Original and creative: Entertainment in the indie space

It’s never boring in the indie area of ​​Gamescom: development teams present their games in all genres on tiny stands on every corner. There were also many surprising and creative ideas this year. Here, away from the hall with the huge stands of Microsoft, Bandai Namco and THQ Nordic, the queues are manageable. The crowds are also less crowded because the passing stations are close by.

Advertisement

The Indie Arena booths (IAB) have already completely exhausted the available space: the combined stands organised by Supercrowd bring a curated selection of games on 1,537.5 square metres. Organiser Valentina Birke would have liked to use more stand space, but there simply wasn’t enough. In any case, there were more than enough applications: Supercrowd received 420 applications this year, a hundred more than last year. An expert jury made up of 43 industry members from 17 countries played through these and eventually selected around 170 games, which will now be presented at Gamescom.

For selected developers, the Indie Arena booth is an all-round, worry-free package that includes everything you need for the stand, from monitors to peripherals and tickets. Games and studios will also be featured in the trade fair’s live stream and will take part in the IAB Steam event. So if you’re not going to Gamescom this year, you can still play the many demo versions on Steam at least over the weekend and follow the live stream on Twitch. Even before the trade fair, Supercrowd prepares participants with workshops to present their game in front of end customers and publishers. Networking events are designed to help those who are still looking for a publisher. Around the IAB, other indie games can be found at the stands of the Home of Indies or the represented countries.

We can only pick out a few from the wide range of new indie games. The C’t-Zockt team will look at more over the next few months. For some of the games shown there is already a demo or even a finished version on Steam, others can only be added to the wishlist.

This year the indie sector is well represented again with The Darkest Files, Tiny Bookshop and Pioneers of Pagonia, all of whom we have already featured. We would like to briefly feature a few more here.

Oddada

The roguelike music building block game Odada by Mathilde Hoffmann and Sven Ahlgrimm has just been released. In the fantasy toy world of Odada, a little train travels from one station to another. With each stop on the toy-like, interactive equipment, the player collects a piece of sound and changes it until they like it. Various landscapes and machines become musical instruments that can be used to control the pitch. Each level has different building blocks to further modify the sounds, such as little houses, weathercocks, campers or gravestones. If you press the red button on the nose of the train, the level is completed and the music block attaches to the train. Gradually you collect basses, melodies and rhythms.

Once all six modules are together, you play them in a performance by starting and stopping the modules and adjusting their volume. In the end, the music blocks form a finished piece of music that can now be recorded on a virtual music cassette. It gets a suitable title, a colored label and can then either be added to the collection or thrown away. You can browse the collection at any time, remove the music cassettes and listen to them again on the virtual player. Compositions can also be exported as an audio file. Only then can the game be resumed.

The colorful and beautifully designed levels and instruments are slightly different each time you play the game, and you gradually unlock more instruments. In Oddada, making music becomes a playful exploration. You can calmly and quietly add one sound after another and play around with the building blocks until it starts to sound good. With a little patience, it’s not difficult to produce good-sounding results, so even those with little musical talent can enjoy.

Odada is available for Windows and macOS on Steam for about 10 eurosIt also ran well in testing on the Steam Deck.

Moonlight Peaks

In Moonlight Peaks you play a vampire striving for a less bloodthirsty lifestyle and runs a supernatural farm in the titular village with a Hellcat, Golem and other supernatural creatures. Some of the game mechanics are familiar from farming games like Stardew Valley: digging the soil, planting seeds, watering daily, clearing the surrounding land of weeds, wood and rocks, and collecting wild plants. The collected materials can be sold. The mailbox delivers mail from the village every day, with additional orders to be completed.

Valve breaks the silence: Steam page for mysterious online shooter “Deadlock”

But then it gets magical: magic spells make vegetables grow faster, but only if you don’t ruin the magic in a mini-game. You can decorate the estate, build things, make magic potions and learn other magic spells. Instead of walking slowly across the estate, pressing a button transforms the character into a bat that flaps rapidly across the estate.

Later you should be able to roam freely in the village and befriend the werewolves, witches and mermaids that live there. A background story is planned along with the quests. If the chemistry is particularly good, the encounters can turn into romance or even marriage. The developers leave it entirely up to your preferences as to who gets along with whom.

The game from Dutch studio Little Chicken Game Company is expected to be released in 2026 Another demo of Moonlight Peaks on Steam for Windows, which also runs on Steam Deck.

Ecognomics

Munich studio Erox Games is presenting its game Ecognomics at Gamescom, a fun combination of roguelite and building game. In Ecognomics, little gnomes venture into the depths of the earth to collect resources. As the platform sinks deeper into the cave, hungry bats must be provided with more and more food on each level. There is food and resources on every level, but also dangers that endanger the little ones. Only the right combination of specific gnomes with the right equipment can reach great depths. Exploration of each cave yields raw materials, which are used to build a village. For example, suitable buildings help to secure food supplies below the surface.

The gameplay is turn-based. Once the stage in the cave starts, you first add special gnomes such as a hunter, a woodcutter or a boomeranger, which have different wood costs. Putting together the right team is important. But on the one hand, each gnome costs rare resources and on the other hand, the number of gnomes is limited. The available gnomes are placed on hexagonal tiles at the start of a level so that they can access the appropriate resources and are exposed to certain dangers. Then the round begins, after which the task is to feed the hungry bats.
Only if enough food and wood is collected during each round can the team reach deeper levels with treasures and boss enemies. But with each level the bats grow hungrier and the dwarves are often already weakened. Sometimes stops have to be made to heal and upgrade the dwarves.

Ecognomics will be released on Steam on September 30, 2024 And it’s already available in a demo version. We played a pre-release version for Windows that also ran on Steam Deck.

Outlook

Gamescom’s indie area offers a good look at what kind of indie games we can expect next year (and beyond). The original ideas and successful graphic designs of many indie games promise an exciting year of gaming.

(LMD)

Starliner problems: astronauts will have to stay in the ISS until 2025