The game is non-linear, with the basic idea being to find the boss characters - the king or queen of the species - and then grab their egg to begin a process of shape-shifting, meeting unusual characters along the way. He adds that he decided upon a strange planet, where creatures would be found and transformed. “It’s obviously a very different form of shape-shifting, it’s a lot less wholesome, but I was trying to think of a way to incorporate it,” says the developer, who began creating games during childhood.
![rayman legends steam icon rayman legends steam icon](https://steam.cryotank.net/wp-content/gallery/raymanlegends/Rayman-Legends-01-HD.png)
Sheepo developer Kyle Thompson explains to THR that the idea for his game, an exploratory, shape-shifting platformer billed as a “pacifist metroidvania,” came about after he watched The Thing. Metroidvania Platformer Sheepo Lands on Steam Spiritfarer is available on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Steam and PS4.
![rayman legends steam icon rayman legends steam icon](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/original/mig/5/4/4/9/2285449-rayman_splinter_17206_screen.jpg)
“To me, I always felt that games had to strive to do something different and to mean something, and to matter.” “The game is actually sad only in very specific moments where we have to let someone go.”Īs far as Guérin’s own game tastes, he easily moves between praising Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto as a title that has a point, that says something and makes a statement as a parody of Western civilization, to the first game from Thunder Lotus, Jotun, a 2D hand-drawn game told in Old Norse. He goes on to say that there is a lot of humor and fun to be had. “We wanted to put a bit of ourselves in the game, and many of the characters are inspired by team members relatives who passed away, or friends,” continues Guérin. While the characters were narrative archetypes at first, they morphed into being real people with real anecdotes as the development progressed. “All these things converged for me to create that database of stories and feelings,” says Guérin, who thought about how people consider their own demise or how they react to the passing of others. “We wanted to talk about a difficult subject matter in a much more comforting way,” he adds, explaining that death is so common, yet so naturally considered in many games that include more jarring representations of one’s life ending, such as a man being stabbed, even though he has a family or is guarding something that other characters want.Īt the beginning of the project, Guérin spent time in end-of-life care facilities - his brother in France is head of a geriatric ward in a hospital - for research, while tapping into the emotions felt after his own grandmother passed away in 2018 at age 97. “Care was a central theme pretty soon in the game,” Guérin tells The Hollywood Reporter. Initially, Guérin says, the pitch for Spiritfarer related to Charon, the ferryman of the dead in Greek mythology, and Studio Ghibli’s 1988 animated fantasy film My Neighbor Totoro. As the story took shape, it became about a character having to find a group of spirits to nurture.
![rayman legends steam icon rayman legends steam icon](https://img.youtube.com/vi/ZeIvL14VQbo/0.jpg)
Guérin joined Thunder Lotus in 2017 after working at Ubisoft on the Assassin’s Creed franchise for many years. Until then, let’s get into some games that can be experienced now.īuild a Magnificent Ship and Care for Your Friends in SpiritfarerĪs briefly noted in the last Indie Gamer column (when it appeared at Indie World), Spiritfarer is described by its Canadian developer, Thunder Lotus Games, as “a cozy management game about dying.” Creative director Nicolas Guérin is here to explain how that heavy and heady description came to be paired with a relaxing and aesthetically pleasing video game about a ferrymaster who builds a seafaring ship and becomes a guardian-type figure for a group of spirits. 12-20 and includes the Indie Showcase.įrom developers around the world, 20 games (of 350 titles perused on Steam) will be highlighted in genres including metroidvania, dating sim, action-adventure, horror, RPG, sports brawler, beat-’em-up, dungeon crawler, puzzle and more. But September welcomes PAX Online (the digital iteration of annual video game conference PAX West), which runs from Sept. It might seem difficult to top the month of August, which had the Game Developer’s Conference, Playcrafting’s Play NYC event and Gamescom in addition to the Indie World showcase and a slew of indie releases. The Independent Gamer is a curated roundup of news from indie gaming, landing here every other Friday.