This may be both an understatement and stating the obvious, but Indies VS Gamers produced a lot of good games. The top 5 rated games—heck, the top 10—are all excellent. In fact, most of the games in the top 50 are worth playing. Make that the top 100. But then there are the overlooked gems that somehow didn’t manage to penetrate the echelon of the top 100.
I decided to choose my favorite games from the jam that didn’t make it to the top 5. I assembled a long list of games that I liked from the jam and proceeded to narrow it down to something manageable. It was excruciating, but I whittled my list down to 20 titles. I’m going to give you 10 now and 10 tomorrow.
By the way, if you didn’t know, the theme of the jam was Arcade and all entries were required to make use of online scoreboards. Okay, here we go.
Alien Stalker from Pluto (Unity Web Player)
Jord Farrell (Mr. Tedders) has produced—and continues to produce—a steady stream of games that are both clever and fun. This one is a Wizard of Wor-like in which it’s more valuable to capture beasties than to kill them. The enemy designs and names are precious.
Tiny Arcade (Unity, Win, Mac)
In this literal interpretation of the jam’s theme, you manage an arcade and try to attract Sims “Hubits” to earn their coins to upgrade your establishment (in order to get more Hubit coins to spend on upgrades, and so on).
Abyss of Failure (Win, Mac)
This tough little roguelike(-like) missed the top 5 by a hair. In it, you face the demons of self-doubt (in the form of a depressed inner monologue) while jumpin’n’gunnin’ your way up the progressively more deadly levels of a robot infested tower. It gets extra points for incorporating the high scores into its narrative.
Pew Pew Heads (HTML)
I wasn’t expecting literal heads going “pew pew”, but that’s pretty much what you face in this boss-rush shooter, illustrated in Orange’s trademark sketchy style: a randomized series of giant heads that emit bullets and missiles at you in various patterns.
Update: The developer has removed Pew Pew Heads from the site after seeing how much it actually resembles the game Jellynauts. I believe Orange was inspired by a memory of Jellynauts, but did not realize how similar his game ended up until after the jam.
Bloodjak (Windows only)
In Bloodjack, dev Alex Higgins takes the standard horizontally scrolling shooter formula and sets it in cyberspace, so everything looks kind of like Tron. It gets pretty hectic.
Claw Champion Earth (Win, Mac, Linux)
Taylor Bai-Woo (From Smiling)’s entry is one of the most charming and most original games of the jam. The idea is that you’re a kid challenging other kids to bouts of competitive claw-grabbing, using a fantasy version of one of those rigged machines that frequently sit next to video game cabinets wherever they are installed these days.
Super Tyrone Land (Windows only)
Scimitri applies his signature surreal/cartoony/disturbing style to a tough-as-nails platformer that’s about two parts Super Mario Bros and one part Super Meat Boy.
Armored Rascals (HTML, Win, Mac, Linux)
The DungeonRift team combines shooting action with a layer of strategy in Armored Rascals. Choose your vehicle and then fight for control of big hexagonal territories in real time.
Lost in the Machine (Windows only)
From the folks responsible for the well-reviewed pixel bloodbath Broforce and the #indiesvspewdiepie smash Super Wolfenstein HD comes something completely different: an atmospheric horror/escape game. Solving it’s pretty tricky because it’s both timed and randomized every time you play. And it’s scary.
Wibble Wobble (Windows only)
Leap around an undulating landscape, using the ground to your advantage, quite literally going with the flow, as you try to collect stars and avoid having your head explode in a fountain of blood when you run into a spike or something. I’m almost convinced that it’s impossible for Daniel Linssen to make a game that’s either uninteresting or unattractive. I was genuinely surprised that Wibble Wobble didn’t make it into the top 5.
Why were good games overlooked?
In most cases, I suspect it has something to do with presentation. People skim jam listings and a game’s thumbnail has got to grab their attention. Animated gifs that show off a snippet of gameplay make particularly good thumbnails.
Also, no matter how cool your game’s logo or title screen is, it’s almost always better to use a screenshot for the thumbnail image.
Speaking of screenshots… If a game page doesn’t have any screenshots (or video) on it, what else is there to convince someone to play the game? Unless they are familiar with the developer, the only clues they have are the game’s title and its description. And don’t underestimate the importance of an informative description!
Finally, there is the matter of publicity. Some developers are more aggressive than others at publicizing their game via social media, news posts, forums, emails to press, etc.
Alright, I’ll be back tomorrow with the second half of my 20 jam favorites. Ciao!
Update: Here’s the second half.
15 comments