It’s damn unfortunate that the Indie Arcade at the Eurogamer Expo was right next to the vacant and obnoxiously loud Just Dance booth which featured an audience of zero and girls dancing in cages. So when trying to get into subtle and atmospheric games such as These Robotic Hearts of Mine, Fotonica and At a Distance I was having to fight my focus away from trashy music and boobs.

The Indie Arcade was absolutely heaving throughout most of the day I was there, the games on show were:

(copy/pasted from RPS)

At a Distance – Terry Cavanagh
Blocks That Matter – Swing Swing Submarine
Fotonica – Santa Ragione
Molecat Twist – iwait4 Developers
Pineapple Smash Crew – Red Produkt
Really Big Sky – Boss Baddie
Rimelands: Hammer of Thor – Dicework Games
Smuggle Truck – Owlchemy Labs
Stellar Impact – Tindalos Interactive
These Robotic Hearts of Mine – Alan Hazeldean
Waves – Squid In A Box
Xenonauts – Chris England

I managed to either observe or get some hands on with all of them and they really are a great selection of games. Unfortunately the expo setting worked with some games like Smuggle Truck - which is sort of like Trials but with a truck full of Carebares instead of a bike, worked well in the environment whereas At a Distance required a bit more space and time to get into.

Firstly, Fotonica has the best soundtrack ever created for a videogame. And I’m completely unbiased in saying that: http://santaragione.bandcamp.com/album/fotonica-original-soundtrack

At a Distance hinted at something excellent but I didn’t spend the time to figure it out, I’m going to wait to play that at home with a friend. Rimelands was an interesting turn based action RPG where the dice rolling mechanic often masked by other games in the genre is on display, it felt quite nice to see what was happening, as if you rolled the dice yourself over the screen. It’s out now for the iPad with future platforms in development.

Waves was great fun, it looked too much like Geometry Wars and arguably it played much like it but it featured an aggressive combo system where it encouraged using a combination of superbomb and slow motion to take out as much as possible. It also had a good variety of AI including one virus like enemy which grew similar to that in the iPad game Current. In keeping with shooters, Really Big Sky looked ‘effing brilliant and I’m going to be downloading that sucker in about 10 minutes.

Other games that really stood out were These Robotic Hearts of mine (which I talk about here) and Blocks That Matter which is a little like a cross between Dig Dug, Tetris and Minecraft. Ironically the one game I didn’t even notice was there was Pineapple Smash Crew, I say ironically because that’s the game which won the RPS award of game of the show so…yeah that’s great. Don’t worry though, I will be playing the shit out of it when it’s released.

PS – Is anyone else bored of Chiptune or is it just me?

About the author

Michael Manning

Michael is a sound designer and composer working in the games industry. His portfolio can be found at www.manningaudio.com