Indie Games at BAFTA 2014

As well as checking out Elite: Dangerous at this week’s Inside Games showcase, I popped into the indie room where a bunch of tiny UK developement teams were showing off their games. Here’s a video showing some of the games that were there.

Framed

Developers Loveshack picked up a bunch of awards at various festivals in 2013 for Framed, with its comic panel-based gameplay. It’s a story-driven detective game in which you have to help the protagonists through the story. Rearrange the comic panels so that your characters survive being shot at and have a clear exit from every page of the story.

You do this by matching up the environments so your character enters each panel from a safe location. Hit the play button when you think you have it and watch the story play out.

On the later, more complex levels you’ll be rotating panels as well as swapping them around. Fences will become ladders, creating new paths and you’ll find plenty of ways to dispatch your opponents.

0rbitalis

Solo developer Alan Zucconi is working on a game that uses principles of real physics to show how orbiting works. On each level you fire your “0rbitalis”, attempting to have it stay in the galaxy for as long as possible without crashing into objects.

Originally created for Ludum Dare, you can play the prototype here. The full game features many more space obstacles and will be launching on PC later this month.

Zucconi is also working on Still Time which will launch on PS Vita this year, as well as a custom controller to be shown at this year’s GDC.

The Marvellous Miss Take

Wonderstruck Games are creating an action-based stealth game filled with colour and perky sound effects. This may seem at odds with the traditional shadow and sneaking of the genre but The Marvellous Miss Take does it very well. As Adam says in the video above, the guards patrol randomly, so you should spend most of your time moving instead of hiding and memorising patterns.

Instead, you can distract them by briefly running into their cone of vision, or using a sound generator to draw them away from the valuables. It’s a browser-based game that’s just been announced and will be launching some time this year.