Indie Games Competition at GDC

Greetings from GDC ’08. I’m here in S.F. getting the scoop on the game industry first hand. So far there has been some pretty exciting things and I’ve been totally overwhelmed by the sheer size of the industry.

One of the most interesting things that I saw today was the Independent Game Design Competition. Here were a few of my favorites from the competition finalists.

Flipside

In Flipside, you play an escaped mental patient with bipolar disorder. You start out a happy-go-lucky person in a brightly lit field
but at any time, you can let your dark side show and flip the screen into a nightmarish version of reality. You have different abilities depending on which world you’re in so you’ll need to go through both modes to beat each level. The amazing visuals for this featured a lot of DIY-looking textures such as cardboard and the character really looks like a paper doll.

Fez

At first glance, Fez is a classic 8-Bit, 2-D platformer with incredibly cute graphics. Then the camera flips around and you realize that your character is actually in a 3-D space. Well, mostly. Your character only interacts with the environment in a two dimensional way so using the depth-squashing adds a puzzle-like element to the gameplay.
Pay special attention to the faux-Engrish used in the dialog.

World of Goo

In world of Goo, you control a colony of crude oil-like creatures who are able to stretch themselves into complicated structures. The goal of the game is to engineer a structurally sound scaffolding to move your colony to a destination. The gameplay is quite a lot like Stick Remover but in reverse.

Crayon Physics Deluxe

Crayon Physics Deluxe is a very simple yet very expressive game. The goal is to move a ball to a target across the screen and all you have to work with is a crayon. All you do is draw something with your crayon and it becomes an object with physical properties. The genius thing is that there are as many ways to get the ball to the goal as you can think of.