In what might be some kind of record for hands-on time, we were whipsawed through a whopping eight games in little more than 45 minutes. All of them had merit, but here a few that really impressed us.
Animal Well
Animal Well brimmed over with pixel art luminousness. A seemingly endless maze colored in dark blues and blacks, Animal Well finds a small creature navigating a massive subterranean complex. Each screen had a bevy of small surprises and puzzles to explore and unwind. Some were instantly apparent, others required long searching across the labyrinth. This all brought to mind the classic NES title Blaster Master and its vast sidescrolling world to explore. In one section we encountered a ghostly blue square that kept killing us. After a series of hidden tunnels were discovered, we happened on an object that listed itself as candle. We couldn’t do anything with the candle, so we moved on. But some screens later a perfect series of platforming led to us a new item, a single match. We headed back to the candle, used the match on it, the blue ghost disappeared. So simple. So satisfying. We spoke with creator Billy Basso and he explained how after a long period developing the game’s engine, he’s now primarily focused on the level design. He’s packing so many secrets into this game, that he’s aiming as he put it, to fill in all the black spaces in any of the current screens with something. Retro art has always been popular in the world of video games, but this one hits just the right combination of challenge, beauty and fun.
Birth
Madison Karrh’s Birth was a fascinating and freeform look at puzzle gaming. As she decribed it to us in our demo, the game is designed to be played with no instruction whatsoever. A small montage explains the narrator’s arrival in a city and the immense loneliness that the immense location might bring. The narrator elects to a construct a friend from readymade bones and organs. Before long it becomes apparent in order to construct this friend you must venture out into the world. Amidst the city, each building becomes an opportunity to collect a piece for your creature/person/thing/friend that will Weird Science’d into existence. Each building becomes its own series of vastly different puzzles, requiring careful consideration and experimentation. The occupants/people of this world, look like eyeless inhabitants born of the same world as Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice existed in. Birth has an oddly peaceful pace to it. Nothing is hustling you along and the notion of the simple tasks promotes well the need to finagle and explore the game’s world to try to solve them. Speaking with developer Madison Karrh she indicated the city that inspired this game was Chicago. Also, she explained a love of the Chicago neighborhood Ukrainian Village and the alluring look of the beautiful buildings there. Those buildings inspired the design of the city in Birth and the individual buildings are what she envisioned them to look like inside.
Roots of Pacha
Never one to shy away from a good farming sim, we enjoyed the stone age (literally ) simulation game Roots of Pacha. Soda Den’s charming farm construction game takes the isometric construction of the classic Maxis Sim City games and places it squarely in a stone age construct and capabilities. There wasn’t much time to get deep on the game’s mechanics, but we did get to see the basics of setting up a crop and the different ways to water and care for it. Also, the potential for this village to grow based on your care and nurturing of the crops appeared to be immense as at the finished state the demo dropped us into, the top down map boasted a giant series of connected areas.
Bear and Breakfast
Bear and Breakfast from Gummy Cat was like taking Yogi Bear and giving him a bed and breakfast business to run, rapped up in a property management sim in the style of RollerCoaster Tycoon. In this you play as Hank, a happy-go-lucky bear that is attempting to convert an abandoned shack into a thriving bed and breakfast business. Guided by your friend Tony the Beaver, you start to outfit your shack with basic furniture doors and amenities. We had just enough time to get the basics up and running and start attracting tourist clientele. The game would require resource collecting in order to have the materials needed, but our demo alleviated that step, outfitting us already with what we needed. It’s hard to predict how the game will evolve as your B&B starts bearing fruit {cough}, but what we did see seemed fun an pleasant way to spend some time.