Independent video game festival awards thought- provoking creations
The Indie Grits Festival teamed up with the USC Center for Digital Humanities on Tuesday to host Indie Bits, a day-long independent video game expo that gave developers and players a chance to fire up each other’s pixelated creations and flex their thumbs in the often bizarre, but always entertaining world of indie gaming.
The 8-bit showcase, which featured about 20 games made by students, amateurs and indie development houses, gave five of the underground developers awards for their game play, art and overall humanitarian message, among others.
Here are the most innovative, most contemplative and most absurd titles the festival had to offer:
Best Game — “The Banner Saga” — Stoic Studio; for sale via Steam for $24.99
This tactical, turn-based RPG plays like a board game come to life. Players commandeer a small army of heroes across a gridded battlefield in an adventure that, like The Banner Saga’s Varl giants, towers over the competition with its deeply strategic game play, plot-twisting story and gorgeous, classic-Disney-movie artwork.
Best Humanities Game — “Cadence” — Diane Mueller, Kelsey McEwing, Nathaniel Frankel, Sarah Ikegami, Mason Wallace, Kai Paquin; free at globalgamejam.org
Made in only 48 hours for a game development competition, “Cadence” follows a child diagnosed with a terminal illness. Players uncover the life of the child through photos and diary entries as they navigate an abstract plane that seems to exist somewhere in between life and death. The game is completely black save for the small boy, who illuminates the environment with his heartbeat in a seizure-inducing yet beautiful ripple effect.
Best Student Game — “Light Bulb” — Timothy Johnson
Made by fourth-year media arts student Timothy Johnson for a class, “Light Bulb” puts players at the helm of a robot as they frantically try to keep a light from fizzling out by matching floppy discs with a color-corresponding computer. But no matter how fast you get the discs to their computers, eventually, the room will slowly fade to black. “It deals with the realities of failure,” Johnson said. “There’s not a lot of games that the outcome is you fail.”
Best Experimental Game — “Walk Through” — Adam LeDoux and Kyle Blevens
Fourth-year computational media students from Georgia Tech Adam LeDoux and Kyle Blevens created this side-scroller that chronicles the rise and eventual breakup of a high school couple. “Instead of being about challenges, it’s about emotions. Super indie,” LeDoux said with a laugh. There are no enemies or obstacles (other than the torment of teenage romance); instead, players engage in simple interactions with their love interest and then walk to the next scene. After their first kiss, players can jump sky high and dash across the screen, but as the impending breakup draws near, the character movements are bogged down. “We were intrigued at the idea of seeing if we could convey the characters’ internal emotions by the way they moved,” LeDoux said.
Best Art — “Disorder” — Swagbyte Studios; free download at globalgamejam.org
Controlling a manically depressed protagonist, players press the space bar to shift the landscape into a brightly colored world, representing a good mood, or a black and blue world, representing a bad mood. Switching between the alternate universes of perception not only activates different lifts and opens different gates, but the dialogue also shifts between optimistic and pessimistic.
Other notable games
“No Child Left Behind” — CannonArts
A political response to the lack of funding in schools after former President George W. Bush’s controversial law of the same name, this gem puts players in the high heels of a teacher as they lead students out of a burning school to the tune of a disturbingly upbeat reggae rendition of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.” Herd your pupils away from plumes of fire and falling chemical vials, or else the little ones will let out a curdling scream as they’re incinerated.
“Lantern” — Julia Upchurch
A woman is pursued by an unknown entity. The only thing keeping the faceless demon at bay is the light from her candle. Players can either run through the dark forest until the light flickers out or press shift and end their lives on their own accord. That’s it.