The Mix at GDC

It’s my third year at GDC, and out of all the crazy parties that I’ve been to and all the cool developer meetups that I’ve attended, my favorite event to go to is still The Mix. The Mix is an event that brings together top tier indie talent and studios and provides them a place to showcase their game. Every year that I go, I’m consistently surprised and amazed by how many new and amazing games are shown every single year. This year was no different, as I stumbled countless games that I’ve never heard of, that were worked on by amazing people. Below are some of the most memorable games that I played this year at The Mix.

Noita

Out of all the games that I’ve played this year, Noita definitely left the biggest impact on me. Noita is being developed by Nolla games, an absolutely star studded cast of developers that I’ve followed in the indie games community for years. Noita is a roguelite game, where you play as a witch/wizard that runs around a procedurally generated world and try to freeze, burn, melt and generally destroy everything that gets in your way. Not only is the gameplay chaotic, skill-based and laden with tons of explosions, every object is physically simulated. This is just a very fancy way of saying that if you shoot a fireball towards a wooden pillar, you can expect that pillar to burn, collapse and drop the platform that it’s holding up. This applies to almost every single object in the game and provides a much more immersive and creative approach to how you can deal with situations that is very obviously stacked against you.

One of my favorite interactions in the game was being able to break a giant vat of acid, and watch as an acid tsunami swept through the lower tunnels and cleared out huge swathes of dangerous enemies for me. I had a blast playing through Noita, and cannot wait for it to be released.

All I Have is Time

I’m a sucker for games with time travel as a premise, and All I Have is Time pulled me quite easily once they dropped the keyword “time travel” in conversation as I was passing by. The game is still heavily in development, as was mentioned to me by team managing the booth, but the general concept of how the game plays was enough to pique my interest. If I had to describe how the game felt, it felt akin to how Limbo and Inside plays. There’s an overarching narrative, but interspersed with platforming and puzzle elements, largely focused on traveling back and forth between two time periods.

While I was playing the demo, I was impressed with how quickly the team was able to iterate through a single concept, with the puzzles platforming quickly growing in complexity as I played through the short demo. While I first I was only using time travel mechanic to “repair” doors or platforms, I was soon using it to perform a complex set of jumps, moving barrels of acid around in the past timeline, only to have it break open and melt through the floor in the current timeline. The concept is solid, and if Threaks is able to craft a compelling narrative, I have high hopes for this game succeeding.

Dead Cells

While Dead Cells has been out on Early Access for quite awhile, I haven’t had the chance to play it until The Mix. For those that are unaware, Dead Cells is a rogue-lite metroidvania, with an emphasis on combat and platforming. While I was a bit skeptical at first of how well a metroidvania would pair with the roguelite genre(as metroidvania maps are meticulously crafted, and roguelites rely on somewhat repetitive procedurally generated maps), my skepticism quickly wore off as I blasted my way through the game. The combat in Dead Cells is some of the best combat gameplay I’ve ever played in a game. The animations are smooth, and your various maneuvers flow from one to the next, without any awkward pauses or animation switching.

If you haven’t checked out Dead Cells, I’d highly recommend that you pick it up on Steam. Personally, I’m very excited to have it come out on the Nintendo Switch and have it become portable.

Black Future ‘88

If there’s anything that I’ve noticed from writing this post, it’s that I have a soft spot for roguelite games, and Black Future ‘88 is yet another roguelite game that caught my eye. Black Future ‘88 is set in an alternate reality in 1988, where you try to climb a tower where literally everything in the tower tries to kill you. I’m not an expert on security systems, but I would think that if I were the owner of the building, I would try and setup non-destructive security measures. Unfortunately, I am not the owner of the building in this game, and unfortunately for me, the owner of the building in this game has absolutely no problem shooting missiles, arcing electricity and spouting flamethrowers at me and the rest of the building.

The gameplay in Black Future ‘88 is frantic, the art style is eye catching and the difficulty is off the charts. I don’t think I survived any longer than 10 screens on my multiple playthroughs, but I handed it off to the artist of the game and watched as he slaughtered everything in his path. Black Future ‘88 was an absolute joy to play, and I’m definitely keeping an eye out for it’s release.

Felix the Reaper

As a general rule, I usually avoid puzzle games at these types of events. It’s not that I don’t like puzzle games, it’s moreso that I like to look like an idiot in the safety of my own home, where there aren’t hundreds of other people milling about, judging me for missing an obvious solution. Unfortunately for me, the person manning Felix the Reaper is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and asked me to try out his game, and because I have a hard time saying no, I went ahead, sat down and got ready to make a fool out of myself.

Felix the Reaper is hard, it’s a puzzle game where you play as the grim reaper and put into motion a long series of events that eventually lead to someone’s death. It’s a pretty dark version of a Rube Goldberg machine. The tricky part, is that Felix can only walk in shadows, so he has to manipulate objects in order for them to cast shadows in a certain direction for him to reach his goal. He’s also able to change the orientation of the sun in one direction. While playing through Felix the Reaper, I discovered that I’m still horrible at puzzle games, and that I did make a fool out of myself. I also found out that I wasn’t the only person to be completely stumped at some points. Overall, the graphics are charming, the animations are lovely(you get to watch Felix dance his around the map) and the puzzles are complex and rewarding.

Zarvot

Creating something simple is hard, as it’s flaws are more readily apparent in the finished product. When you first look at Zarvout, it looks like a very simple game, an isometric action game, that has a very barebones look to it(the large majority of the objects on the screen are simple geometrical figures). Luckily for me, the only things I can draw well are simple geometric figures, so the graphics felt right at home for me. To be clear, the graphics aren’t bad, I quite enjoyed them, they’re very functional and do a great job at communicating what things are. In general, red and pointy means bad for your character.

In Zarvot, you play as a cube that can shoot a gigantic laser beam, dash, do a spin attack and do a small AOE attack in a small circle around him. You’ll have to use these very basic attacks in order to get to the end of the level, which of course is littered with enemies. As a game concept, this is quite basic, but the execution by snowhydra games is absolutely amazing. Every attack is more effective against a certain type of enemy, so knowing how to balance these attacks as you have multiple mobs running at you is key to surviving. Not only is each fight a blast to play through, as you start comboing different moves together, every attack you perform is satisfying, because of the haptic feedback that’s provided after you attack. There’s nothing more satisfying in the game, than charging up a giant laser beam and crushing a swarm of enemies that were charging at you.

Mineko’s Night Market

Mineko’s Night Market, was quite possibly the cutest game that was showcased at The Mix. The graphics were absolutely charming, with beautifully vectored graphics and eye popping choice of colors, it was very hard to miss this game.

Mineko’s Night Market will have you playing through a bunch of mini games, collecting resources and crafting resources into items that you can then sell at your stall. As I talked to Meowza about Mineko’s Night Market, I was very quickly reminded of one of my favorite indie games of all time, Recettear: An Item’s Shop Tale, which has you exploring dungeons, killing monsters, collecting items and then selling those items in your shop. Mineko’s Night Market follows a similar formula to this, and being able to run around the world and collect exotic and strange items to craft and sell is an interesting concept that I am very excited to see executed.

Children of Morta

Children of Morta was not an easy game. While most roguelites aren’t easy, I have to say that it was especially difficult in Children of Morta. Children of Morta is a roguelite, that will have you take control of members of the Bergson family, as they fight their way through Mount Morta, in an effort to find the source of the Corruption that plagues their lands.

What stuck out the most about Children of Morta, was how polished the enemies were and how well thought out each class that I played, interacted with the enemy. You really had to know the enemies and your class inside out, in order to stand a chance of surviving. In the large majority of games that I play, it’s all too easy to go into autopilot mode, where you can half pay attention to the mobs that you are facing and easily wipe them out without a second thought. In Children of Morta, you needed to constantly be engaged and ready to react to various enemy attacks, and environmental effects that could plague your character. While the concept of Children of Morta may seem basic and not very innovative, the amount of polish and sense of danger in the game really makes the game shine.