The Nintendo Indie World Showcase is a cure for those tired of the same formulaic shooter. This month's event showed off intriguing ideas that come from different perspectives and backgrounds. The diversity of concepts shows how gaming has inspired people from all walks of life.
Anselm Pyta, of Studio Seufz in Germany, created a game based on a real-life legend about a king who lost his powers and laid himself to rest, asking a servant to wake him up. Called "The Longing," it takes place in real time over 400 days. As the servant, players are presented with plenty of things to do such as puzzles and collecting material as they bide their time waiting for the king to awaken. The game came out April 14.
Neil "Aerial_Knight" Jones, a Black developer from Detroit, designed a narrative runner called "Never Yield" that has a slick style that reminds me of "Sayonara Wild Hearts" but with a hip-hop flair amid a Tokyo-style Detroit. Jones' game is now available on the Nintendo eShop.
"Aztech Forgotten Gods," from the Mexican studio Lienzo, imagines a Mesoamerica that wasn't colonized by European powers. It mixes a sci-fi world with Aztec mythology as the hero Achtli works with Tez to defeat deities who have been forgotten. It's a compelling twist on the action game that introduces players to a culture they may be unfamiliar with while using the design language of anime and video games to open that door. The game comes out this fall.
"Road 96" has the biggest potential of all the games shown during the showcase. It's a procedural narrative from French studio DigixArt inspired by road trip movies from the 1990s. Players have potentially thousands of paths to take. An adventure game with moments of action-oriented gameplay, it comes out later this year.
"Skul: The Hero Slayer" by SouthPaw Games comes from a team that met in a club at Chonnam National University in South Korea. It flips the common video game narrative of a hero saving the world, focusing on an undying skeleton who has to rescue his king. "Skul" has a gorgeous sprite art-style and looks fast-paced, requiring plenty of skill. "Skul" is set to come out this summer.
