My favourite part of PAX every year is seeing tons of amazing Aussie indie games in action. There’s no denying the massive talent and passion we have for games as a country and I fucking love it.
I had a wander around the indie arcade this morning and demoed a handful of really cool games, getting the elevator pitch from their creators.
Here’s the ones I really bloody liked.
BlockPocalypse
I had a go of this one last year and absolutely had to go back again. It’s a 4 player platformer that pits you and your mates against a variety of apocalypses, like zombies, fire and brimstone, etc.
“You work together, you try to build your pathway to safety and freedom using bits of debris that have fallen from the city and the space station and stuff,” creative director Dan Clayton told PEDESTRIAN.TV.
“But because it’s a party game, it’s fun every now and then to screw each other over.”
And how! That was part of the joy of the game and when it’s fully released I can see it being a party hit. It’s on Steam via early access at the moment, but Dan says it’ll head to consoles soon. Suss the trailer below.
Party Golf
Speaking of party vibes, I also played a game called Party Golf. The idea is simple, but the customisation options are massive.
“The point of it is that you can play it however you like,” developer Adam Zulkifly said. “So what we do is we build this very simple, very fun default golf game – just racing to the hole – and then we add a whole bunch of customisation on top of that.”
There’s over 300 customisation options including power-ups like being able to control yourself in the air or fucking up your opponents by turning the screen dark.
It was crazy fun, even though I sucked at it a lot. As the saying goes, easy to learn, difficult to master. You can pick up Party Golf on PS4, PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One.
RUMU
A really cool point and click adventure where you play as a robot vacuum cleaner with feelings. As developer Ally McLean describes it, “it’s like Monkey Island, but sad”.
“You go through this doll house environment and through the relationship between Rumu and Sabrina, who’s the house AI, like an Amazon Alexa, you learn about the people who lived in the home and what happened to them.”
It’s undoubtedly a pretty original idea and the visuals look gorgeous. Rumu is due out on Steam later this year.
Survival Games
On the surface, Survival Games looks a lot like Minecraft, but there’s much more to it. Its semi-procedural generated world offers four different game modes like straight-up survival or zombies.
The map changes every single time you play, so there’s no doubt it’ll keep you on your toes. “Because in a survival game, when people get to know the map, they win all the time,” said team member Jarrod.
They’ve even included the ability for viewers of streams to interact with the game. If they think the streamer is too good at it, they can vote to add in challenges or obstacles.
You can suss the trailer for the first-person shooter below.
The Adventure Pals
This game looks incredible. It has fun platforming gameplay coupled with the weirdness of Adventure Time that had me giggling like an idiot the whole time.
“The Adventure Pals is a quirky platforming game about a small boy and the crazy adventures he goes on with his giraffe and pet rock,” said designer Julian Wilton.
It comes out next year, so make sure you keep an eye on it. Suss out the trailer below.
