Games
With a surplus of passion and unparalleled creativity, indie developers are gearing up for another year (and decade) of cat mechs, JRPGs, and Lovecraftian thrillers.
Indie games are life. It’s a very 2019 thing to say in regards to one of art’s most unconventional mediums, but since the rise of Xbox’s Summer Of Arcade in 2008, indies have become timeless anecdotes that are more about heart-to-hearts than carpal tunnel syndrome. This year has been no different and with Ooblets, Cadence Of Hyrule, and In The Valley Of Gods on the horizon, we thought we’d highlight 10 upcoming indie gems (in no particular order) that we can’t wait to get our thumbs on.
1. Gato Roboto
Release Date: Spring 2019 (Switch, PC)
Gato Roboto consists entirely of a cat that’s inside a powered-up mech suit. It’s a robot cat. Or a robot controlled by a cat. Either way, doinksoft’s surprise at PAX West 2018 is a hyper adorable ‘CatMechtroidvania’ that follows a ‘gato’ (the Spanish word for cat) that embarks on a journey through an alien underworld to save their stranded captain and his spaceship. A lot of its beauty lies in its bass-heavy scores and Devolver meets Downwell aesthetic, but it’s still a feline living out its Mobile Suit Gundam fantasy and wrecking shop against evil mice who have binged way too many speedruns of Contra III: The Alien Wars. Did we mention there’s a double jump?
2. Inmost
Release Date: 2019 (Switch, PC)
Much like Eastward and Witchbrook, Hidden Layer Games’ debut inhabits a breathtaking pixel art world that manages to look incredibly surreal. Inmost follows three playable characters – a knight sworn to darkness, a creature that feeds on pain, and a young girl who’s all alone – and it spins them through an interconnecting plot line that explores the depths of an abandoned castle. There are puzzles, traps, secret pathways, and a whole mess of 2D platforming that’s ghoulishly atmospheric. It also gives off some pretty heavy Limbo and Hollow Knight vibes thanks to its massively detailed set pieces and brooding nightmare fuel that’s several shades of Del Toro.
3. Luna The Shadow Dust
Release Date: Summer 2019 (PC)
As a wordless point-and-click puzzle adventure that’s both adorable and spellbinding, Luna The Shadow Dust is a mesmerising synthesis of art, intellect, and emotion. It’s a single-player story that uses cerebral puzzles and hauntingly gorgeous, hand-animated cinematics to unravel a tale of ‘true courage’ and two characters who are ‘drawn together through an inseparable bond’, and it never shies away from letting you free fall into every single frame. There's an unsettling dose of mystery to it all and its Mononoke use of light versus dark, but it’s a stunning example of how a small design team of four can revitalise a subgenre with patience, passion, and ambiguity.
4. Moving Out
Release Date: 2019 (Switch, PC)
Known for OTTTD and Death Squared, SMG Studio’s Moving Out is a 1980s’ co-op adventure about everyone’s favourite pastime: moving. Players sign up with the Smooth Move company in an effort to become a Furniture Arrangement & Relocation Technician (F.A.R.T.) who’s proficient in dodging floor saws, unloading cargo from moving planes, picking up deliveries in outer space, and smuggling giraffes from the local zoo. There’s also trains, portals, ray guns, lava, and ‘over 50 levels of insane moving action’ for anyone who still thinks Overcooked is a good time. It’s all topped off with SMG’s dark humour so you can probably expect drop bears and LEGO pieces.
5. Sable
Release Date: 2019 (Xbox One, PC)
Shedworks’ Sable was labeled the ‘prettiest game of E3 2018’ and for a damn good reason. The narrative adventure from Daniel Fineberg and Gregorios Kythreotis looks like it was torn straight from an ‘80s-inspired graphic novel – leaning on the kind of the detail and simplicity you’d find in The Louvre. It’s an open-world, coming-of-age tale of discovery and with writer Meg Jayanth (80 Days, Horizon: Zero Dawn) and Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner on script and music, it’s bound to be a Breath Of The Wild outlier that fills every corner of your heart with butterflies.
6. Signalis
Release Date: 2019 (PC)
Alexander Zwerger and Barbara Wittmann’s Signalis is a Lovecraftian sci-fi thriller that’s equally Dead Space, Another World and Ghost In The Shell. You shoulder the role of a ‘Replika’ (an android) named Elster, who must explore the ruins of an abandoned re-education facility in order to search for answers and find ‘a way to escape’. Every single scene falls in line with the phrase ‘escape room horror,’ but its aesthetic is in a genre of its own, as the 2.5D visuals, isometric view and Resident Evil 3-style menus help to create a polygonal epic that will scare you senseless.
7. Spelunky 2
Release Date: 2019 (PS4, PC)
It’s been a mere decade since the initial debut of Mossmouth’s Spelunky, but that hasn’t stopped Derek Yu from dreaming up a gorgeously detailed sequel to the beloved platformer. Spelunky 2 follows Ana, who traces her father’s footsteps by wandering through randomly-generated caves, tombs, and planetoids with a brand new cast of characters (including a humanised sloth). There is online multiplayer, boss encounters, and gullible turkeys that act as mounts, but there’s also a renewed focus on NPCs, who are tailored to implement more personal stories, rather than a set linear narrative. It’s a choice that ups the difficulty, but it’s one that modifies the old-fashioned dungeon crawling to devise a time loop that will keep your thumbs busy for months on end.
8. Tunic
Release Date: 2019 (Xbox One, PC)
The action-adventure epic formerly known as Secret Legend had its own moment on Xbox’s E3 stage in 2018 and it was well deserved as Tunic is virtually a video game within a video game. Underneath its ‘OMG cute’ exterior is a technical combat system that utilises slash/block/dodge tactics and requires a whole lot of decision making (think Hyper Light Drifter). You'll die and die and die some more, but you'll do so in beautifully-rendered isometric environments and against enemies that recall Studio Ghibli, SNES classics, and your pre-and-post puberty levels of nerd-dom. There’s still a profound sense of mystery to it all considering its time away from the spotlight, but that aura could make Tunic one of the most mesmerising tales of the modern era.
9. Virgo Vs The Zodiac
Release Date: August 2019 (Xbox One, PC)
Virgo Vs The Zodiac is a phenomenon of style. It’s a sci-fi/fantasy JRPG that draws on the likes of Undertale, Earthbound and the Shin Megami series to tell the story of a snobby Holy Queen and her crusade to bring justice to the Astrological Realm. It might be Tumblr fan fiction that was purposefully written for Sailor Moon and Scott Pilgrim truthers, but its use of twitchy, turn-based 2D combat and shield-based counter attacks is a thing of beauty. Every slash, lunge, and scroll of text is fine-tuned to make you scream with glee and its liberal use of classes, abilities, and celestial alpacas will make you a sucker for Virgo’s unrivalled reimagining of classic pixel art.
10. Void Bastards
Release Date: 2019 (Xbox One, PC)
From Australia’s Blue Manchu, Void Bastards is an upcoming strategy shooter in which you lead a band of misfit prisoners through the derelict spaceships and dangers of the Sargasso Nebula. It’s also a hyper-stylish action epic that asks the question ‘Would id Software ever swipe right on System Shock 2?’ just to see your heart accelerate and explode into a million pieces on the wall behind you. It’s jam-packed with alternate paths, space maps, trippy artefacts, and androids that just want to be robo-kittys and it underscores its part BioShock, part Image Comics charm with retro-cool onomatopoeias and the ability to respawn as a new space prisoner with unique traits.
