Monday nights, 6PM, at Awesome Inc., we meet up to expose ourselves to indie games. C’mon out and look at how small game designers are pushing the medium, or bring something we can play!
This week we played Even the Stars, Mountain, & Secrets of Raetikon
Even the Stars
Exploration game, mostly keyboard driven. There’s some great deformation to the screen that puts it in a 4:3 aspect ratio. There’s something eerie about the game, but nothing definitive. The game was originally conceived for the Space Cowboy 2 week jam.
Your only punctuation appears to be a question mark, and leaving logs on planets shows the progression of time. Warping between points allow you to move to other planets, and in a single case, into a random asteroid. Oftentimes the planets are empty, but occasionally you find objects like huts where you can consume alien fruits and meet priestesses, similar actions that are not expressed with much beyond simple text prompts.
You can find the game on itchio.
Mountain
Mountain is one of the many simulators that came out in the last few months, but to claim that it is anything like Goat Simulator would be disingenuous. Mountain is not like those games.
Even to call it a game feels slightly false, as in many ways it feels more like a toy. At the beginning, it proclaims you “You Are Mountain, You Are God,” but what it really means is that you’re supposed to watch the mountain. The game claims to allow for collection, but you collect things in the sense that you are hit by meteor-like toy blocks and other items.
Beautiful animated and with a great quality of ambient sound, it’s an interesting play. You can find more of it on Steam.
Secrets of Raetikon
This game calls to mind that frustrating spectre of Ecco: The Dolphin, while bringing a unique and beautiful innovative style and Metroid-vania style trackbacks.
Interested in indie games? Bring out your favorite, every Monday night at 6PM at Awesome Inc!