This feature is a collection of games featured in the IGF’s Nuovo category! I have joked before that Indiepocalypse about as “IGF Nuovo Previews” and with 3/8 of the nominated games (and 4/8 of the devs) in this year’s nominations passing through the zine at one point, the claim isn’t too far off*.
10 Mississippi (Karina Popp) Coincidentally also featured in the aforementioned double feature, 10 Mississippi is also the only game where it’s IGF nomination predates its inclusion in the zine. Placing you into a stop-motion abstraction of the developer’s daily routine, 10 Mississippi forces players into an uncomfortable intimacy with its developer. The world is not carefully crafted for the player in the same way that the real world that forms the basis of the game’s visuals is not carefully crafted for developer Karina Popp. Instead players, through familiar controls, are placed into a perspective that is not is not theirs to control but experience.
He Fucked The Girl Out Of Me (Taylor McCue) From the very beginning, He Fucked The Girl Out Of Me tells you that it is not going the be The Narrative on trauma but a personal story of personal experience. Made in GB Studio, the emotion that resonates in each screen is a reminder that impact does not scale with graphical resolution. Taylor McCue exemplifies why some storytellers are drawn to games as a medium and is one of the best to use it. Know going in that He Fucked The Girl Out Of Me can be an intense experience, but it also among the best the medium has to offer.
Sylvie Lime (Love♥️Game) Sylvie Lime is a game about the exploration of game design as much as it is about you exploring the game world (often as a lime). Game design as personal expression can be less obvious than story but is no less crucial. From the very beginning with its momentum preserving lime transformation Sylvie Lime invites to develop your own interpretation to and relationship with its open world area and various tools. Do you find tossing your house around makes for safer platforming? Is a simple chair your most trusted ally? These are questions you and Sylvie Lime arrive at an answer to together.
Titanic II: Orchestra for Dying At Sea (Flan Falacci) The first thing you may notice about Titanic II: Orchestra for Dying At Sea are the familiar models or that memorable song from James Cameron’s Titanic. But quickly recognition fades and the once familiar become pieces in a new work of collage. Absurdity wrapped in sincerity, your journey to the ocean floor and beyond is a bizarre experience worth repeating. Truly my favorite musical moment since Room of 1000 Snakes and perhaps my new favorite. A worthy successor to Titanic.
Fuzz Dungeon (Jeremy Couillard) If you simply described how you play Fuzz Dungeon you would do it a disservice and not really be accurately describing the game. That is the problem (not just in games) with describing nonliteral and surreal works. Describing a work in terms of it’s plot or verbs can only get you so far. You could say *Fuzz Dungeon” is a collection of mini-games on the way to collect a McGuffin (sasquatch sex amulet) and you’d be right. But the context of gameplay matters and you could not ask for a more strangely engrossing context that the world crafted by developer Jeremy Couillard.
10 Mississippi was featured in Indiepocalypse #12
He Fucked The Girl Out Of Me was featured in Indiepocalypse #9
Sylvie Lime was featured in Indiepocalypse #34
Titanic II: Orchestra for Dying At Sea was featured in Indiepocalypse #16
Fuzz Dungeon was featured in Indiepocalypse #20
And to round it out with my own collection of “honorable mentions” are developers who have been featured in Indiepocalypse but not for the same game that they nominated for in the IGF.
Sparkles & Gems (Resnijars)
Nth Dimensional Hiking (Zachariah Chandler)
Everything Is Going to Be OK | Tetrageddon Games (Nathalie Lawhead)
Starseed Pilgrim (Droqen & Ryan Roth)
An Outcry (Quinn K)
*though obviously it’s a case of good games getting recognized and not any kind of Indiepocalypse -> IGF pipeline, or Indiepocalypse being any kind of industry trailblazer