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The best of the rest of the indie games at the GDC Big Indie Pitch

The 14 that didn't make it

The best of the rest of the indie games at the GDC Big Indie Pitch
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We've already revealed the winner of the latest Big Indie Pitch in San Francisco - innovative gyroscope-driven dancing game Bounden - but there were several other outstanding games on display that afternoon.

Here are some of the best, including the games that came second and third.

Bullet Boy (second place)
By Pomelo Games - iOS/Android - by August - price undecided

The first runner-up was Bullet Boy, a polished platformer from Uruguayan studio Pomelo Games.

If you've ever played the barrel cannon stages in Donkey Kong Country, you know what it entails - you are a projectile whose only means of getting around is to be fired from a cannon, so you have to time your shots to go from cannon to cannon and reach the end of each stage.

There was only a short gameplay demonstration at the pitch, but it looked extremely promising, and we expect it to make a modernist splash when it arrives 'before August'.

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Wizard Golf (third place)
By Floor 27 Industries - iOS/Android - May/June - freemium

A firm favourite of the occasionally sensible Touch Arcade contingent, Wizard Golf is the product of the following insight by US developer Floor 27 Industries: golf is essentially a turn-based RPG in funny trousers.

It's a likeable and ingenious concept, which in practice involves trying to get a pixelart ball into a hole in as few shots as possible while also avoiding hazards and attempting to collect gems to make spells.

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We of the Woods
By Blunt Instrument Studios - iPad/Android tablets - mid to late 2014 - premium

Described loosely by developer Blunt Instrument as a cross between Don't Starve and Proteus, We of the Woods is a beautiful roguelike in which you simply hang around in a forest, inhabiting a series of animals and trying not to die.

As with any experimental arthouse game there were question marks over how much fun it would ultimately turn out to be, but if you like either of the influences cited then we expect you may like this.

Puppet Punch
By Mech Mocha Games - iOS/Android - mid-April - freemium

Puppet Punch sees you playing as a little boy who has somehow contrived to get his head lodged in the stage of a puppet theatre and is doing what any boy would do in that situation: punching all of the puppets.

It's a casual high score-chaser with shades of Crabitron, since you have to manipulate the little boy's fists directly and independently with your fingers. Sometimes you also get to slingshot stuff from a magical hat.

Puppet Punch's gameplay is original and pretty fun, but its principle selling point is its aesthetically diverse blend of cultural influences, with puppets from India and Europe lining up to get their faces smacked right in.

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Cellular
By Tribal City Interactive - iOS/Android/Windows Phone - summer 2014 - freemium

I wasn't overly keen on this one, but it played well with many of the judges and I suspect it will play well with many of you. The gameplay simply entails snaking about the screen as a string of abstract shapes collecting other little abstract shapes and avoiding enemies.

You move automatically, circling around to the right. Holding a finger down on the screen makes you pull to the left instead, and that's how you steer. It all looks very polished and stylish, and has all the hallmarks of a minimalist indie game of the week.

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Dark Dot
By Inzen Studio - iOS - summer 2014 - freemium

As soon as you pick up Dark Dot you wonder how you've never seen the concept before. And then you'll realise that you have, when the game was first released in 2011. It was subsequently pulled from the App Store, and now it's coming back.

You play as a top-down squad of automatically firing blobs as they blast their way up the screen. Instead of losing health you lose one of your blobs every time the squad is hit.

To keep your blobs out of harm's way or concentrate their firing power on a single point you can draw a line around them to arrange them into a matching formation, and then rotate the formation using two fingers.

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Prestige
By Loqheart - iOS - don't know - freemium

Developer Loqheart describes Prestige as 'Harry Potter meets The Sims, which is enough to make players of a certain kind (nerds) salivate. Thankfully, it looks fun enough to appeal to non-nerds as well.

You play as the invisible hand governing a wizard school, researching spells and sending wizards out to have fights to earn XP in order to improve the academy and ultimately graduate. It's still relatively early in development, but Loqheart seemed pretty on the ball and I suspect this one will do well.

We've actually seen it before at a Big Indie Pitch, and we made a video. Here.

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Breakout Blurg
By Dime Studios - Facebook/iOS/Android - May - freemium

The version of Breakout Blurg that we saw seemed fairly early (despite its imminent launch), but it has potential as an endless-runner in the vein of Jetpack Joyride.

You play as an alien cheerfully rampaging through what looks like a government facility, jumping, slamming, and going ablaze to maintain your momentum and kill puny humans.

Yes, you're sick of endless-runners. And yes, the three available moves won't keep you interested for long. But if developer Dime Studios adds more variety then Breakout Blurg could be worthy addition to an admittedly overfull genre.

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Chronology
By Osao - iOS/Windows Phone - 2014 - premium

Chronology is a cartoon platformer in which you play as a snail and an old man.

It's a bit like Lost Vikings, in that you swap between characters to solve switch puzzles, but it differs in that the snail can stop time, which lets you solve slightly different kinds of puzzles. You can also jump between time periods.

It's a solid-looking enterprise with an interesting concept, so we expect it to make a splash.

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Jungle Rumble
By Disco Pixel - iOS/Android - April - premium

I'll be honest: I still don't entirely understand Jungle Rumble.

Developer Disco Pixel describes it as a 'rhythm-RTS', which I suppose puts it in Patapon territory. The gameplay involves rhythmically tapping points on the screen according to a 'rhythmic grammar', with the ultimate aim of (I think) arranging monkeys into deadly gangs.

The only thing I know for sure is that it looks promising. Probably. I think.

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Zombie Commando
By Pixel Nuts Games - iPad - May - paymium

Zombie Command involves tapping on the screen to lead around a crowd of heroes, who automatically fire on the 30 types of monster.

There are several different mission types, and the game has five different chapters and charming pixelart graphics.

That's all we know for now, but it's enough.

Ninja Time Pirates
By HappyGiant - iOS/Android - late March - freemium

Ninja Time Pirates is a similar proposition, but with shiny polygons in place of pixelart, incredibly slick and professional presentation, a tongue-in-cheek time-travelling plot, and smaller squads.

The only thing going against it is the fact that developer HappyGiant last came to our attention when it released the atrocious Usagi Yojimbo: Way of the Ronin.

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Skullduggery
By ClutchPlay Games - iOS/Android - autumn - premium

Skullduggery is a highly polished casual game in which you have to fling a skull around the underworld so that it can collect taxes for the Infernal Revenue Service.

It's an immensely slick and stylish effort, bulging with humour and mildly puzzly physics-based fun. Of course, this description applies to a lot of games, but ClutchPlay has demonstrated that it can deliver the goods with the well-reviewed Little Chomp, so you can expect good things.

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Pixel Powers (working title)
By LambdaMu Games - iOS - autumn - freemium

If you are a human who owns a phone you probably know something about Pixel People, a massive freemium casual game that pulled off the rare feat of appealing to gamers across the casual-hardcore spectrum.

Well this is the follow-up, and it's likely to be huge. This time around the focus is less on discovering people and more on managing cities, primarily by dealing with disasters using a stable of superheroes.

Rob Hearn
Rob Hearn
Having obtained a distinguished education, Rob became Steel Media's managing editor, now he's no longer here though.