PlayStation Experience Indies Impressions Round-Up Part 3

Gazele is back with even more impressions of indie titles from the PlayStation Experience.

Gunship X has AC130 style combat, which has been done a few times, especially on mobile, and really started with Modern Warfare. You have three different weapons and you’re trying to protect humans who are trying to escape giant bugs. Not my bag of tea personally, but it was cool for that style of game. The people are apparently XP, so you’re incentivized to save as many as you can and rockets blow people up easily as I found out.

Overall: AC130 gameplay with giant bugs

gunship_x

Wander is a “non-combat, non-competitive, collaborative” MMO, which is mostly about exploration and peacefully travelling through the world. You play as different kind of creatures such as a giant tree and a gryphon that can fly around the environment. Really unique concept but I wish it played a little better; it was slow and clunky, although that may be the point. It was hard to get a sense for what the game really is without other players in the world. It sure looks great though; it’s realistic but well designed.

Overall: Combat-free MMO about exploration

In One Upon Light, your character can only travel in darkness. You manipulate the environment to get through the world, has an interesting black and white art style but didn’t stand out to me.

Overall: Cool mechanic, not sure how it’d hold up over a full game

OneUponLight

Ouch, One Way Trip did not demo very well at all. There apparently will be combat in the final game, but it wasn’t in this build. It’s in the style of Telltale games where you have dialogue options, but I just wasn’t feeling the art or dialogue.

Overall: Telltale style, weird art style, not a great demo

Woah Dave is a minimalist game, but has a really cool style and sound effects. Gameplay-wise it’s kind of like Mario Bros where you pick up skulls to throw at eggs before they hatch and become lizards that chase you. You can also throw eggs right into the fire at the bottom of the screen.

Overall: simple, but fun single screen platformer, retro, like Atari retro

Apotheon has a cool Ancient Greece art style, had a couple different weapons which had different charge times. It played a little strangely, was not my favorite.

I’ve heard a lot about Galak-Z from 8-4 Podcast and other places, but I wanted to try it out. I was surprised at how good it felt. It’s basically a rogue-like asteroids, with anime, Voltron-style story telling. You have homing rockets and a peashooter, possibly other weapons, and power ups that you find in the world.

Overall: rogue-like asteroids

GALAK-Z_

Distance is apparently based on Nitronic Rush which some of these guys made at DigiPen. The first thing you notice is the visuals, which are Tron-like and the electronica soundtrack is in sync with the world, where lights flash with the beat. It’s a racing game, although I didn’t see any other cars on the road. It has jumps and tricks you can do with the right stick, and in a way reminded me of San Francisco Rush. I’m not sure how the game will work beyond just trying to get a high score or the best time.

Overall: Racing game, with really cool visuals and music, not sure if there’s much else there

Starwhal was the Game of the Show for me. I don’t even like local multiplayer games all that much and don’t really have people to play them with, but my god, this game is amazing. It’s out now on Steam so go buy if you can play with more than one person on a PC. You play as a narwhal and you have a heart on your belly. The goal is to hit the other player’s heart with your tusk before they hit yours. The game goes into slow-mo just as a heart is about to be hit and makes for a really tense, fun couple of seconds. There’s a ton of strategy as well as its not super simple to control the narwhal. There are some really funny in-joke costumes (Blue shell, Star Wars, etc.) and an awesome Tron-like art style. I have to buy when it comes out, although its coming to Wii U, which might be the best system for it.

Overall: If you like local multiplayer game you must buy this, frantic, but strategic

Starwhal

Night in the Woods: This game is awesome, super unique art style, kind of a Native American meets South Park style. Apparently it’s an adventure game and I didn’t get a chance to play it, but it looked really cool. You play as a cat getting high off donuts in first person so I’m already sold.

Overall: Psychedelic donuts

Didn’t get a chance to play Rebel Galaxy, but it looks super cool. It’s a space sim, but is more arcadey than something like EVE. The combat is essentially the naval combat from Black Flag, which looks really fun. Interested to see how big the game actually is, but visually looks impressive for an indie game.

Overall: Visually appealing space sim with Black Flag naval combat, unsure about how big the game is.

Jumble Rumble is a rhythm-based platformer where you move and attack and using different tapping patterns that need to be in sync with the music. You turned the vita on its side to play, which I haven’t seen before, but I wasn’t a huge fan, it’s out on iOS and played like a mobile game.

Loved what I saw and played of Cosmic Space Heroine, I’m a backer so I may be biased, but I was interested to try it out the combat system. The turn-based combat system is really deep; you have style instead of mana, which you build up to make your attacks stronger, so it’s basically a buff. You just cant use the same attack multiple times, so it encourages you to mix it up, looks great, can’t wait for it to come out.

Overall: Turn-based sci-fi RPG in the vein of Chrono Trigger.

CosmicStarHeroine

Source is a strange game, I wasn’t sure what to do exactly as there was no one at the booth, but you fly around and can change the color of your character from blue to orange. There’s some mechanic of landing on flowers of the same color and collecting pollen. There were also what looked fish, both blue and orange, flying around but they would run away when I got close. Visually, it looks great though, has a mostly gray world so the colors really pop.

Ether One: First person exploration game, with some adventure elements. Looked really good and would be amazing in Oculus or Morpheus.

Relativity: cool first person puzzle game. You can essentially rotate rooms so that a wall or ceiling becomes the floor and you complete puzzles using this mechanic.

Close castles seems really cool, is essentially a 2-4 player local multiplayer game (yep, lots of these at the show) but with a cool tower defense mechanic. You build houses, which produce soldiers and towers to defend your castle. Soldiers are used to convert neutral and other player squares to your own color, which makes you a certain amount of money per second depending on the number of squares you are in control of.

That is it for games impressions from PSX. Come back for the final part of the write-up which are general show thoughts!

Earl Rufus

The owner of this little chunk of the internet. Enjoys having a good time and being rather snarky!

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