On the final day of GDC, after all the big news stories have died down (and after many people have left for home), it's always fun and instructive to hit up the Independent Games Festival's booth. As I shoved my way through the tiny corridor, which was packed to bursting with kiosks and bodies, these are the games that made me want to stop and play them:
The winner of a $5,000 prize from Adult Swim, this throwback to classic Warner Bros. cartoons puts you in the role of a cartoon rabbit pulling up carrots and other veggies from a 3D field... while trying to dodge a mysterious anvil storm. Anvils plummet down from above as you harvest the crop. I really liked the writing, actually, which is probably part of the reason Adult Swim is eager to work with these guys.
Produced by students at Digipen, that ancient breeding ground for up-and-coming developers (many of whom, it seems, end up at nearby sponsor Nintendo Software Technology), Rumble Box puts an interesting twist on the fight club concept. You're in a box, beating up enemies. But every one of them is made up of several blocks, and as you defeat them the blocks stay in the box. Your goal is to build a hill of body parts high enough that you can escape from the box. If it were rendered realistically instead of with simple geometry, this could be the most gruesome game ever made. As it is, it is merely adorable.
I guess you can already get this on the Interweb? At any rate, I'd never seen the followup action title from the creators of last year's cult classic Alien Hominid. You're Rage, a purple-suited, skull-masked schoolyard bully who beats up anyone he can get his hands on. But since your dad drives you to the playground, it's a family story. Heartwarming. Gameplaywise, it's a Final Fight-inspired beat-em-up in most ways. You can't jump, and you automatically grab enemies when you walk up to them, making them ripe for the pummeling. I'd like to see if they can swing a console release deal for this as well.
Ah well, back to the show...
