The Indie Informer

Double Fine and iam8bit kicked off the GDC week with their traditional indie fete, Day of the Devs. It was a wonderful opening filled with amazing experiences. Some of my favorites are highlighted below. Don’t forget to wishlist anything that catches your eye!

Sopa

“It’s all about getting a potato,” creative director Juan Castañeda asserts with a laugh. His obvious delight at showing off his game is infectious and lends even more light to an already shining game.

In Sopa, narrative is key. It unfolds the story of a grandma and her grandchild’s relationship through making soup, discovering a magical world, and, yes, a potato. The first thing I notice is the lighting. It’s dazzling. The sun glistens off every surface of my grandmother’s vibrant, comforting home.

Presiding over the kitchen with a gentle smile, the matriarch teases and teaches in equal measure. A great early example of this is when she explains to her young miho that her dog — who is currently growling at me from under a counter — is not mean but scared. Dogs, like people she says, can seem scary when they feel unsafe. I swear then and there that dog will be my best friend before the end of the game.

Then a monster attacks. Strictly speaking, it could be categorized as a lizard. However, it crawls out from behind a sack of potatoes my grandma asked me to grab for the soup she’s making and carries me in to the land of lizards. I call that kidnapping and it sounds like monster behavior.

With months left until release, Sopa has time to fine tune a few elements, which is great. At the moment, the more action-packed sequences (like a water rapid dash) feels harsh to control and I have a hard time avoiding rocks in my path. Castañeda assures me the team plans to smooth out any roughness before launch, however.

Fruitbus

Friutbus’ demo had surprisingly a lot in common with my PAX West time with Pacific Drive. Everything in this “journey of flavors and friendship” is really tactile. I use my left or right hand to pick things up/use objects. So If I don’t have room, I have to drop something to pick something else up. Fruit, bowls, knives, I can interact with it all. But I also have to find a way to pile them all productively into my fingers to make the perfect order.

The sunny game takes an unexpected turn when my memories of learning to cook in the Fruitbus – a kind of food truck – makes way for the gray world of adulthood. My grandma, who taught me how to navigate every inch of the feast-mobile, is dead. She loved the Fruitbus and wants me to prepare a festive meal for her friends to honor her memory. However, some will need convincing and the food truck currently sits in a scrapyard. Picking up and using a wrench, grabbing and installing the tires, and making sure the parking brake is disengaged to move forward are all actions I have to take step-by-step to get the familiar van out of its prison. Then I drive off to board a ferry and save the day with a salad before starting my adventure.

Hyper Light Breaker

The hotly anticipated follow-up to Hyper Light Drifter had its first public hands-on opportunity at Day of the Devs. My gameplay starts with death, and kicking someone out of a seat they’ve battled through a long line just to play. Now that entire line hates me.

The futuristic neon is as thick as the jungle vines in the starting village hub. It’s a space to upgrade and get equipment between runs, but currently, the town is functionally useless. One vendor I approach only has an option called “decode” which I’m told is just a kind of place holder for the demo and not some future gameplay breadcrumb. Veterans of the series, explains the developers helping players jump into the game, have been somewhat taken aback by the differences in the gameplay. I get it. The look, feel, and open-world nature of the demo is difficult to wrap my mind around.

I enter a pink portal at the end of the shops, set a loadout (which is noticeably sparse owing to it being my first run), and choose a character. Or, at least in the full game I’ll have a choice for that last one. For the demo, I’m limited to a preselected character.

Suddenly, I manifest in a wide field with large bones off to my side, and a gaggle of enemies that give me the vibe I don’t want to mess with them. My job, I’m told since there is no narrative to this demo, is to track down and murder three elite enemies, helpfully marked on my mini map. And wouldn’t you know it, my first elite is a stone’s throw away. I’m still getting a handle on the controls as I approach. The melee attack and parry (with rewards for perfect timing) are face buttons. As is the glider which I discover after instinctually holding A in the air. Also in my arsenal are motion-triggered explosives, a fluid dash, and — very importantly — healing with the down directional button. 

Despite learning all this on the fly, I manage to take down the first of my opponents. Granted, I used every healing item and have no energy — effectively ammo — left. But I’m going to call it a win.

I head off in the direction of other targets, scaling green hills and pouncing from metal towers. My second encounter doesn’t go quite as well. I figure out too late that the interactable blue boxes dropping from smaller foes refill my ammo, and I die trying to swipe the big bad to death with my sword.

I don’t manage to get the third elite in my allotted time, but I did haphazardly trigger some kind of shrine that made the sky go a blood red. When I asked what the hell happened, the dev was noticeably hesitant to explain my vermillion-colored world, saying quickly that it was tied to story stuff. So, I end my time with a mystery.

Isles of Sea and Sky

According to its Steam page, Isles of Sea and Sky has you:

Awaken as a castaway on an untouched, unfamiliar island with no memory of how you arrived and unsure what to do next. Explore ancient islands, forging your own path as you uncover hidden secrets, solve compelling block-pushing puzzles, and unearth a mystifying narrative in this puzzle adventure game. With no set path or order, you determine your fate and decide which puzzles you want to solve first.

But I didn’t know any of this as I stepped up to the controller. Even going in blind, I quickly discovered what the game wanted me to do, though it has no hand-holding explanations. This is a testament to the game’s good design, and, of course, the aesthetics speak for themselves. Puzzle games can be hard to demo, but at the end I was feeling pretty proud of myself. I also made friends with a giant turtle which always puts me in a good mood. However, I got the sense getting spirited off by my new aquatic friend was really the start to the adventure.