Indie Spotlight - PAX Aus 2014

Bearzerkers
Created By: Wildgrass Games
Status: In Development

You can kind of tell when somebody is demoing a clever party game at PAX because all you can see of their product is a transfixed cluster of spectators and players, with the stand's sign poking out the top somewhere in the middle. Once I politely stamped on a few toes to get to the front, I discovered what had kept them fascinated: the fact that somebody had actually named a game 'Bearzerkers'.

No, no, sorry. Actually it's because it's the first occurrence in the wild of what I'm now going to call 'NPC aggro deathmatch'. Essentially you play as one of up to four armadillos who must perpetually roll around an arena while being pursued by an ever-increasing number of angry panda bears. Not sure I'd associate pandas with limitless reserves of enraged energy, but whatever, we'll roll with it. Bears focus on one armadillo at a time and chase them until they catch up or something causes them to switch targets, so the challenge isn't so much in directly attacking your fellow players – because you can't – as in manipulating the bears into catching them instead of you. Your main means of doing this is to dig under the ground, leaving an impenetrable wall in your wake, and if you don't see the potential here for backstabbing, capricious, fast-paced pandemonium then I'm sorry to inform you that somebody has replaced your imagination with a rotten tangerine. Anivia players, on the other hand, have probably finally found their one true calling in life. Blocking off somebody's escape route so that the bear catches them is the most common strategy by far – and, of course, utterly hilarious – but you can just as easily block somebody else's block, or even block off the bear. It's the kind of game that naturally encourages fake-outs, deception, short-lived alliances and sudden changes of plans.

Having said that, I'm not so sure about the long-term appeal. Right now there's just this and one other mode – heavily reminiscent of Runling Run, the Starcraft II arcade game – and while I'm sure they'd both superbly complement one night, three friends and atrocious amounts of alcohol, I'm not sure how many times you could repeat that situation before people start to ask wearily if you could just dig under the sofa cushions for the Super Smash Bros disc. Still, it's a preview, right? Can't judge it for content this early; that'd just be unkind.

Submerged
Created By: Uppercut Games
Status: In Development

Of all the visions of post-apocalyptia that video games have treated us to, a world consumed by floods definitely makes a pleasant change from those consumed by nuclear war, zombies, or carnivorous jam. Clear blue water below, greenery covering the ruins above, and not a single wretched super-mutant – or any real hazard at all, for that matter – in sight. I'm fairly sure that if other people weren't waiting their turn, I'd have happily driven my little boat around the entire playing area, soaking in the peaceful atmosphere and searching for more buildings to clamber all over. It got a smidge awkward when I floated into bits of the level that hadn't quite been built yet, though.

So yes, you're a young woman living among the decrepit rooftops of a flooded city, searching for ration supplies to keep your useless sickly little brother alive. Fortunately, this isn't so much a stressful Dead-Rising-2-esque situation – where you have to return with supplies at the mercy of a constantly ticking clock – as a scripted plot device to give you a reason to get out and about. Supposedly he'll stay in a state of barely-conscious ineffectiveness pretty much permanently, leaving me to believe that he's actually just a lazy little twit, but it's certainly a more interesting driving motivation than just 'stay alive indefinitely'.

Gameplay in general seems pretty light, focussing mainly on platforming pinched audaciously from the Tomb Raider games – heck, no reason to reinvent the wheel – and open-world exploration in your little boat. It's the storytelling that interests me the most: each collected ration is followed up with a series of cryptic paintings that partially describe how the two of you ended up in this flooded city, and there are optional 'secret' flowers which, when collected, unload a similar set of paintings that describe how the city itself came to be submerged (name-drop unintentional). While I'm not exactly salivating over the delivery method itself – deciphering pictures to work out what's going on isn't really my cup of tea – being able to choose how immersed you are in the back-story makes Submerged another game to keep an eye on.

Well, that just about wraps up this monstrously over-written exercise in uninformed first impressions, blatant favouritism and uncharacteristic positivity. My only hope is that I have communicated some small shred of the utterly infectious enthusiasm that permeated the expo hall floor throughout those three days, and maybe left some important names sticking in your heads too. More than anything else, PAX Aus 2014 demonstrated just how healthy the future of indie games really is. Not just because of the way these tiny teams were given space on a global stage, but because every single day of the convention heralded crowds of people packing the pavilion and the surrounding booths, excited to sample their creations. As a general rule, feel free to share in that optimism... but wait for the reviews, alright? And for crying out loud, remember not to pre-order; that's my job.