Swaying softly in the late-morning breeze, a SNES controller, suspended from a thick telephone wire, hangs in the air above the street. It's a visual metaphor that could mean a number of different things in a documentary about indie games. Resembling a shot from a public information film about the danger of overhead power lines, it could represent the perils facing a small team of creators It might refer, perhaps, to the many projects discarded partway through development, abandoned by their makers when the going got too tough. You could even say this old-school controller is indicative of the dominant genre featured in the film: Braid, Super Meat Boy and Fez are all, after a fashion, sidescrolling platformers. And the phone wire? Well, that obviously speaks to the online distribution boom that first sparked the indie gold rush in the mid-to-late 2000s - when Steam, Xbox Live Arcade, PSN and WiiWare provided opportunities to a new wave of bedroom coders.
This story is from the August 2022 edition of Edge UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the August 2022 edition of Edge UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles
Anyone familiar with the concept of kitbashing is already halfway to understanding what Tomas Sala’s open-world builder is all about.
Children Of The Sun
René Rother’s acrid revenge thriller – an action game with its limbs broken and forcibly rearranged into the shape of a spatial puzzler – is at once a bonafide original and an unlikely throwback. Cast your eyes right and you wouldn’t blink if we told you this was a forgotten Grasshopper Manufacture game from the early PS3 era (we won’t be at all surprised if this finds a spot on Suda51’s end-of-year list).
Post Script
What does Rise Of The Ronin say for PS5 exclusivity?
Rise Of The Ronin
Falling in battle simply switches control to the next person up, and then quick revive fixes everything
Post Script
The pawn and the pandemic
Dragon's Dogma 2
The road from Vernworth to Bakbattahl is scenic but arduous. Ignore the dawdling mobs of goblins, and duck beneath the chanting harpies that circle on the currents overhead, and even moving at a hurried clip it is impossible for a party of four to complete the journey by nightfall.
BLUE MANCHU
How enforced early retirement eventually led Jonathan Chey back to System Shock
THE MAKING 0F.... AMERICAN ARCADIA
How a contrast of perspectives added extra layers to a side-scrolling platform game
COMING IN TO LAND
The creator of Spelunky, plus a super-group of indie developers, have spent the best part of a decade making 50 games. Has the journey been worth it?
VOID SOLS
This abstract indie Soulslike has some bright ideas
