A month after the flurry of events surrounding E3 week back in June, indie publisher Annapurna Interactive put on a gaming showcase of its own. The company's debut presentation was filled with fun game announcements, release date reveals, and a few surprises.
We were excited to see more of several Annapurna titles going into the show and we were not disappointed. Stray, Solar Ash, The Artful Escape, and Neon White, among others, all took the spotlight today with fresh trailers and exciting news to share. The show even revealed a handful of new indie projects and we may have to update our list of indie games to watch.
If you missed the Annapurna Interactive Showcase, don't worry. We have rounded up all the exciting games and announcements from the show for you.
Kicking off Annapurna’s presentation with a bang was The Artful Escape. It’s been a long journey for Beethoven and Dinosaur’s rock adventure, but The Artful Escape finally has a release date and an impressive, star-filled, cast. Some of the actors lending their voices to the title include Lena Headey, Jason Schwartzman, Mark Strong, and Carl Weathers. The Artful Escape jams out on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox Game Pass, and PC on Sept 9.
The creator behind Donut County, Ben Esposito, decided to shake things up for Neon White. Instead of raccoons, you’ll find demon assassins taking the stage in this first-person shooter with card mechanics. The main character, White, has days to clear all the other demons from Heaven. If he is successful, he might just get to stay up in the clouds. The new trailer in today’s presentation showed off the game’s gunplay and relationship system.
Reality and reveries blend together in A Memoir Blue, a new, aquatically-inspired game by Cloisters Interactive. The reveal trailer features a series of recollections that play out in front of Miriam, a champion swimmer. Her childhood memories of one special day with her mother manifest in the game as wonderful, hand-drawn art. These memories blur the line between the character’s thoughts and the world around her.
One of the most unique announcements of the presentation, Storyteller challenges its players to create literary masterpieces. This puzzle game will start you off with primary figures of the story, a fitting place for the action, and important themes. It is your task to successfully weave all these elements together.
Solar Ash is coming out on October 26 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and PC. The cherry-on-top date reveal came after an epic trailer showcasing the game’s stunning landscape, intimidating monsters, and speedy traversal. As the second project from the developers behind Hyper Light Drifter, we have some big expectations for this game and Solar Ash’s launch is only months away.
Some exciting things are coming down the pipe from developer Jessica Mak (Everyday Shooter and Sound Shapes), the creators at No Code (Observation) and Outerloop Games (Falcon Age), and brand-new studio Ivy Road lead by Davey Wreden and Karla Zimonja. We don’t get to know what the projects are just yet, but you may want to bookmark these names for the future.
The Annapurna Interactive Showcase gave us a look at Skin Deep’s personality-filled gameplay. In Skin Deep, you play as an insurance agent, the kind of insurance agent that shoots guns and hunts space pirates. Stuck aboard a starship filling up with hostile invaders, it is your job to ensure the insurance corporations’ valuables are protected.
Heads up, Gorogoa and Telling Lies are coming to Xbox Game Pass some time in the near future. The Pathless’ Steam release is on November 16, and What Remains of Edith Finch is heading to the App store on August 16. Last but not least, I Am Dead launches on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox on August 9, just a few weeks away.
Stray is set to launch early next year and the team’s personalized tour through the game’s worn streets will give us plenty to think about in the meantime. BlueTwelve Studio confirmed you will be taking control of the titular stray cat, before offering up a few more hints about the story and gameplay. We don’t know what happened to the humans in Stray’s setting, but we do know that a helpful drone will join you on your quest to escape the city and rejoin your feline family.
The final surprise of Annapurna Interactive’s presentation turned out to be an Outer Wilds DLC. Called Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye, the game’s first and only expansion, will be ready for lift-off on September 28. Today’s minute-long trailer sets a creepy mood but doesn’t reveal much about what to expect. The DLC is just around the corner, so hopefully, we see more it Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye before launch.
Ben Esposito is not making Neon White for everyone – in fact, even though he admits it's probably not the best marketing move, he says he's trying to make a cult game. He wants Neon White to find players that love it the way he loves the cult games that influenced him, like God Hand, Danganronpa, and El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron.
Put another way, as Esposito said in the game's most recent trailer, Neon White is a game made for "freaks."
On Thursday, during the Annapurna Interactive Showcase, Neon White made its latest showing after being announced back in February. But this time we have a better idea of the game itself; how it's played and a bit of the story. You can see its latest trailer below:
Click here to watch embedded mediaThe game centers around the aptly named White, an assassin from Hell fighting demons in an attempt for a new life in Heaven. While on the surface the gameplay looks like an anime-inspired Quake or other similar first-person shooter jump map homage, Neon White's hook and complexity come from its card system and how it affects combat.
In Neon White, cards are weapons or guns. Depending on what card you have, that's what gun you're using; if you have the pistol card, you're shooting a pistol, and so on. "However, before it's been used up of all its weapon magic, let's say – this is so silly," Esposito admits, laughing. "Before it's used up all its weapon magic, I can at any time choose to discard it actively, which will get rid of the card but instantly I'll be able to do a movement ability. So like the pistol, for instance, lets me kind of do a double jump in the air. The rifle lets me dash forward and kill anything in my path. And so on and so forth. So it's kind of like you're always making that choice, like, 'Do I want this gun? Or is it better for me to move faster here?'"
There's an emphasis on speedrunning in Neon White, and players are encouraged to fight for the best times on the game's global leaderboard. The result, at least judging by the trailer, is a tense game of juggling priorities and quick thinking as you jump around each level blasting enemies. Admittedly, it looks a bit too intense for standard controls and more suited for a keyboard and mouse setup. It'll be interesting to see how and if it works better on one versus the other when the game is released.
Most people likely caught wind of Esposito from his previous project, Donut County – a cute, relaxing game about a mischievous raccoon. Visually, Neon White stands in stark contrast, borrowing amply from anime (Esposito cites Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, and Black Lagoon, specifically) but also Japanese games we just don't see as much of anymore – smaller, weirder, and more experimental titles. Shinji Mikami's work in the 2000s, like the aforementioned God Hand and his sci-fi shooter Vanquish, is a big inspiration, Esposito says. He also cites games by Goichi "Suda51" Suda, such as Killer7 and No More Heroes. Neon White’s life-sim aspects pull from the Persona and Danganronpa series, as well as Fire Emblem: Three Houses. All of this is on top of hero shooter elements informed by games such as Team Fortress 2.
It's an interesting, albeit bizarre at times, hodgepodge of different influences all coming together in a game that looks visually distinct from other games in 2021, while also feeling and sounding nostalgic for fans of Japan's early-to-mid 2000s video game output. And, of course, that's the point. Neon White looks like a game made for that specific audience, even if it's not the biggest in the world.
"Yeah, so I don't know if everyone else involved likes to hear that I want to make a cult game, because financially making a cult game isn't a great idea," Esposito says, laughing. "But I will say, the way I love those games is pretty unique, I think, to games in general. Like, I don't love really perfect games the way I love a weird kind of broken cult game. And what I wanted to do with Neon White was make it so this game is not trying to be for everyone. It's trying to be a game for really specific people. And if it does hit correctly, for those people, it will be their favorite game. That's really what I'm trying to do."
Neon White is set to be released sometime this winter for Switch and PC.
Daniel Benmergui of Ludomancy is an Argentinian independent game designer that I've respected for a long time because his approach to creation is so unique and explosive in its intent. He has been behind some incredible thought-provoking games like Today I Die and I Wish I Were the Moon, and with today's Annapurna Showcase, he showed off Storyteller, a game that made its first debut back in 2008 but is now ready to be shared with the world.
Storyteller is a creative spin on the puzzle genre where players have the complete freedom to tell a story of their choosing. Whether it be a comedy or a heartbreaking tragedy, players are given a toolbox filled with characters, settings, and emotions to craft a narrative that can inspire love, revenge, and resonate with the deeper depths of our emotions. Twist a supernatural tale, if that's your fancy, or go the more Shakespearean route; the choice is yours.
Sitting down with Benmergui, he opens up to us about the more vulnerable side of being a game developer, especially with a tale such as this. There's a lot of himself in this game and with so many years building up towards its release, he admits that the thought of launch day scares him a little. "In the case of [Storyteller], it was very ambitious," he says. "Why don't you make a game about people making stories? It's very difficult to relate it to other things we've done."
Click here to watch embedded mediaWith the game having been revealed years ago, the buildup towards launch is a double-edged sword. It's exciting, but it has also opened up a few fears regarding the public's reaction, doubly so with him putting so much of himself into the story, creatively speaking. "One of my fears is you," he says. "Was it worth the wait? I don't know, because most people are going to go into the story never having seen a game like this before. So I don't know what's going to happen, and yeah. That scares me."
He also opens up that it's difficult to not put yourself into the things you create as a creator and that the difference between being a AAA dev versus an independent developer gives more edge to that innate fear. "I come from a AAA background and then, if we ship something and people react badly, we can just push that blame up to the top. As an independent creator, that blame falls on me. It's about being extra exposed, you're going to be judged on everything. As an independent creator, you're going t be judged on everything. You have more freedom, yes, but that in itself is also kind of scary, it's like a freefall. I had a team that supported me, but what if that doesn't come across?"
The vulnerability expressed adds to the emotional depth of the upcoming game. It's personal, it's rooted in majesty and realism in equal measure. It's honest. Storyteller is about telling your own story. We've all had our moments of triumph. Of love and loss. Of fear and victory. Of doubt and contentment. Storyteller allows players to control the narrative, to put themselves into the story much like the dev team did. With the amount of care and passion this team has, including Benmergui himself, I have no doubt that Storyteller will continue on the studio's excellent track record of incredible tales.