Chants of Sennaar (Rundisc) is a puzzle adventure game, which I was introduced to and played a demo for at GDC 2024. What drew me in was the unique vibrant art style, combined by the unique puzzle mechanic, in which the player must translate and attempt to understand the languages they encounter through murals, writing, and conversations with NPCs.
One of the many joys of attending GDC in March of earlier this year was being able to play and talk about indie games that I might not have heard about otherwise. In some cases, I had the opportunity to speak directly with the game developers themselves about the game I was demoing, exploring the connection between gameplay
At the time, I intended to write something about all those games—only to come home and get wrapped up in my daily life. As time went by, I started to feel that I had waited too long and it was too late, but to hell with that. Indie games need all the support they can get, so here are some of the indies I loved exploring at GDC.
I recently replayed Norco (Geography of Robots), which I included in last year’s list of games I loved, for a video game club discussion — and I found myself enjoying it even more the second time around. The writing is rich and nuanced, with storytelling the utilizes its point-and-click format to explore a sense of isolation in a world impacted by climate change and corporate exploitation. This is a world with advanced technologies, like cybernetic robots and automated supermarkets, but these technologies are not readily available to the working class who are forced to live in communities that face regular flooding and continual entropy — a feeling that is perfectly reflected in the pixel art with its classical compositional style.
With it being spooky season, I decided to take a break from Cyberpunk 2077 and jumped into a game I’ve been wanting to play for a long while — Alan Wake II (from Remedy Entertainment). I absolutely adored the first Alan Wake, and I was excited to delve into the sequel (which arrived 13 years after the first game) — and I’m having great, if semi-stressful and terrifying, fun so far.
Before Your Eyes (GoodbyeWorld Games) is a beautiful game about exploring the memories of one’s life and the way we can’t really ever hold on to the past. When the player opens the game, they are greeted by a wolf carrying them on a boat through the waters of the afterlife. The wolf explains that he is taking the player to the gatekeeper, and that he needs to understand their life in order to allow them to pass through.