As all posts I write, this is compiled by myself and my gamer daughter Danni. Team Family Geek FTW!
These are the Top 10 Indie Games we’ll be looking forward to in 2015.
1) No Man’s Sky, Hello Games [PS4]
My wife’s favourite post-rock band in the world, 65daysofstatic, are soundtracking this whole game, which means it’s going to be completely awesome. After seeing them live about 100 times across Europe with her, I’m confident they wouldn’t put their name to it otherwise, Sony release deal or not.
NMS is ‘procedurally generated’ : a) totally open-world, b) set in an almost infinite multiverse (something like quadrillions of possibilties according to the next reason); and c) the 64-bit seeding key means you’ll have your own, unique experience of this story world.
Danni’s looking forward to hanging out with dinosaurs, keeping an eye out for distinct floral and fauna design on each planet and of course, insane spaceship and battle antics.
2) Beyond Flesh and Blood, Pixelbomb Games [Steam, XB1, PS4]
A game set in the UK which seems to be a running theme of 2015; the city of Manchester in the North of the UK has been turned into a giant-mech featuring dystopia in 2281 – how very topical.
The indie game devs have been fairly quiet on the story front but every description out there reads that it’s a ‘story led 3rd person shooter‘.
We’re excited because for an indie, it looks surprsingly “Triple A” (ack, let’s not get hung up on labels here guys) and if we’re not mistaken, Danni says their next build should move to Unreal 4 next year as everything so far looks very UE3…
This game was Greenlit in a lightning-fast 13 days. I’m looking forward to their next full playable demo.
3) Volume, Mike Bithell [Steam, PS4, PSVita]
Thankfully moving beyond rectangles… as mindblowing as they were; Volume is based on one of my kids’ various mythical heroes: Robin Hood or rather, a Mister Robert of Locksley, Nottinghamshire.
Another 3rd person-er on the list, this game features labyrinths, stealth design and nothing too reminiscent of Monaco: What’s Yours Is Mine given the top-down 3D visual persepctives offered. And especially because we don’t parlons française and the hilarious voices of the legendary Charlie McDonnell and Danny Wallace feature this time round.
4) Wulverblade [Steam, XB1]
The kids checked out this charming little game at the indie stand in PlayExpo in Trafford, UK in 2014, and we cannot wait for it to be released – all bloody and Viiking nonetheless – but we were hooked from the outset. It’s kind of like a 2D How To Train Your Dragon mixed with an arcade scroller.
I can tell it’ll be an after-school wind down classic for the kids next year.
The animation is superb with subtle, cheeky motion FX hints to the Sega action games their mum and I played when we were growing up.
5) Cuphead, Studio MDHR [Steam, XB1]
Danni’s been following this Canadian #gamedev journey for about a year now, and while she loves the old school, Disney tribute animation – I’m actually old enough to remember when this kind of thing was on TV and it still creeps. Me .Out.
Danni says it looks “like shooting up creatures from the 1930s” and there’ll be a co-op mode as well as single player.
As ever with ID@Xbox and Steam, there’s plenty of room out there apparently for decent scrollers and platformers and stylised 2D games; and Microsoft signed this along with a couple of winners this year in a bid to compete with Sony’s XDEV…
But what about Steam? Indie Cade? What are your top tips for 2015?
We’d love to know what you think.
