Gamescom is over and everyone is going home. My heart, however, remains there. I played more games in that week than I did all year, and while some of them didn’t stick with me, there are others that I’ve put on my calendar and already put on Steam. So for this week’s Indie Spotlight, I’ve rounded up the best indies made by small teams I played at Gamescom.
Chants of Senaar
I’ll start with my favorite, Chants of Senaar. Though aesthetically a mashup of Sable and Journey, Chants of Senaar omits the wandering aimlessness of its inspirations in favor of a more focused, puzzle-solving story. The story is inspired by the Tower of Babel – the tower that was so tall it was seen as a hybristic insult to God, and the inhabitants were all forced to speak different languages so that no one could communicate. As the legend says, that’s why we all speak different languages.
The core of the gameplay consists of climbing the tower and figuring out the languages spoken by the residents. Everyone speaks and writes in a series of glyphs whose meaning you have to guess. It starts simple, with a lever that opens and closes a door, and escalates to someone asking you to open gates while they wait and vice versa. After each series of puzzles, you can try to match the symbols with their actions to confirm the words.
Gradually unlocking meanings and seeing alien sentences and sentences take shape is exciting and deeply appeals to the puzzle-solving part of my brain. Chants of Senaar was developed by just two people, but you wouldn’t be able to see it. It looks beautiful, the puzzles are tricky but not frustrating, and there are multiple languages to learn. I am utterly fascinated by this game – both the puzzles and the reason why these people built this tower in the first place.
Chants of Senaar is available on wishlist on Steam and will launch in 2023 on PC and Switch.
Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop
What do you get when you cross 1950s Utah Americana with cartoonish aliens? A roguelite for repairing a spaceship, which also happens to be the exact description of the developer of this game. You play as the owner of a franchised interstellar garage, who works for Uncle Chop’s corporate hologram. This isn’t a fun mom-and-pop place, it’s corporate and evil, and if you don’t pay the rent on time, you’ll literally be killed for it. That’s right, this cute alien Americana game is a satirical take on capitalism, and it rocks.
Each day you wake up and have a morning to get your bearings, wander around the restaurant and chat, and make plans for the day ahead. Once you exit the restaurant and clock in, you’ll have eight minutes to repair as many ships as you can to earn enough money to pay the rent and upgrade your garage. Repairs range from the expected fuel rods and oil changes to the downright bizarre, such as feeding the snails on a mini-planet that supplies oxygen to a ship, or setting the right mood for a sentient AI controlling a vessel’s systems. It draws heavily on the otherworldly absurdities and funny quirks of the cosmos – it’s the kind of garage that Finn and Jake would end up in in Adventure Time.
The actual Fixation gameplay is very similar to FixFox – you even play as a four-eyed fox. It’s bizarre how many find their calling to fix spacecraft, those near me just peck in my garbage bags… You have to flip through manuals to find out the order in which to remove things, put them back, how to fill them . The difficulty increases when you start working with homebrew setups that combine different parts from multiple ship brands or adjust wiring configurations.
The roguelite elements are coming in due to the impending corporate death. Major events happen on the same day every cycle, so once you know them, you can try to prepare. The goal is to join one of the five main factions in the galaxy – will you pick a sentient black hole or the beehive building donut franchises everywhere?
Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop is made by three wonderfully creative and potentially damaged people, you can get it on Steam wishlist right now – it’s coming “soon(ish)”.
decarnation
I have no idea how to pronounce the name of this French game, and I’ve played it way too long to ask now. Decarnation is a witty and ingrained look at the relationship creators have with their art, especially when that art is the product of one’s own body – the game asks how much your art is you. It follows a few horrific days in the life of dancer and model Gloria. She sees the sculpture she posed for assaulted by a museum visitor and spits out that “the disgust now outweighs the pride.”
Gloria is about to turn 30, which is old in the world of cabaret. Not only do you play through her daily life, but you also descend into the depths of her psyche and encounter twisted versions of herself and the people around her. Although game director Quentin De Beukelaer told me that the people closest to him are women, he also made sure to work with women on the creation of Decarnation as well. It’s co-written by Liz Kelly, with more words and art from more female creators.
In the demo I played, I got to play parts of Gloria dances, explore her inner self and fight with her demons. De Beukelaer told me he wanted to make sure Decarnation wasn’t seen as a walking simulator, so there’s a solid mix of rhythmic minigames for the dancing and unusual combat for the more psychological sections.
De Beukelaer also said the game is heavily inspired by the work of David Lynch, something that is evident in the visuals and symbolism. While the story itself is simple, there is more meaning to unlock for those who want to look beneath the surface.
Decarnation is a game about the body, patriarchy, art and our connection to everything. It is available on the wish list on Steam and is expected in early 2023.
conscript
Finally, there’s Conscript, a WW1 survival horror game created by solo developer Jordan Mochi. It’s made in the style of the original Resident Evil games, and while I’ve never played them, I found it incredibly easy to deal with. It certainly has that old-fashioned feel, but with a smoothness and ease of use that cement it as a modern game.
The intentionally slow steering adds appropriate weight and excitement to exploring and fighting the trenches. Enemy soldiers scream and growl as you fight, constantly reminding you that these are people you kill. Twisted by war, but still human.
There is nothing supernatural about the horror on display here, the atrocities of war are more than enough. There were monsters in an older version of the game, but Mochi removed them to keep the game in the reality of conflict. “People are forced to act like monsters in war,” Mochi tells me. “That’s the scary part.”
You can play the demo for Conscript and wishlist it now on Steam.
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