The discussion about E3 indies on Waypoint Radio recently got me thinking about a few indies that I’ve been following for a while, that I don’t hear people talking much about. Usually it’s because they’re really early in development, and maybe there’s only some art-tests or small vertical slices available to get you excited, and the big question is usually what the actual gameplay is going to be like.
Anyway, in that vein, here’s a few that I’m really interested to hear more about:
Ashen (by Aurora44)
Being from NZ, I get excited when I hear about NZ developers doing interesting things. Ashen was announced for Xbox one (published by MS) at E3 last year, but there hasn’t been much talk of it since. From what I can gather, it has influences from Journey, Dark Souls, and a bit of Shadow of the Colossus. The multiplayer sounds like it could be journey-like, which is pretty interesting.
The Last Night (by Odd Tales)
Super small team working on this, and the first time I’d heard about Raw Fury as a publisher. The art style here is what’s got me interested (as there’s no actual gameplay shown). A version of it made in 6 days won the Cyberpunkjam in 2014, and they’ve been working on making it a full game since then. The work in progress art stuff that Tim posts on twitter is gorgeous.
HK Project (by Koola & Viv)
“The game where you play as a cat in Hong Kong”. This one I’ve seen the most articles written about, but now it sounds like they’ve secured funding and are hiring up a little. I’m expecting this one’s a few years away at minimum. Gameplay wise, it simply says adventure game, but could feature some kind of puzzle platforming by the looks of the tests? Hard to say at this stage I think.
What are some indies that have your attention, but seem to be under the radar at the moment?
haha it looked nothing like that. I don’t recall being able to jump and most of the art was much less developed than that? idk. Definitely an early build lol
It was fun/interesting though, Monument Valley is probably the closest thing that’s come out since I played it.
This is sort of a wing suit/parasailing simulator. Terrific sense of speed, really good sound design. Kind of early access, and maybe there’s not even any gameplay still, yet, even after a lot of years in development? But you can do some really cool stuff with it.
Distance
I dunno if anyone here remembers a free indie game called Nitronic Rush, but it was a college final by the team that eventually went on to do Distance (which is more or less the same game, with a fresher coat of paint). Distance would be a bummer, because its singleplayer feels over-aggressive and ends on a “the game’s not done yet :)” message, but there is a gigantic, massive community behind this game posting user-made tracks to its Steam workshop that are far better than anything in the truncated singleplayer campaign. I sort of get the impression the devs may have abandoned this game, but given the 200-300 tracks I’ve played off the Workshop, maybe it’s fine if Distance never gets properly finished, because I got my money’s worth.
Sweet, I backed Distance early on (largely for the VR stretch goal), but the controls never sat right with me so I never got past the first level. I still keep an eye on it from time to time. I don’t know if it counts though as it’s totally playable in early access. I left off Ghost of a tale from my list due to it being playable.
I didn’t know Volo airsport was still under active dev. It was awesome fun as a VR demo back in DK2 days. The mechanics were fun (if sometimes difficult), but I hope they do an art pass on it at some stage, character models especially.
