Screenshot Weekly – Hopping Turtles Condensed into Rolling Horrors
Welcome back to Screenshot Weekly! Every Saturday, IGM brings you exclusive looks at upcoming games in various stages of development (so devs, don’t forget to tag @indiegamemag in your #screenshotsaturday posts so we can find you!). The featured image introducing each game will always be original, and made especially for IGM, so you’ll see them for the first time right here! Now without further ado, let’s take a look at this week’s screenshots:
Condense
The trio of folks who make up ValenceOne Games unsurprisingly think pretty highly of their debut project, titled Condense (also referred to as Condense- a game about collecting mass). The “casual and beautiful arcade game” starts players out as a small point in space on an atomic level, as they fight to keep their character alive while growing to galactic sizes in the process. The game’s title also describes its primary mechanic; “once a player has collected a certain amount of mass, they must condense it in order to grow to the next stage.” According to Lead Developer Brigham Morgan, the game “was designed to feature a unique look and feel that allows detail and complexity in its graphics while still feeling fairly simple and minimalistic.” The visuals are accompanied by a 16-song soundtrack, and the gameplay features randomized spawning for a new experience each time. Condense is “nearly done” and is scheduled to release for iOS, Android, PC, and Mac on November 20.
Hopping Horror
As Studio Bleep puts it, “This Halloween we are embracing everything that the horror-comedy genre has to offer: A little bit of blood, despair and panic!” To that gruesome end, they are developing Hopping Horror, “a mobile game that provides you with a disturbing play field together with a little bit of humor.” The story centers around the classic Houdini magic trick of pulling a rabbit in and out of a hat. Except this time, something goes wrong, and once the rabbit disappears into Houdini’s hat it is transported to a dangerous world of horrors. It’s the player’s job to guide the bunny through obstacles and hazards by using a single action: Fast-paced hopping. Unfortunately for Studio Bleep, Apple rejected their game for being “too cruel and realistically violent,” so it won’t make it out in time for Halloween. However, the team is still committed to releasing a finished product, so they plan to “re-evaluate, dot the i’s and cross the t’s” while they tweak the experience for iOS approval.
Roll Turtle
Kira Fu is a solo developer currently working on Roll Turtle, an action puzzle platform game for iOS and Android. The game, which is dedicated to Kira’s infant son, is about a father turtle who must rescue his stolen babies from a bandit rabbit before they hatch. The turtle does so by rolling through various landscapes, including jungles, deserts, and snow-covered tundra. Kira describes the game as “easy to play, but challenging,” with one-touch controls to roll the turtle left or right and an emphasis on speed and friction. Each of the 5 worlds has 3 eggs to save, as well as stars to collect. There are a total of more than 100 stages, with each world consisting of 20 stages and a boss level. Roll Turtle has already garnered some recognition in the form of the 2015 Taiwan 4C Digital Design Gold Award, on top of being selected for the 2015 Casual Connect Indie Prize Showcase and winning the 2015 Taiwan Bahamut Indie Game prize. As previously mentioned, the game is being developed for iOS and Android, with support for the Amazon Kindle and Windows Store as well. It is scheduled to release in late-2015.
That’s it for this installment of Screenshot Weekly. Be sure to come back next week to see more exclusive looks of the latest indie games in development! Let us know in the comments section what upcoming indie games you’d like to see featured in a future segment. As for any indie developers who would like to see their screenshots featured right here, feel free to send an email to IGM at [email protected] with the Subject Line: “Screenshot Weekly.” Or, if you’d like to be part of our Magazine’s Screenshot Monthly segment, include that in the email as well!
