Another year brings with it another round of Australia and New Zealand’s finest indie games delivered to us on a platter just in time for PAX Aus. Given thousands of games to put down to just six titles, it’s a tough job but it ensures that we know just what to keep our eyes on for the best of the best coming out of our region.
So let’s take a sneak peek at this year’s winners. And, yes, we know only 5 are listed here, but PAX Aus is keeping the 6th winner under wraps until the showcase.
Wayward Strand
Website
Wayward Strand is a game that is set in an airborne hospital in a 1970s Australia. It describes itself as a “touching, empathetic narrative game, woven together from many distinct threads”. The game puts players in the shoes of Casey Beaumaris, a teenage girl visiting the flying hospital for the first time. From here, she can meet all the delightful residents, explore the hospital, get to know the staff and slowly unravel the mysteries of the murky past of the floating hospital ship. The game is slated for iOS, Android, PC, and OSX with a release slated for some time in 2020.
Ring of Pain
Website
Ring of Pain is a roguelike flavoured, dungeon crawling, card based, chaos embracing game that looks delightfully creepy and odd. Players are thrown into dungeons, each card an encounter, with players able to choose to fight or sneak their way through, all the while balancing an inventory and making some hard choices about how they want to play. All the while trying to unravel the truth from cryptic clues. The game is set for early 2020 for Mac and PC.
Death Hall
Website
Death Hall is all platforming action done in a delightfully cute but also kind of menacing way. The stages promise to be diabolical in nature, testing players skills and dexterity. Players can also buy items to help them along their journey, but will it be enough to defeat the fearsome monster waiting for them at the end? Death Hall is out now for iOS.
Unpacking
Website
You know that zen feeling where you have a bunch of stuff in boxes, and you get to unpack it and sit it all just so? Just right to decorate a new room, a new house, a new apartment or whatever you find yourself living in? Unpacking aims to capture that zen in a game they describe as “part item Tetris, part home decoration”. The game unfolds over a series of 8 house moves, where players can unravel the story of a character they’ll never see and a story they’re never told. Unpacking doesn’t have a release date at this stage, but will be released for Windows, Mac and Linux.
EXO ONE
Website
EXO ONE is an interplanetary journey, which will allow players to pilot alien crafts and learn to master the gravity-based movement system. It’s a surreal exploration game in which players can glide across otherworldly landscapes or open a wormhole to step through to the outside of our own solar system and into the unknown. EXO ONE is set for release in 2019 for PC.
Keen for pax? If you haven’t yet bought them yet, check out the release here!
