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I doubt any of these are big enough to really warrant their own thread, so I'm just kinda gonna lump a bunch of them together in one place here. It's all small-time/indie games that prior to actually just stumbling upon their booth I had never heard of before, and a lot of them were really damned good. Gonna start with The Best Game At Pax (T):
Death's Gambit:
Easily my favorite thing at the entire convention. It's like Dark Souls combat, with some metroid-vania style exploration and platforming type stuff, and some fuckin ridiculous Shadow of the Colossus bosses. Very well done pixel art, which is rare for me to like these days as I'm mostly sick of it. Animations are super slick, the combat was tight and brutal, and some of the levels/bosses you climb around were really amazing. The dev dude didn't have anything more specific than like spring-ish 2016, doubtful there will be early access. I'm honestly more hyped for this game than anything else coming down the pipe right now (aside from maybe Dark Souls 3 obviously).
Ghost Song:
This was just two dudes, one guy who is making the game and his friend or whoever that is trying to market it. Adult Swim picked it up as a publisher, so it might actually get some legs from that. They were super honest about it and basically said "yes, this is Super Metroid, because Nintendo stopped making Super Metroid so someone had to". It plays like you'd expect, but what really put it over the top is how awesome the atmosphere/ambience/music all are. They've done such a good job with the world design and sound that it actually gets rather unsettling and creepy to play despite it having a fair bit of combat elements.
Below:
This is from the dudes who worked on Superbrothers and other bigger-name indie stuff, so I'm sure at least some people know about this, but I had no idea it was even getting made. The gameplay demo they had was fairly short, and played almost identical to Link to the Past, but this is another case where the art style and atmosphere are really carrying the game. There wasn't really anything new as far as gameplay goes, but it was definitely very, very pretty.
Galak-Z:
This was probably the most pure "fun" I had playing anything there. It's a super intense acardey/bullet hell space ship combat with some really neat physics twists and a lot of old Gundam/Robotech animu humor thrown in. It's mostly 2d, but you can cheat cause it's space and go 3d as a dodge move, objects have gravity that pulls projectiles/missiles and such, and a few other pretty neat physics tricks really set it apart from just another bullet hell game.
Mushroom 11:
I'm not usually a big fan of puzzle platformers, as its a genre that has mostly been done to death at this point, but this one actually had enough of a unique system to keep me interested. You can't really move your "character" (who is just biomass of cells or something), instead you have to kill/delete cells from the blob in such a way that it will grow in reproduce in general direction you want it to go. I didn't get a chance to talk with the devs really cause they were kinda busy, so I'm not sure if this is getting a mobile version or not, but the way its built it seems like an obvious winner for tablets.
Enter the Gungeon:
I'm probably fairly biased in liking this as much as I did, as I have a ridiculous amount of hours in Binding of Isaac. This is very similar, but far faster paced and more action-oriented than Isaac. You have a dodge roll with i-frames and such, stuff tends to get far more chaotic and messy, etc. It plays really well and there is a huge variety of weapons you can grab. Had multiplayer as well, but local only which was kind of a downer, cause who the fuck has friends over to play games in the internet age?
I'm sure there are more things that I either can't remember the name of, or have just completely forgotten about but probably liked at the time. Honorable mention goes to Hairbrained Schemes because they are making a goddamn Battletech game. The Kickstarter isn't even live yet, but they apparently have access to all the visual and audio assets from Mechwarrior Online to use, and they've proven they can do turn-based tactical pretty well already with Shadowrun so I'm pretty excited.
Death's Gambit:
Easily my favorite thing at the entire convention. It's like Dark Souls combat, with some metroid-vania style exploration and platforming type stuff, and some fuckin ridiculous Shadow of the Colossus bosses. Very well done pixel art, which is rare for me to like these days as I'm mostly sick of it. Animations are super slick, the combat was tight and brutal, and some of the levels/bosses you climb around were really amazing. The dev dude didn't have anything more specific than like spring-ish 2016, doubtful there will be early access. I'm honestly more hyped for this game than anything else coming down the pipe right now (aside from maybe Dark Souls 3 obviously).
Ghost Song:
This was just two dudes, one guy who is making the game and his friend or whoever that is trying to market it. Adult Swim picked it up as a publisher, so it might actually get some legs from that. They were super honest about it and basically said "yes, this is Super Metroid, because Nintendo stopped making Super Metroid so someone had to". It plays like you'd expect, but what really put it over the top is how awesome the atmosphere/ambience/music all are. They've done such a good job with the world design and sound that it actually gets rather unsettling and creepy to play despite it having a fair bit of combat elements.
Below:
This is from the dudes who worked on Superbrothers and other bigger-name indie stuff, so I'm sure at least some people know about this, but I had no idea it was even getting made. The gameplay demo they had was fairly short, and played almost identical to Link to the Past, but this is another case where the art style and atmosphere are really carrying the game. There wasn't really anything new as far as gameplay goes, but it was definitely very, very pretty.
Galak-Z:
This was probably the most pure "fun" I had playing anything there. It's a super intense acardey/bullet hell space ship combat with some really neat physics twists and a lot of old Gundam/Robotech animu humor thrown in. It's mostly 2d, but you can cheat cause it's space and go 3d as a dodge move, objects have gravity that pulls projectiles/missiles and such, and a few other pretty neat physics tricks really set it apart from just another bullet hell game.
Mushroom 11:
I'm not usually a big fan of puzzle platformers, as its a genre that has mostly been done to death at this point, but this one actually had enough of a unique system to keep me interested. You can't really move your "character" (who is just biomass of cells or something), instead you have to kill/delete cells from the blob in such a way that it will grow in reproduce in general direction you want it to go. I didn't get a chance to talk with the devs really cause they were kinda busy, so I'm not sure if this is getting a mobile version or not, but the way its built it seems like an obvious winner for tablets.
Enter the Gungeon:
I'm probably fairly biased in liking this as much as I did, as I have a ridiculous amount of hours in Binding of Isaac. This is very similar, but far faster paced and more action-oriented than Isaac. You have a dodge roll with i-frames and such, stuff tends to get far more chaotic and messy, etc. It plays really well and there is a huge variety of weapons you can grab. Had multiplayer as well, but local only which was kind of a downer, cause who the fuck has friends over to play games in the internet age?
I'm sure there are more things that I either can't remember the name of, or have just completely forgotten about but probably liked at the time. Honorable mention goes to Hairbrained Schemes because they are making a goddamn Battletech game. The Kickstarter isn't even live yet, but they apparently have access to all the visual and audio assets from Mechwarrior Online to use, and they've proven they can do turn-based tactical pretty well already with Shadowrun so I'm pretty excited.
