Seattle Indies Expo Round-Up

Planck

Developer: Shadegrown Games

Planck is a rhythm game with no rules. At first glance it resembles a psychedelic shooter with your glowing avatar scrolling down an endless digital river in an empty black environment of sparse neon lights. You shoot glowing shapes called "motes" that unleash different sounds, so by playing you're taking an active role in conducting the soundtrack.

So far so Rez, but designer Matthew Burns (an ex-producer of Halo who Simon documented recently) has a different agenda. He wants people to interact with music on their own terms.

Burns felt like there was a lot of untapped potential for music games, citing Guitar Hero as a missed opportunity because it dictated when players could play certain notes. "You're just playing someone else's song," he explains. The idea with Planck is that you create your own.

As a result, there's no fail state. Initially there were no points either, but Burns found this lack of goals was too alien for most gamers, so he introduced scores to encourage players to learn the ropes before going off on their own and implementing their own audio flourishes. "The points are just there for those who want it" Burns assures me. The game's original state is still available in free play mode with no points whatsoever.

Eventually players unlock the ability to switch up what kinds of motes they'll encounter, and you can carry up to four weapons at a time - each of which fires constantly unless deactivated - granting more aural variance than most rhythm games that force players to adhere to a rigid structure.

Some might consider this more of a toy than a game, but after Rock Band showed me why I should never ever sing and my Guitar Hero rendition of Paint it Black made it sound like Keith Richards was choking a canary, simply being able to lean back and jam and still create a pretty groovy tune without even trying proved a rewarding musical experiences. The full version is expected to be released in 2012 for PC.

Containment

Developer: Bootsnake Games

Zombies are a formidable foe. By infecting those they bite, they increase their numbers at an alarming rate. Focusing solely on the videogame space they were once relegated to horror, then they popped up in military shooters, followed by Westerns. Now they're breaching our last defense; casual puzzle games. Is no one safe?

Bootsnake Game's (ex-Gas Powered Games staff) premiere title Containment aims to put an exciting spin on a well worn genre. Rather than rely on the tired "connect three" staple, the idea behind Containment is to surround zombies with the same type of color coded citizen to eradicate the undead. You can swap any living character with any other on the grid, but take too long and zombies will infect those next to them instantly turning them. This threat is largely turn-based, but there's some real-time elements mixed in too, such as when a zombie attacks and you're given a split second to react and make a character swap.

Units are based on various professions such as nurses in pink scrubs, soldiers in green camo, cops in blue uniforms, and thugs in orange hoodies. The type of unit used and the size of the combo determines what kind of power-ups you'll receive. These range from a sniper shot that'll take one zombie off the board or an airplane that whose bombs deplete an entire row.

These power-ups really come into play during the games various puzzle challenges. One level will task players with clearing a board of seven zombies with only three sniper shots. Others will contain bosses and mutated zombies with unique properties (like exploding and infecting those nearby), and environments are often interactive. One tutorial stage had me shoot an electric box to topple a hotel sign over nearby zombies.

Between battles the camera pans from one block to the next, telling the story through the environment and brief text interludes. This gave a real feeling of progression as you could witness the mayhem spreading throughout the city without pulling you out of the game.

With zombies and puzzle games being at the height of their popularity, Containment could be mistaken as a soulless byproduct of market research, but that would be a misnomer as this zombie plagued puzzler is infectious.

Rook (codename)

Developer: Carbon Games

Comprised entirely of Fat Princess alumni, Carbon Games unveiled their upcoming action-RTS hybrid for the first time at the Seattle Indie Expo. Codenamed "Rook," it resembles a modern update of the Genesis classic Herzoq Zwei. You control an aircraft that can taxi units around, as well as transform into a mech for ground-based combat.

You gain resources by taking over enemy bases, and each base comes with its own perks. Taking one will allow you to generate income quicker, another reduces your respawn time, and another allows you to build new units faster. You can take a base by deploying foot soldiers nearby, but be ready to defended it with tanks and turrets.

Much like Trenched, there will be plenty of customization to your craft, and the game can be played with a focus on action or on deploying units, depending on your playstyle. The crisp, cartoony graphics give it a nice, clean look, not unlike Fat Princess before it, and it's typical dual analogue shooter controls are much smoother than its 20 year old inspiration.

The final game will be available for up to four players (either two vs two, every man for himself, or in an endless survival mode), and there's even talk of it going free-to-play. Amazingly, its only been in development for a month or two, but I can't wait to see what they do with it by the time it's released later this year.