Indie DB 2019 Indie of the Year awards
Retronator Community Feature
A new Community Feature! Today we’ll look at Indie DB, the home of—you guessed it—indie games!
But before we do that, hello! Welcome back to Retronator Magazine, a place where we look at beautiful pixel art (and related) imagery, up big, fullscreen, without too many distractions! I’m returning to writing after 2 years of working solely on my game Pixel Art Academy, so I thought I’d quickly say hi. If you’re an old reader, I hope you’ll be happy to hear I’ll be publishing more articles again.
For newcomers, some advice: the way to read my articles is to slow down, grab a drink, and spend as much time on the images as you do on text. Getting to the end as fast as possible is not the point. Instead, pause your scrolling on each artwork and take in the pixels wholeheartedly.
That being said, let’s check out Indie DB’s Indie of the Year nominees.
If you haven’t come across it yet, Indie DB is a sister site of the older Mod DB repository. The mod database started back in 2002, quickly becoming the place to go for various fan projects tied to big franchises. Mods were a great way to extend the life of AAA purchases, often bringing completely new gameplay to the table. Plenty of popular titles started as mods first. Counter-Strike was built on top of Half-Life, DotA started as a map in Warcraft III, Team Fortress was a mod for Quake, The Stanley Parable released first on ModDB for Half-Life 2 …
With time, many modders moved on to make their own games. Together with other hobby developers and smaller studios, they fueled the emerging indie gaming scene. By the end of 2000s we saw the success of Xbox Live Arcade, the rise of Steam, and launches of indie favorites such as Braid, World of Goo, and Gish.
In the eyes of Mod DB’s founder Scott Reismanis, this warranted a separate website dedicated just to indie games. Indie DB was born in 2010, practically as a re-skin of Mod DB. All the back-end was the same, so really it was just a new domain and an official blessing to developers who wanted to share work on their own game projects.
Just like on Mod DB, Indie DB hosts an annual awards competition to commemorate the best released and upcoming projects on their site. Many household names appeared at the top of the podium in the past: Minecraft in 2010, Terraria in 2011, Starbound in 2013, RimWorld in 2016 …
The awards are split between editor picks and a popularity vote. For the latter, an initial round of voting narrows the thousands of titles (currently 38,873) to the top 100 that are in the running for the yearly honors. The selection has already happened this year, which means we have a fresh new hundred indie games to look at!
Now, if only someone would go through them all to find the pixel art ones … and post all the screenshots in a beautiful, distraction-less format … What if indeed.
Top 100 of 2019 — released games
Let’s start with the 3 titles in the Rougelike category.
(If a game picks your interest, click on its name to go to Indie DB where you can cast a vote for it, no registration required, just a click. Multiple votes are allowed and encouraged.)
Blazing Beaks
“Birds with guns are blazing the way out through the piles of mutants, monsters and creepy creatures to stop the invasion. Gathering items and artefacts is essential to survive in this fast-paced colorful roguelite. Lots of mysteries to unravel, secrets to find and levels to explore.”
“Noita is a magical action roguelite set in a world where every pixel is physically simulated. Fight, explore, melt, burn, freeze and evaporate your way through the procedurally generated world using spells you’ve created yourself. Explore a variety of environments ranging from coal mines to freezing wastelands while delving deeper in search for unknown mysteries.”
“Experience sci-fi tactical combat and exploration in a procedural world that combines traditional roguelikes with an immersive modern interface like no other. Build yourself from components found or salvaged from other robots. Attach power sources, propulsion units, utilities, and weapons to become a slow tank bristling with weapons, or a fast-moving flier zipping past enemies before they even have time to react, or a stealthy sword-wielding assassin/hacker, or whatever else you can come up with from the salvage you find. The situation can quickly change as you lose components and rebuild yourself from enemy remains. You are the Cogmind. Discover what that means as you explore a living, breathing world ruled by robots.”
Another text heavy title is A Legionary’s Life in the Role Playing category.
A Legionary’s Life
“Set during the Second Punic War and beyond, A Legionary’s Life lets you play as a Roman conscript soldier. Rise up through the ranks and win prestigious awards or just focus on making it home in one piece; it’s up to you.”
And with a more generic top-down art style, the massively-multiplayer DarkStory Online.
DarkStory Online
“DarkStory Online is a 2D retro MMORPG with a innovative battle system and a big world to explore, every class has authentic mechanics, discover the secrets of Dragonia and defeat the bosses, enjoy in a unique fantastic adventure with the community.”
Adventure category is represented with the lo-res Aground.
Aground
“One of the last human survivors, you find yourself stranded on an uninhabited island. With a few other victims of the crash, can you craft, mine, and build your way to survival?”
Another side-scroller lives in the Family category.
The StoryTale
“The StoryTale — is a family-friendly fairy tale puzzle-platformer where everything goes bing-bang-boom, but everybody remain alive and healthy. It’s a game where you constantly forget the spells and the weapons are cursed. But even in the midst of the swirling action you can stop and think over the next step.”
I had the pleasure of playing the nominee in the Fighting genre, Eight Dragons. It has one of the best shittiest CRT monitor simulations, so I kept it turned on even though I’m usually all about crispy pixels.
Eight Dragons
“Eight Dragons is an old-school side-scrolling fighting game that takes the classic beat-’em-up action from the eighties and pushes the gameplay and story to a whole new level!”
Screenshots really don’t do it justice without flickering. And if you can’t stand the blur, there’s a normal viewing mode as well.
Next up, the Arcade category hosts 3 games, the first one funnily enough being a trippy 90s-like internet simulator.
Hypnospace Outlaw
“Hypnospace Outlaw is a game in which you police the internet of the future. In said future, most people work for a powerful corporatocracy all day and cruise the Hypnospace Highway (the internet is on a literal Information Superhighway in the future) while sleeping. There are competing virtual sleep worlds, but Hypnospace reigns supreme. As an Enforcer, your job is to peruse a Geocities-esque database of websites, identify scumbag users who violate Hypnospace law, and take your cruiser out to track and apprehend them. You’ll face everything from clueless old folks propagating adware and toolbars (which can infect you if you get too close) to masterful cyber hackers and their bots.”
The other two Arcade games are a bit less prominent on the art side.
Demolition Crew
“Join Sasha and Valya abd smash your way to the top of different buildings in a race against time, puzzles and enemies in this action puzzle game.”
Guardian of the System
“A retro action game, with bullet-hell elements, where you must protect the system at any cost. You are the Guardian of the System.”
A couple of isometric titles are in the two Sim categories, Realistic and Futuristic respectively.
Overcrowd: A Commute ’Em Up
“Design and build the most efficient metro stations known to man! Excavate. Expand. Set staff priorities. And manage the commuter flow. Overcrowd is a management/tycoon/simulator set below the bustling city of Lubdon Town.”
“Have you ever wanted to build your own space station? Trade goods and care for the inhabitants? Explore distant galaxies and take on daring missions while trying to keep your meeple alive! Meeple station is an open-ended space station simulator in the vein of Rimworld that succeeds in doing just that. Live a never ending adventure whilst trying to make the best of your ramshackle station.”
Next we have Peanut’s Quest as the only nominated puzzle game.
Peanut’s Quest
“Help Peanut to collect all the food while dodging nasty enemies. Navigate your way through deadly traps while keeping an eye on the bigger picture.
Peanut’s Quest combines a variety of puzzles with skilled movements required to avoid the enemies.”
Did you know Command & Conquer: Red Alert has an open-source version? I didn’t, so I was very happy to find OpenRA among the real-time strategies.
OpenRA
“Open-Source reimplementation of Westwood’s Command & Conquer: Red Alert game engine, updated to use the hardware acceleration of modern video cards using OpenGL and OpenAL for sound playback.”
Nothing like some old-school pixels … which is exactly what was waiting for me in the final, first-person shooter line-up. Seems like there’s a resurgence of 90s FPS engines going on, giving us not one, not two, but three shooters with low-res weapons and/or pixel art textures.
WRATH: Aeon of Ruin
“Enjoy timeless elements of classic titles such as DOOM, QUAKE and more in the FPS that brings old-school shooters into the 21st century.”
“The AMC TC is an epic multi-character single player stand-alone game based on Duke Nukem 3D, utilising Eduke32 and the 2.5D BUILD engine. There are 5 episodes planned; episodes 1, 2 and 3 have been released and episode 4 is in development. Each episode is a full length campaign featuring detailed and intricate levels to explore, with dozens of secrets and scores of enemies to fight and weapons to utilise.”
Oh boy, and check this out:
Ion Fury
“3D Realms (Duke Nukem 3D, ROTT, Prey, Max Payne) is excited to bring back our famous Build engine, which powered Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Shadow Warrior and other 90’s hits. Of old-school throwback games, ION FURY is the real deal, using our original tech from that famous era that launched the FPS genre.”
Looks like someone made a bloody mess there.
Top 100 of 2019 — upcoming games
We’re halfway through! Actually more like 3/4 through because there are only 6 pixel art titles among the games that are still in development.
Let’s start with an RPG.
8-Bit Adventures 2
“Enjoy an all-new RPG experience that mixes modern design with retro style, in this sequel to the fan-favourite 8-Bit Adventures: The Forgotten Journey Remastered Edition!”
We find two more top-down titles in the Arcade category.
Pushy and Pully in Blockland
“Cooperative arcade game with a retro feeling. Players will journey through lots of levels with our two hero girls: Pushy and Pully, trying to crush their enemies to clear each stage by pushing blocks and getting power ups by joining blocks together.”
“Future, one of Earth’s colonies. There was a war your home country lost. Occupation forces don’t care about people — crime and decadence are everywhere.”
We have one Realistic and Futuristic Sim again. First we’ll go with Imagine Lifetimes that sports an Oekaki art style.
Imagine Lifetimes
“Imagine Lifetimes is a short narrative driven simulation game about the meaning of life. Question the absurdity of existence as you figure out what it means to be alive. As in real life, two randomly generated parents define your character through genes. Born with the ability to choose, your actions and decisions shape the paths laid out in front of you.”
The futuristic one has lovely sprites and sweet pixels on 3D tiles.
Starmancer
“Starmancer is a Dwarf Fortress inspired space station building game. After a catastrophe on Earth, humanity launches the Starmancer Initiative in a desperate attempt to seek refuge.”
Finally, among Adventure games we’ll find pixel art from Ricardo Juchem.
Chinatown Detective Agency
“Singapore. 2032.
The world is in a state of chaotic flux as the global economy is nearing the nadir of its decade-long downward spiral. Singapore is one of the last refuges of relative order, but even here, the government is struggling to keep the nation state from the brink of collapse. Law enforcement, like most public services, is underfunded. Private Detectives are becoming the first option for citizens who can afford a semblance of justice.
Enter Amira Darma, once a rising star at INTERPOL. She has just set up shop as a Private Investigator in the heart of Chinatown, and her first client is about to walk through her office doors…”
That’s it! As of the publishing of this article, you have a bit more than a day to cast your votes. Give the pixels some love (or other art styles as well — you can vote for any number of games, no registration required) on the Indie DB top 100 page of the 2019 Indie of the Year Awards. I’m sure the hard-working devs will appreciate it.
Hi again! As customary, you’re now reading the outro of the article where I say things unrelated to the topic, like wishing you happy holidays and a great start into the 2020s! I’ll work to bring educational articles back to the magazine, like the continuation of the graphical projection series. I also started working on a physically-based rendering engine for Pixel Art Academy, so I’ll have many more things to say about proper shading. You can follow along on my 3D Paint devlog to learn the theory in small chunks over the next few weeks. Hope to see you there!
—Retro
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