In this week’s Indie Flash: PAX East 2014 highlights, NaNoRenO games, the Hover Kickstarter campaign, and more. Indie Flash is a small look into this week in indie games.
PAX Highlights
PAX East just gets better and better every year, and the Indie Megabooth gets more ‘Mega’ every year too. There were a ton of fantastic games on the floor, but a few really stood out:
Transistor
I would eat a shoe for this soundtrack…
Supergiant Games’ sophomore offering will release (hopefully) next month and the title looks and plays and sounds like it’s in amazing shape. Playing as Red, you will wield the mysterious talking Transistor sword as you fight futuristic enemies in real-time and plot executable strategies via the games unique ‘pause’ mechanic. Transistor is slated for a May 20th release on Steam and PS4 and will feature Bastion‘s Logan Cunnigham (voice of Rucks/Narrator) as well as music from Darren Kobb (composer for Bastion).
Be sure to check out GameSkinny’s hands-on with Transistor for more info. I would eat a shoe for this soundtrack…
Hyper Light Drifter
The gorgeous pixel art action RPG calls up old-school retro stylings and crams them into a tight and satisfying package. The game embodies ‘easy to play, tough to master’ in the best way possible. Personally, I was relieved when I played Hyper Light Drifter on the show floor – I actually backed the game. It was refreshing to get my hands on the game and finally have tangible evidence that the money I put down really has been going towards a great product. The game will likely release near the end of this year and will feature music from Disasterpeace.
Max Gentlemen
The Men Who Wear Many Hats’ ultra-manly hat-stacking simulator was on proud display at PAX and while I didn’t get to play it, the game is definitely on my radar. Sporting a stylish arcade cabinet and full-sized body pillow, Max Gentlemen was in fine form on the floor and I didn’t see a single person leave the booth without tongue firmly in cheek.
Check out our initial coverage and interview with Max Gentlemen.
Hover Kickstarter Combines Parkour and Jet Set Radio
Hover: Revolt of Gamers is already sprinting towards it’s $38,000 funding goal ($22,000 currently pledged with 30 days still left to go). The French 3-man team already has an extremely impressive alpha demo after only 4 months of development and the 700+ backers are extremely keen to see what Midgar Studio can do with proper funding.
The game is flashy, fast, colorful, and implements the most iconic movement elements of Jet Set Radio and Mirror’s Edge into a promising concept. The deal-cincher for most backers is that the developers have actually brought on Hideki Naganuma, the composer from Jet Set Radio (and other SEGA games). With Naganuma’s name as a seal of approval, Hover is sure to reach it’s ambitious stretch goals. Check out the Kickstarter here.
NaNoRenO Wraps Up – Games Now Live On Forum
Named after the well-known one-month novel writing challenge, NaNoWriMo, and the popular visual novel creation tool, Ren’py, NaNoRenO is a one-month long visual novel challenge. The visual novel/interactive fiction challenge ran during the month of March, but many developers have been slow to upload their resulting work until now.
Our Nanoreno game thread is up! http://t.co/d2qo1RXf9z
— Auro-Cyanide (@AuroCyanide) March 5, 2014
Three weeks after the event, a ton of visual novels from a range of genres can now be found on the NaNoRenO forums. This thread contains all the completed visual novels from this year’s challenge, all free to download and play, and is worth checking out if you’ve ever been interested in interactive fiction. Not sure where to start? Lucy Morris from IndieStatik has a great column about visual novels and she is currently taking a look at a number of this year’s NaNoRenO submissions.
Everything Else – More News From the Land of Indie
(coming soon)
As always, if you have a positive or negative reaction to anything in this Indie Flash, let me know in the comments below! Any feedback that helps me make this project better is greatly appreciated. Let me know here, or hit me up on Twitter @ZacaJay.
