The Tokyo Games Show is a spectacularly noisy, vibrant and crowded affair. Endless throngs of people ceaselessly stream through cavernous, hangar-like halls of clamour and bustle. It’s late-stage capitalism at its most flamboyant. Quite a spectacle. Thankfully, away from the triple-A commercial bombast of the main hall, the Selected Indie 80 event offered a little respite. Indie developers from around the world brought their games to Tokyo, and what a joy it was to sample the myriad delights on offer and chat with their talented creators.
The Indie 80 event space was a long esplanade just outside one of the main halls, with huge windows on one side, giving you the sense of being half-inside, half-outside of the main show. Walking up and down the two alleys between the tiny booths, you almost felt like you were at a quiet street market, just off the beaten track. And what delightful wares tantalised the eyes and allured the ears!
The first game to draw me in was Pain-T, a gorgeous Metroidvania by the Spanish team Wheel of Games. You play as a small blob of paint in a pitch-black world. As you tentatively traverse the darkness you bring light and colour back to the beautiful minimalist environments. It’s an explorative metroidvania through and through; each and every screen hides its secrets. In the demo, new abilities – double jumps, dashes and ground pounds – are added to the moveset, making it thick and fast, providing flexibility, and giving a deep sense of creativity to the traversal. (One of the development team told me that they want ‘every movement to be a flash of creativity for the player’). There’s also combat, but you don’t kill the ‘enemies’ so much as save them. This is shaping up to be a very lovely and inventive little Metroidvania.
As I played more and more indie games, I noticed two main trends in the show. First, the number of wonderful games from Spain (this won’t come as a huge surprise to indie geeks); second, the amount of games that eschewed traditional forms of combat and conflict.
Xerme’s striking black and white art, with vibrant splashes of yellow, immediately drew me into the booth of another Spanish team, Acarino Games. The feel and tone of this gentle exploration game put me a little in mind of Journey, with its sense of quiet discovery and awe-inspiring environments. Like the latter, there will also be a multiplayer element, a way to (asynchronously) connect with other players in this seemingly empty world.
The focus in Loadstar’s (yet another Spanish studio) Traces from Auralis is also exploration and discovery. This stunning anime-inspired game is set on a mysterious alien world. Knowledge is the key to progression as you slowly uncover the secrets of the world and piece together the story of the deaf protagonist. There are no aliens to slay, only environments to read and sounds to decipher. This is one of the most visually striking of the games I played at the show.
Another drop-dead gorgeous game was Yareta, an original-feeling open-world game by Mariana Games, a team from Taiwan. As with Traces From Auralis, the focus is very much on puzzles and discovery. ‘We all love Zelda,’ one of the team told me, ‘but we wanted the focus of our game to be an exploration of the world, without the worry of combat. ‘ You play as a librarian-researcher investigating a mysterious ancient civilisation. She is attached to a rope (which presumably connects up to a research vessel high above you), which enables you to reach high places. It felt exhilarating, like a new way to traverse an open world, bounding up steep precipices like a puppet on a string, searching out the next ancient puzzle to decipher.
A game that does have combat is EthrA, an RPG with some of the best 3D pixel art I’ve ever seen (we need more 3D pixel art games). Miraculously made by a two-person Spanish team, StoneLab Games, the chunky pixels and stunning environments – the colourful flora is especially breathtaking – made me tingle with excitement and awe. The tutorial at the start of the demo was perhaps a little overwhelming – a lot is thrown at you in too short a space of time – but once I was free to wander about, I had a wonderful time exploring the world. There’s still a long road ahead before EthrA comes out (two years, one of the developers told me), and plenty of work to get this potential gem all polished up, but if you’re a fan of RPGs, I’d recommend getting this on your wishlist immediately.
Another combat-focused game I enjoyed was the fast-paced arcade-style Smash ‘N Grab. This one is bags of fun. Built for speedrunning, it put me in the mind of indie classic Ape Out, only perhaps more cartoony and less avant-garde. Playing as a snappily dressed robot and their sidekick (a raccoon on an elasticated rope, who you can throw!), you smash up security guards and frantically grab museum artefacts and loot. It’s manic, and I was humming the vibrant big band jazz soundtrack the rest of the day.
This being Tokyo, there were also plenty of excellent games by Japanese developers (including the already-released ‘platinum’ darling of the show Finding Polka). Re:Connect is a very cute and fun arcadey programming puzzle adventure. You play as an incredibly loveable AI (this is one game that I’m happy to have AI in), whose job it is to repair bugs by (literally) connecting code. The pixel graphics and chiptune electronic music are unashamedly retro and delighted the nostalgia-ridden part of my brain.
A few booths over, Tete was challenging my hand-eye coordination. Playing as a little stone golem, this intentionally difficult climbing game – think of something between Getting Over It With Bennet Foddy and Baby Steps – has you controlling each of the golem’s stretchy Inspector Gadget-like arms independently (using the left and right shoulder buttons), while gripping onto walls for dear life (with the left and right triggers). My fingers were confused, but the masochistic gamer in me was hooked.
Now, I sometimes struggle with cute and/or cosy games, what with me being a grumpy old man and all, but A Tiny Wander, by Doukutsu Penguin Club, felt like a lovely game that just happens to be cute and cosy. The picture book art is a delight, as is the quiet sense of strangeness and whimsy at the heart of the mysterious forest you’re exploring as the cute ‘pigling’ protagonist. Lovely stuff!
An animal protagonist that’s not quite so immediately endearing is the mischievous eponymous corvid antihero of Bad Magpie (made by the British team Milktooth). This pesky bird pecks everything in sight, has a penchant for setting fire to things, and generally seems to enjoy disturbing the peace. The game has some DNA in common with Untitled Goose Game – it’s certainly a very funny game and has a similar structure and bird’s-eye isometric view – but one of the developers hinted to me that behind the antisocial behaviour of my new best magpie buddy lies a story of pain and fragility. Sometimes people, and magpies, are jerks for a reason.
A more obviously sweet game is Become, in which you play as a sperm inside a human body, competing against millions of others to reach your destiny. Far from being crude, like all the best video games, this charming game took me into a magical world I’d never get to experience otherwise. It’s essentially a 3D adventure platformer. The platforming feels a little strange, quite literally floaty, since you’re playing as a sperm. It perhaps needs a little refinement, along with the level design, before the game’s full release (apologies for the unintentional pun there). However, this inventive and wholly original little game captured my heart and imagination, and I also learnt a thing or two about my own bodily functions. ‘I wanted, first and foremost, the gameplay to be fun,’ says lead developer Valentin Wirth, ‘but if people learn something along the way, that’s great too.’ Amen!
Fukurō was a fascinating and unexpected discovery. Not part of Indie 80, but certainly an indie game, this is the first time it has been shown publicly – it doesn’t even have a Steam page yet. It is very much a family affair. Based in Wales, the core team is made up of husband and wife team William and Elizabeth Morris-Julien and their son and daughter. Their work is supplemented by a talented team from around the world, including Martin Stig Andersen, the sound designer of Limbo and Inside. This might give you a clue as to the tone of this 3D puzzle platformer.
Playing as an owl spirit reborn as a girl (‘fukurō’ is Japanese for ‘owl’), the game alternates between tense platforming stealth sections and more serene puzzling ones, in which you plot your way up huge towers, catching drafts of wind as you soar upward. While it’s still relatively early on in development, and there’s plenty of polish still to be added, the shifting rhythm of the gameplay loop seems like it’ll be compelling, and the atmosphere is already utterly gripping. William describes the game as ‘Journey’s dark sister, with puzzle platforming mechanics like Inside and flight mechanics like A Short Hike.’ I was certainly on board with all that.
On my second day at TGS I had to venture into uncharted waters: the main hall, where the crowds were thickest, like those millions of sperm in Become. I had an appointment at publisher Critical Reflex’s booth, a very different setup to the charming car-boot-style booths in the Indie 80 area. They had seven or eight stations set up to play their games, and you could flick between five or six different games on each.
I first played Militsioner, developed by Tallboys, a surreal first-person Kafaesque stealth game in which a giant policeman looms over a city, watching your every move. Every dialogue choice you make affects the mood of each character you interact with. It’s an intriguing premise, and the city looks fantastic, with its triple-A quality graphics. But, alas, even with headphones on, the dull roar rolling around the capacious hall interfered with my concentration (some sort of Palworld competition was going on across the way). However, this remains firmly on my wishlist.
Despite the rumpus around me, I also had a quick play of Altered Alma, an eagerly anticipated 2D pixel art metroidvania by 2Awesome Studio (another Spanish team). It played nicely, and I made quick work of the first boss. However, I was very quickly skipping through the cartoony dialogue, which felt mired in old-fashioned video game discourse, making the odd swear word dropped here and there sound very incongruous. This will do well, but it isn’t for me.
By this point I was eager to get back to the relative quiet of the Indie 80 space. The Tokyo Game Show is obviously a wonderful event, but intense, especially in the main hall, which is a place of dazzlingly bright lights and ear-piercing marketing. (Moreover, there are not many seats for a middle-aged man to rest upon).
So I escaped and found refuge in a little game called i want to be a tree (but life has other ideas). Made by solo developer Ian Tyf, this is the type of game where you don’t do much, other than exist in the world, safely ensconced within a picture frame, away from the noise and fuss. You play as a basket with arms. You can climb and collect leaves and, in my particular case, decompress. The game gives you space to breathe and think. And there’s a wonderful surprise ending. It’s a very beautiful little thing, this game. I recommend that you go play it right now, or perhaps when you need a little respite from the busy, buzzing world.
But I had to return to the crowds heading for the station at the end of the day. It was a new and strange experience, sharing my love for video games with so many people, a love that is usually so solitary or shared only with those closest to me. It was likewise slightly peculiar playing games while their creators lovingly peered over my shoulder, gauging my reaction (which was most often ecstatic!) and figuring out what parts of their game might need refinement. But most of all it was a pleasure and privilege to make the acquaintance of so many talented people, each of whom are pushing at the boundaries of the medium in their own unique ways. Here’s to TGS 2027!
