IndieSider - indie video game developers interviews

This past Sunday, for the first time since before the pandemic, I had the opportunity to share a panel with attendees of PAX East !

The tenth annual PAX East was held last month, and I was honored to host two panels of brilliant speakers. One, “The Art of Craft: Inspiring Game Creations”, can be seen and heard on the Polygamer podcast . The other was “The Return of Couch Play”, looking at offline multiplayer as an alternative to online games such as Fortnite, PUBG, and Tetris 99. Steam, PS+, and Xbox Li...

CRYPTARK is a 2D sci-fi roguelike twin-stick shooter in which players pilot mechs charged with salvaging alien technology from derelict spaceships. Technological defenses remain active on these procedurally generated abandoned hulks, and players must shut them down and shoot the core if they hope to escape with enough artifacts to sell and fund their continuing expeditions. CRYPTARK is available f...

Old Man’s Journey is a 90-minute puzzle through the hero’s memories. After receiving a letter, he sets out on a journey across rolling landscapes that the player can reshape, allowing the old man to leap from foreground to background, making his way across obstacles. At the end of each level, he reminiscences about his past, unraveling a tale of love, hope, and regret. Old Man’s...

Kona from Parabole is a first-person exploration game set in the cold northern reaches of Canada in the 1970s. A private investigator has been hired to investigate some petty crimes but soon stumbles into a larger mystery hidden in the supernatural cold. What secrets lie within in this chilly interactive tale? In this week’s IndieSider , I speak with Jean-François Fiset, community manager fo...

Future Unfolding is a top-down exploration game set in a pastoral world. Without direction or tutorial and with very little written text, the game invites players to go whichever direction they wish as they discover secrets in the woods, make friends and foes of the fauna, and solve puzzles. A rustic palette, rich mythology, and soothing soundtrack complete the ensemble. In this week’s Indie...

Open Sorcery is a cyberpunk hypertext adventure. You play as BEL/S, a fire elemental who has been bound by C++ code to serve as a firewall. Your job is to scan the local environment and detect any other elementals or poltergeists who could be interfering with your creators or neighbors. As you identify their material and motive, you will learn more about the world around you and gain sentience — p...

Circles is an abstract puzzle game for Mac and PC that uses only mouse control. Each level consists of circles that behave in different ways but all of which must be avoided to reach the level’s end. As the game uses no written or spoken language and offers no tutorial, it is up to the player to decipher each level’s mechanics to manipulate and navigate the shapes. In this podcast, I s...

Warlock’s Tower is a 2D puzzle game with a retro Game Boy aesthetic. Tim the mailman must scale the wizard’s tower, but each step he takes costs him a hit point. Players must carefully plot their course through each room to overcome such obstacles as zombies, slimes, barriers, conveyor belts, and more. Warlock’s Tower is developed by Midipixel, a Brazilian studio consisting of Yg...

Induction is a time-bending puzzle game from Bryan Gale. A veteran of such AAA studios as Electronic Arts, Gale’s first indie game employs temporal mechanics to create time loops. The only way to pull levers and cross bridges is if a player can be in two places at once — as long as they don’t cause temporal anomalies. The geometric art style is complemented by a soundtrack from Tim Shi...

Owlboy is a 2D adventure-platformer — a Metroidvania — developed by D-Pad Studio and recently released for Windows. Otus, the main character, is the titular hero with the power of flight, but without the power of speech. Can he and his friends come together to save his besieged floating hometown? And can an indie game that’s been in development for nine years achieve success? This week, I sp...

Beholder puts you in charge of an apartment building in a totalitarian state. As a public servant, you are tasked to spy on your tenants and report any suspicious activities or ideological subversions to the authorities… whatever the consequences. Will you do what’s best for your family? Or will you risk your life to save others? Beholder is developed by Warm Lamp Games and published by...

Pankapu is a family-friendly episodic platformer. The land of Omnia is being invaded by Nightmares, so Iketomi, the god of dreams, creates Pankapu, an avatar charged with bringing hope back to the realm. Only by discovering the three Aegis — Bravery, Ardor, and Faith — will Pankapu master the abilities needed to access all of the land and save his friends. Pankapu is the first game to be featured...

Four Sided Fantasy is a puzzle-platformer for Steam and PlayStation 4. As with most platformers, the screen scrolls side-to-side and up-and-down — but with the push of a button, players can toggle the scrolling and make the screen wrap, where one side connects to the opposite side. Using this power, players can navigate puzzles and access new areas through the game’s many seasons. In this in...

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is a visual gamebook — a cross between choose your own adventure and tactical RPG. As your adventure in this classic dungeon crawler, you’ll be presented with paths and choices. The character you choose determines your narrative as you encounter orcs, goblins, dwarves, dragons, and more. In this interview, I speak with Tin Man Games creative director Neil Renn...

Lifeless Planet is a narrative puzzle-platformer for Steam, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. A astronaut has been sent to what’s supposed to be a verdant, unpopulated world — but his arrival reveals a barren wasteland populated by Cold War-era Russians. How did they get here, and what happened to the lush planet NASA had detected? In this episode, I speak with David Board of developer Stage 2 St...

Stage of Development is a video documentary series featuring the human stories of Chicago’s indie game developers. Produced by Russ Pitts of Flying Saucer Media, Stage of Development goes behind the scenes with Bit Bash, Young Horses (Octodad: Dadliest Catch), William Chyr (Manifold Garden), Culture Shock Games (We Are Chicago), and The Men Who Wear Many Hats (Organ Trail: Director’s C...

Chime Sharp is a 2016 sequel to the 2010 puzzle game Chime. In this puzzle game, players rotate and place pentomino blocks onto an open grid, trying to form perfect quadrangles (squares and rectangles). As the the timer counts down, a beatline moves across the level, clearing completed quads and triggering musical tones that complement the techno soundtrack. I spoke with designer Ste Curran about...

Perchang is an iOS puzzle game that’s been described as a cross between Lemmings, Marble Madness, and Lunar Lander. Manipulate moving parts in each level’s Rube Goldberg machine to get the marbles into their goals. Color-coded flippers, fans, magnets, and more are at your disposal — but all the red parts are activated together, as are all the blue parts. Group the parts by assigning th...

Lumo is an isometric puzzle-platformer in the style of Solstice, Equinox, or Head Over Heels. With modern design sensibilities, a fantastic design aesthetic, uncomplicated controls, a quirky sense of humor, and plenty of secrets and allusions, Lumo is a fun and original revival of a genre that’s lain fallow for nearly a decade. It’s the debut game from Triple Eh?, founded by Gareth Noy...

Life Goes On: Done to Death is a 2D puzzle-platformer for Steam and PlayStation 4. Each level holds a chalice protected by traps, spikes, switches, levers, and relays. Crossing these obstacles will require the ultimate sacrifice — but your death will not be in vain: each character’s corpse remains behind, serving as a foothold or trigger for the next hero. This interview with Erik Johnson of...

Kathy Rain is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Clifftop Games and published by Raw Fury Games for Steam, Humble & GOG on May 5, 2016. After decades away, college sophomore and social outcast Kathy Rain returns to her hometown to solve the mystery surrounding her grandfather’s mysterious death. Her investigation will uncover a conspiracy that stretches back decades and involv...

Epistory: Typing Chronicles is a narrative adventure through an origami world plagued by an insectile infestation. Help the protagonist and her three-tailed fox defeat their foes by typing increasingly complex words. As the world is purged of this corruption, new areas literally unfold before your eyes, as a voiceover narration unveils the story. This interview with Fishing Cactus’ game desi...

Gravity Goose is a 2D puzzle platformer available for free for Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. The defining mechanic is the player’s ability to manipulate gravity, which manifests itself by making gravity stronger or weaker, rotating the entire level, and more. Use these tools to guide your avian avatar through a deadly maze of pits and traps! In this interview, Eddie Rossiter of Duck...

The Flame in the Flood is the debut game from The Molasses Flood, an indie studio composed of six alumni of Irrational Games. This procedurally generated survival game sends a young woman and her dog down a river, scrounging for resources they can craft into tools and supplies they need to stay alive. Death can come from drowning, snakebites, exhaustion, being mauled by a bear, starvation, and mor...