Episode 22: Our Indie Cup Europe '24 Jurors' Debrief
Вставка
- Опубліковано 18 вер 2024
- This summer, the good folks over at Indie Cup once again asked three podcasters known for opining at length on the subject of indie games to be jurors at their festival, and once again Liam, Rachel, and Rebecca were all too happy to take part. This time was a little different, however, as instead of the UK having a branch of the festival all to itself like last year, for 2024 Indie Cup held one big festival encompassing all of Europe!
Even though we were only jurors in one category (Critics' Choice, thanks so much again to the organisers for putting far more faith in the professionalism of our opinions than we sometimes do ourselves!), we still looked at literally hundreds of games over the course of the summer - and, now that the results are in, we've gathered together to discuss some of our personal highlights from the festival.
We begin our debriefing, as is only right and fair, with the winner of the Indie Cup Europe '24 Critics' Choice Award and the only double-winner in this year's festival: the very deserving Phonopolis, a charming and visually striking dystopian resistance puzzle game by Amanita Design. We're all genuinely delighted it won, especially since it was the only game we were all equally taken with when playing through this year's shortlist.
We then move on to some worthy runners-up from our category's shortlist: retro-stylised gardening horror Grunn, surreal-yet-wholesome exploration puzzler Henry Halfhead, toy-themed musical sandbox Oddada, historical courtroom mystery based on true events The Darkest Files, and interactive historical fiction drama Two Falls (Nishu Takuatshina).
Finally, we dedicate a little time to just a few of the many games from the Critics' Choice Award longlist that didn't make the final cut, but which at least one of us would have loved to see make it into the final round, including Aquapark Tycoon, Fruitbus, KreatureKind, Nurikabe World, and Sulfur.
Onto hyperfixations and Rachel has been playing The Iron Rig, the latest DLC addition to this podcast's collective 2023 GOTY Dredge, and yup it sure is more Dredge - what more could you ask for? Liam has, if you can believe it, read yet another sad book: Erasure by Percival Everett, best known now as the basis for the Oscar-winning movie American Fiction. (Word of warning: American Fiction is a comedy; Erasure is… decidedly not.) Rebecca, who really shouldn't be allowed to drive this thing because it clearly sends her on a power trip, quickly shouts out American Vandal on Netflix and the forthcoming Ace Attorney Investigations Collection before getting down to her real latest hyperfixation: The Tomb Raider Compendium, a doorstopper collected edition of early-2000s comic books she spent over a decade trying to get hold of, before finally becoming the proud owner of a copy this week.
Our music was written and performed by Ollie Newbury! Find him on Instagram at @newbsmusic. Meanwhile, you can support the podcast by leaving us a 'like' and nice review on your podcast platform of choice, follow us on Twitter @indieventurepod, and visiting our website: indieventurepodcast.co.uk.
I'll throw a question towards upcoming mailbag episodes --
By what methods do the three of you find interesting indie games in the first place, since they often don't have much advertising? Industry buzz, word of mouth, a review source, events like Indie Cup? (The answer is probably 'all of the above', but do you tend toward some sources?)
I Am Your Beast, Wild Bastards, and Hollowbody all come out this week, then UFO 50, Plucky Squire, Frostpunk 2, and Beyond Shadowgate are all coming out next week -- this fortnight is absolutely stacked with indie games I've been waiting for.
I really need to finish the enormous PSP-era JRPG I've been playing for the last month instead of anything indie -- but once I finish this one, I've only got like 9 more before I'm caught up on the Legend of Heroes: Trails franchise!
I'm grateful that you've brought Hollowbody to my attention, but the last thing I needed was another rad game on my radar. THERE ARE TOO MANY GAMES - Liam
It was fun getting to hear about some upcoming games that I didn't have on my radar!
I'm curious about the behind the scenes process of judging, actually! How many days did y'all have to get through the games? 100 just feels like such a big number. Were all of them just demo-sized, or were some longer? Were you given info on how long a playthrough would take? I'm just trying to think of myself playing through Steam Fest demos, and I feel like I usually already end up reaching saturation of wanting to try things at around the 50 game mark haha. I also wonder if you went back to certain games after playing them the first time, to help with deciding the score or coming up with feedback?
Finally, one important question: Has Henry Halfhead replaced Harold Halibut as the indieventure babygirl?
Ooh these are really good questions! I'll answer them here as I think doing so in an episode may be a little bit too self-indulgent, even by our standards haha.
So for the first round, I believe we had a month to pick 20 games from an initial long list of 300. We couldn't play any of the games at this point, and had to pick based on a handful of screenshots and a video. Some games had trailers, but most just had short gameplay demos, usually narrated by a member of the development team. This bit was really hard, as there's simply too many games to sift through. I tried to watch at least a minute of each trailer, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't make some snap judgements based on screenshots. Last year this list was much shorter, which made the selection process easier.
For the second phase we were given a demo for each of the 11 games that made it through to the short list and again, were given around a month to play them all. The demos varied in length. Most were demo-sized (around 30-45 minutes) but some were much longer. We weren't given any info of how long they'd take - which would have been handy, honestly, and I might feed that back to the team behind the festival - but I personally spent no longer than 30 minutes on each one in the interest of time/fairness. Personally, I never went back after playing the games once, but I gave my feedback immediately after playing them to A) make sure I was being as helpful as possible while my opinions were still fresh and B) to remind myself how I felt after my time with the game if I wanted to compare notes with another game I'd just played (I went back and altered feedback based on other games I'd played a few times, though, usually deciding that a nit-pick didn't feel as important to mention when the game was doing so much right compared to its competitors).
I have a question for you, actually: how do you consume that many games during Next Fest?? I found it much easier to play a handful of games while I was in the industry as we used to do write ups for the site, but I find engaging with it now to be really overwhelming! Any tips?
Oh and in regards to Henry and Harold... I'll save that one for our upcoming mailbag haha.
Thanks as always, Simon!
(EDIT: Maybe goes without saying, but this is a Liam comment)
@@Indieventurepodcast Thanks for the detailed response! Picking based on screenshots and video makes sense (after all, that's more or less how you pick a game on Steam), but with that number it makes a lot of sense to just make snap judgements. It's really wild just how many talented people are out there bringing their passions to life!
I went back and looked, and the 50 game mark was an anomalous high score so far, haha. Usually it's been 30-40. Still, my secret to trying that many is - I allow myself to abandon a lot of them very quickly (the downside of that is that I rarely find myself with a lot of patience for more narrative-driven demos). In the case of the time I played 50, I only ended up fully finishing 12 of them. I often just want to see how gameplay feels - whether it matches the idea I've built in my head based on the game description and footage, and whether I actually vibe with it or not. Sometimes I might even abandon demos that I really end up loving (usually when I get the sense the demo is a longer one). Hauntii or Balatro were two such examples, that I still picked up on release because they left such a strong initial impression. As you've even mentioned on the podcast, sometimes a demo can negatively affect how you feel about a full game, so if it's a case where I very quickly know that I do vibe with the gameplay A LOT, I may decide I'd rather experience it later rather than give myself a sense of saturation beforehand.
I will also say that it's very much a "overloading my plate at the buffet" situation. I usually download more demos than I end up even booting up. And then delete them, as access to them gets revoked after the Next Fest haha.