British Indie Game Dev Showcase

The British indie game dev scene is producing a great range of games right now. TIGA showcased a bunch of studios at an event recently and all of them are producing really interesting stuff.

Spin King

Spin King from 232 Studios has you spinning around the wheels of dozens of maps, trying to save the princess. Sure, the old knight-rescuing-damsel-in-distress is terrible cliché but when you learn that the original story involved Streaking Bob running around the city avoiding policewomen’s tasers… it’s not so bad.

It looks simple, but as with the best mobile physics games, it quickly becomes more complex, with wooden cogs that need the right momentum to spin and barriers blocking your trajectory for no good reason whatsoever.

Spin King is coming to iOS and Google Play on 25th March.

Hills of Glory 3D

Coming from AMA Studios, Hills of Glory 3D is a World War II tower defence-ish game that’s been optimised for touch controls. Hapless soldiers march past your defending towers while you call in napalm strikes and other such weapons of destruction from the sky. The touch controls take a bit of getting used to – touch your start point, drag a line from it with another finger and then let go to rain down firey napalm death – but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be fine.

Hills of Glory 3D is coming to iOS and Google Play “soon”.

GooHoo

Robots are rampaging throughout the land! Only a tiny blob of goo can stop them, with the help of its companion helicopter.

What? Yes. That’s actually the premise of GooHoo and it’s brilliant. Your friendly helicopter bud drops you off in a disorderly robot and you squelch your way through it. Attach yourself to spinning cogs to work your way around, picking up crystals and avoiding the lurking nasties. You need to bounce and spring through all the obstacles to find the self-destruct button, then get out before it blows.

Tick Tock Toys

This is a lovely iOS game disguised as a kids’ toybox. Swallowtail Games are a studio formed from the Dare to be Digital game dev competition, winning BAFTA’s Ones to Watch award last year. After building the game during Dare, they tapped into the Abertay University Prototype Fund to finish off the game for a full release. While 6-11 years olds will enjoy it the most, thanks to the range of creatures that roar and bleat at you when you touch the screen, the puzzles are interesting enough to keep everyone occupied.

Your job is to get Tic Toc the toy robot safely around the toybox. Trains, knights and hippos will block his route and cannons will fire at him, so you need to move things around in the tiny space to make sure he survives.

Here’s the trailer:

The first 15 levels of Tick Tock Toys are free. Once you’re hooked, you can buy the other 120 levels for £3.99.

Switch Galaxy

This game from Atomicom looks a lot like wipEout, mostly because “futuristic floating space racer” will always look like wipEout. It’s nothing like it though, being more of the Rock Band Blitz style of track-switching to grab power-ups and avoid barriers.

Switch Galaxy is the sequel to Switchand is coming to PlayStation Mobile, that PlayStation app that everybody forgets about which lets you run pretty good games on both your Sony Android phone and your PS Vita.

It starts out slow, but within 5 minutes you’ll racing away at breakneck speeds, flipping from track to track as the obstacles hurtle towards you. Each level is short, clocking in at a minute or less, which makes it a perfect game for when your date has nipped off to the loo, or you’re waiting for the bus.

Switch Galaxy launched on PlayStation Mobile last week, with iOS, Blackberry, Android, PC and Mac versions coming in May.