Eurogamer Expo 2011: Best indie games
We take a look at the best new games you've never heard of at this year's Eurogamer Expo.
While the big guns pulled crowds of thousands and queues of hundreds for just the briefest taste of gameplay, Eurogamer Expo’s Indie Games Arcade was also doing bustling trade with games that can afford to be quirkier, less populist and much weirder than their mainstream commercial rivals. We’ve picked five of our favourites.
Squid in a Box’s frenetic abstract shooter comes with a euphoric electronic soundtrack and free stress-induced heart palpitations. It’s also far more polished than a one-man-band project has any right to be, with beautifully glossy graphics.
You control a laser-blasting ball that must navigate a circular playing field, where glowing enemies, bonuses and power-ups materialise. The objective is simple: survive as long as you can or, in timed mode, rack up as many points as possible.
The game’s responsive controls allow you use a keyboard to control your movement while your mouse determines the direction in which you fire – alternatively, you can do as we did and use the dual analogue sticks of a control pad. Either way, you’ll want to take advantage of a time-slowing feature that helps you build up bonus points and survive the most frantic enemy swarms.
Waves will be available to buy via Steam and directly from the Squid in a Box website towards the end of October.
Rogue-like RPGs, in which you explore randomly generated dungeons full of enemies, are common, particularly if you have a penchant for games built out of ASCII characters. However, Dicework Games’ Rimelands: Hammer of Thor is a great deal more polished than its spiritual antecedents, with lovingly detailed isometric graphics.
As well as being part of a grand heritage of computer RPGs, Hammer of Thor tips a nod to tabletop gaming, too, particularly when it comes to the combat system. To attack, you click on your opponent in typical turn-based RPG style. Once you’ve done that, though, it all gets a bit different – a set of virtual dice is thrown for both you and your opponent. Depending on which of four symbols come up, you’ll hit or miss or block with greater or lesser effect. You also have the option of discarding your first throw and re-rolling.
Although it’s been out on iOS devices for a year, Rimelands is about to be released in a new, more polished version for PC and Mac OS X.
Video shows iOS version.
Alan Hazelden’s These Robotic Hearts of Mine proves that a beautiful game is about far more than glossy graphics and high-end spec requirements. This puzzler wrapped in a narrative is remarkable for both the elegant simplicity of its gameplay and the haunting promise of the story that frames it. While the puzzles themselves require a good grasp of spatial awareness and movement dynamics as you rotate hearts around cog-wheels to bring them to life, it’s the story as much as anything else that keeps you playing.
Boss Baddie Games’ Really Big Sky plays like a modern take on forced side-scrolling shooters such as Gradius, with glowing, multi-coloured graphics that do a good impression of the liquid light display from a psy-trance night, game events that alter in response to your actions and – most important – frenetic, fiercely hard gameplay.
Like Waves, Really Big Sky uses dual controls – one for movement and the other for tageting your fire. You don’t have to hold anything down to keep firing – it’s all automatic – but it’s up to you to trigger special attacks and switch from laser cannon to a drill bit when you need to burrow through an inconveniently positioned asteroid.
There are multiple play modes, loads of stats (if you’re that way inclined) and the game even allows up to four players to work together to put some serious firepower into blasting the enemies out of your Really Big Sky. It’s out now for a mere £4.95 at Greenman Gaming.
At first glance, Rich Make Game’s Pineapple Smash reminded us of Team 17’s Alien Breed – the original Amiga version rather than the darker reboot you can find on Steam.
However, there’s a lot more to this title than meets the eye. Brightly coloured alien blasting becomes a deeply tactical experience as you navigate your team of four heavily armed individuals with a penchant for looting derelict spaceships. There’s plenty of loot to be had, too, with a particularly fine selection of grenades (the eponymous pineapples, we presume) that can be used to blast your enemies into finely pureed goo.
Your team’s chatter is amusing, too, and we appreciated the strategic elements involved in switching the commando with the best arsenal and highest health into point position during dangerous missions. We don’t have a release date for Pineapple Smash Crew, but we’ll be keeping a close eye on its progress, so watch this space.
That’s it for our very favourite indie games of the show, although we saw plenty more to pique our interest, including X-com inspired strategy from Xenonauts, light cycle/snake hybrid Hard Lines for iOS (also coming soon for Android) and multi-player space strategy in the form of Stellar Impact.
You can also check out our round-up of our most anticipated releases from big publishers at Eurogamer.
