The Legend of Wright is an impossibly gorgeous storybook transformed into a video game and has maybe some of the most charming and creative art I've seen in any video game. If you want something that makes you feel like a kid again in the best possible way, I can't recommend it enough. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1839510/RPG_Time_The_Legend_of_Wright/
