GDC can be such and interesting experience pairing games together that otherwise would never be said in the same breath. Though the two games at the center of this write-up have little in common, I saw them back-to-back in my busy week — linking them forever in my mind. And with such excellent indies, I can’t see a problem with having them burned into my brain.
Everdeep Aurora
I first went hands-on with this game at PAX West last year and it is still so good. This time ’round in the digging, Game Boy-inspired title, I unearthed a speakeasy full of animals. It wasn’t exactly what I was looking for — the feline main character has lost her mom, and finding her is my main goal — but it was a pretty exciting find.
Despite my best efforts, the moma cat is nowhere to be seen. I’m told that the game actually has three distinct layers, and I’ve only breached a fraction of the first one. There is more going on in this title than its nostalgic visuals would imply and it seems like my mom is tied up in it somehow.
Demonschool
The funny thing about living in a hub for game creation is that sometimes, when you walk into a demo, you discover the developer is kinda a neighbor. Having secured a new Bay Area buddy, I turned to the challenge at hand: fighting demons. The 2D meets 3D world is full of horrific charm and wonderful absurdness. A great example of that last point is the NPC known as The Red Bag Haver — a fan favorite. Her struggle to remember the excellent scarlet sack she was so proud of as a new day dawned clued me in on the fact that something strange was going on in Demonschool.
And the giant skeleton boss really hammered the point home. A wonderful instance of aesthetics working in tandem with the story, anything set in the human world is two dimensional, while the demon realm is represented in glorious, old-school 3D graphics. The turn-based battles have two phases — planning and execution. So, I can play around with the best way to spend my action points, work in team combos, and escape from danger zones that threaten to crush me with piles of skeleton innards.
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