prokopetz:

gizensha:

prokopetz:

Like seven indie games whose development I’ve been following for years are coming out all at once in the next two weeks. This is gonna hurt.

(Catmaze, FAR: Lone Sails, Forgotton Anne, Golem, Moonlighter, Wizard of Legend and Yoku’s Island Express, for the curious.)

Elevator pitch for them? (I know what Yoku’s Island Express is – the rest are a mystery)

• Catmaze – A casual Metroidvania with light bullet-hell elements; the gimmick is that your equipment/upgrades all take the form of various animal companions. Story-wise it’s based on Eastern European folklore, while its visuals and gameplay are clearly inspired by the Momodora series. And yes, there are cats.

• FAR: Lone Sails – A post-apoc survival game cross-bred with an engineering-sim puzzler; gameplay revolves around operating, maintaining and repairing a cobbled-together landship as you travel across a dry seabed in search of other survivors. No zombies, no mutants, no combat of any kind.

• Forgotton Anne – A traditionally animated puzzle-platformer about a human lost in a spirit world inhabited by forgotten household items. Pretty obviously influenced by Studio Ghibli’s later works – I get a major Spirited Away vibe from the preview material.

• Golem – One of those “human child and weird magical companion solve puzzles” games. This one’s conceit is that the companion – the eponymous Golem – can transform into multiple forms, each with different abilities. It looks a little rough around the edges presentation-wise, but the Golem is surprisingly cute for something without a face.

• Moonlighter – A shopkeeper sim/dungeon crawler hybrid. If you’ve played Recettear, you know the drill. It’s actually kind of surprising to me that we haven’t seen more decent Recettear clones from Western publishers, but this’ll be the first to come down in nearly a decade – and along with Mineko’s Night Market, we’re getting two in one year!

• Wizard of Legend – A top-down action game with light roguelike elements and a strong focus on precision movement and chaining dashes; if the teaser videos are putting you in mind of Hyper Light Drifter, that’s not accidental. Local co-op mode, too, if you’re into that sort of thing.

• Yoku’s Island Express (for the benefit of those following along) – An open-world 2D platformer set in a world that operates according to the mechanics of pinball machines. This is basically one for everybody who played way too much Space Cadet Pinball as a kid.