The Game Dev Direct show premiered on YouTube from IGN last week and featured quite a few announcements during its five and half hour livestream. At 9 A.M. Pacific time, the stream focused on the MIX Showcase: where all the new games were announced and presented to the audience. From there, at approximately 11 A.M., started the Paradox Insider, which focused on the head developers at Paradox Interactive and some of their projects, as well as getting access to inside knowledge, BTS video and more. The Post Show started around noon and centered on a few significant indie projects and their developers, with live Q & A, as well as live gameplay.
The hosts were Justin Woodward, Co-Founder of The MIX and Advisor on Play Humble Games (@ICJMAN / @indieexchange on Twitter), Katie Williams of IGN (@katieluxe on Twitter), Paula Thelin (Event Manager at Paradox Interactive) and Troy Pruitt (Community Manager at Paradox Interactive).
The show lasted over five hours, but the livestream chat seemed to be excited for most of the games announced and didn’t seem to reduce in number until the final Post Show kicked in. Just some of the games that were announced included “The Wandering Village” by Stray Fawn Studio, a game that features a Kickstarter campaign to fund its development. Pegged on their official website as “A city-builder/sim game where a group of survivors establishes a settlement on the back of a giant, wandering creature.”, most viewers seemed intrigued by its “Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” art-style. The stream went on to announce several other indie games, such as “Hello Neighbor 2”, “Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield”, a never-ending side scrolling running game, not unlike “Canabalt” if any of you remember that mobile game from a couple years ago. Other indie games announced were “Windjammers 2”, “Skatebird”, “Wave Break”, “AAW: Action Arcade Wrestling”, “Expedition Zero”, “The Signifier: Director’s Cut”, “Lust From Beyond”, “Deepest Chapter”, “She Dreams Elsewhere”, “Roguebook”, “Doors of Insanity.” and “Tandem: A Tale of Shadows”.
As you can tell, a large number of games were briefly shown off and all the developers kindly asked fans to wishlist their games on Steam and play the demos, if they were available. This would provide traction for their games to get the final greenlight to release. So if you’re an eager fan anticipating any of these releases; get on Steam and wishlist these games and download their demos. Check them out on Kickstarter and donate if you want to.
Personally, the ones that stood out the most to me were “Tandem”, “Wave Break” and “Aerial Knight’s”, as these games all looked fun and engaging. The latter two being games being something I could turn my brain off to and enjoy after a long night at work. Tandem reminds me of a top-down version of Limbo, with puzzle solving. A game that would force me to think. I love any game or book that makes me think hard to find a plausible solution and features a dark, creepy atmosphere for me to get spooked in with headphones on.
The Paradox Interactive showcase was great, as the information and BTS footage presented was very cool and gave great insight into their games and process and as a diehard Paradox fan, I was fully engaged. If you’re even remotely interested in their games and company, I highly recommend you check out that section of the showcase. The timestamp is 1:00:56. They showed some cool announcements for Cities: Skylines, as well as talked about how their mod community has led to many of the positive changes in the game and its dlc, as well as the point that a good number of their ideas for the game, came from their modding community. The hosts had some cringe jokes, but getting to see some new announcements from games such as Stellaris , with some awesome footage from the story of their new dlc, Nemesis. Brenda Romero, Game Developer of Empire of Sin, gave a great interview on how they were getting their updates out for the game and how their fanbase has been invaluable to their team on developing updates to help the game reach its full potential. Romero said, “We wanted to strengthen what players loved about the game, while immediately addressing the things that were getting in the way of them enjoying their experience. Our players have been invaluable in guiding our post-launch plans.” Her interview starts at 2:41:18. I highly recommend you listen to it.
The Post Show was a fine way to conclude the livestream. Featuring gameplay of more announced games and feedback and interviews from developers, it was just as enjoyable as the rest of the stream. Overall, I had a good time watching the stream on Day 1 and my only caveat was that I wished that IGN would’ve included a list in the bio of all the games announced with their websites and timestamps. That way viewers wouldn’t have to comb through the entire video to find the games and companies they were actually invested in. I do recommend if you’re a gamer and a lover of indie games to check out this livestream and try to support just some of these games in their development, as well as check out some of the games that Paradox Interactive has helped put out, as they are top-notch if you like simulation games. Here’s to the indie developers! Ad astra!
Video Link:
The Wandering Village website: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/strayfawnstudio/the-wandering-village