Indie Games

A) Choose one of the indie designers / developers and outline why there work and approach is of interest to you.

Minecraft, the second bestselling game of all time, started life as a simple indie game being developed by one man. Over the last seven years the game has continued to grow in features and popularity, but I believe part of its success was down to the way it was developed and shared in the community during the earlier stages of development.

I have been playing Minecraft and following its development process for many years now and I was always interested in how open the developers were. For the most part, they stuck to a cycle in which each week they would release a snapshot of the upcoming update that would feature some of the new things they had been working on. By doing this it gave players an extremely steady and frequent stream of new content to try out on a regular basis; complimenting the creative and explorative nature of Minecraft. So of course, more content means players stick around and eventually the player base just keeps growing and growing. As well as this, by using a weekly release format, Mojang were be able to take in feedback from the community then adapt and cater to the community’s desires. As a devoted player I always looked forward to what was going to be added to Minecraft each week and, through means such as YouTube and social media, was able to keep track of each snapshot. This method of development would not work for most games, but I think for Minecraft it was vital in contributing to its long-term success.

Minecraft

B) What do you think could be the most exciting indie projects that are in development

Earlier this year during E3, I sat through a rather dull and generic Microsoft press conference livestream only to be absolutely blown away by a minute-long trailer for an indie game. While the Xbox team were busy shouting “4K” at the world, I was left in awe at one of the most visually unique and beautiful games I had ever seen. This game is called ‘The Last Night’ and it is currently in development for a 2018 release by Odd Tales. The Last Night excites me for many reasons, the first being that it is pixel art – excellently hand drawn, highly detailed pixel art. The first glimpse of this game tells you how much effort is going into it and how passionate the artists and designers are. However, the quality of the art style doesn’t stop there; the 2D sprites of the world are generated in a 3D environment to emphasise depth and make use of incredible lighting and shaders. Another aspect that caught my eye was the cyberpunk setting; I love this sub-genre of science fiction, but it has been played out a few times. I am intrigued to see what direction Odd Tales can take this narrative in to make it unique and engaging. At the end of the press conference, The Last Night was only game to make me truly consider buying an Xbox One – it was an extremely convincing argument.