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Tandem Events, organisers of Develop:Brighton 2019, have announced the ten finalists in this year’s Indie Showcase competition. The games will be showcased at the event next month.
There are two prizes up for grabs; an Overall Winner – which will be decided by a panel of judges – and a People’s Choice award, which will be nominated by attendees. The winner(s), will be announced on the final day of Develop:Brighton while the full top ten finalists will have their games showcased to media, fellow developers, and potential publishers who attend the conference, as well as receive a three-day pass to Develop:Brighton, pre-event publicity, and a profile on the Develop:Brighton website.
The shortlisted games for the Overall Winner are as follows:
Cadence by Made With Monster Love (PC): Cadence is a zen music sandbox game. Starting with minimalist puzzles, the experience builds slowly into a safe space for people to understand and explore their own creativity.
Gladiabots by GFX47 (PC, Android): In Gladiabots, players carefully construct the AI of their robot squad and send them into the battle arena, iterating, improving and repeating until they outsmart all their opponents across 3 distinct game modes in either the single player campaign, freeplay or in online multiplayer.
Heaven’s Vault by inkle (PC, PS4): Heaven’s Vault is an archaeological narrative adventure with an entire hieroglyphic language to decipher. Players take on the role of Aliya Elasra, who sails the rivers of space with her robot assistant Six, attempting to solve the mysteries of the Nebula’s forgotten 5,000 year history.
Oddman by Set Snail (iOS): Oddman is a fast-paced fighting game with simple swipe controls for mobile and tablet. You fight against funny looking creatures and push them into piranha infested waters without falling in yourself. With a king of the hill-inspired gameplay the game offers non-stop action and intense boss battles.
Pacer by R8 Games (PC, PS4, Xbox One): Pacer is a pulse-raising future generation anti-gravity racer that mixes high octane speed with fully-customisable craft, allowing players to tweak until they’ve outfitted the perfect winning killing machine to complement their skills.
The Procession to Calvary by Joe Richardson (PC): The Procession to Calvary is a Pythonesque adventure game made from Renaissance paintings, and a spiritual successor to the critically acclaimed Four Last Things.
Sea Salt by YCJY Games AB (PC): Sea Salt is a narrative action game with a bit of real-time strategy elements. You control a personalised troop of monsters sent by an Old God, Dagon, to punish humans for not sacrificing what was asked.
Smith and Winston by Execution Unit (PC, PS4, Switch): When a strange signal is detected in deep space the Federation orders Smith and Winston to go and investigate. What they find, after a brief nap, is a shattered ring world, aliens and an evil overlord called the VOID.
Space Race by Nosebleed Interactive (PC, Switch, PS4, Xbox One): Space Race is a loot grind RPG where you race beautiful retro-futuristic vehicles, wreck opponents and upgrade really cool sci-fi abilities rather than crawling dungeons. It’s a CARPG; a 3D racing game that takes its inspiration from some unlikely sources.
Touch Type Tale – Strategic Typing by Pumpernickel Studio (PC): With barbarians at the gates and an empty throne to claim, an unlikely hero emerges to save the kingdom by typing!? Touch Type Tale is a real-time strategy game featuring a story rich campaign and online competitive play, all controlled by typing.
Develop:Brighton is a three-day conference and expo running from Tuesday 9th to Thursday 11th July, 2019, at the Hilton Brighton Metropole, and the accompanying Develop:Star Awards will take place on July 10th. The expo is attended by more than 2300 members of the game development community and will play host to more than 100 speakers giving talks and roundtable discussions – for more, check out the conference schedule here.
“We had a fantastic selection of games this year, and competition for the ten places was extremely close!” said developer Alistair Aitcheson, who chaired the judging panel. “The level of variety and imagination was delightful and it was a privilege to be able to try out so many great games.
“We saw technically outstanding work, beautiful art styles, enchanting and witty writing, and some really challenging concepts. On behalf of all the judges, congratulations to the finalists – I’m so excited to see you there at the exhibition – and thank you so much to everyone who entered!”
Keynote speakers include Frontier Developments’ CEO David Braben who will be discussing the 25-year history of Frontier Developments. Also confirmed are Siobhan Reddy, David Smith, Kareem Ettouney, Alex Evans and Mark Healey from Media Molecule who will discuss the development of Dreams.
Hello Games’ Sean Murray and Rebellion founders Jason and Chris Kingsley who will also be presenting at the event; the latter will be presenting “Rebellion: The Path to Independence” on the final day of the conference on Thursday, July 11th, while Murray’s keynote – entitled ‘To Infinity and Beyond’ – will offer a “candid” behind-the-scenes look at how No Man’s Sky was “made, released and transformed” in a fireside chat hosted by Edge editor, Nathan Brown on the morning of July 9th, 2019.
