Welcome back to another Ask Gamedev Community Member Game Showcase.
With this installment, we are bringing to you 10 more amazing games created by members
of our community.
We hope these games can provide some inspiration for your personal gamedev journey as they
illustrate what is possible for passionate indie developers.
The Community Member Showcase is a friendly competition that any member of the Ask Gamedev
Discord Server can participate in.
For 2021 we’re doing a seasonal format, so this is the Spring Showcase.
For info on how to submit your game, join Ask Gamedev on Discord and keep an eye out
on the announcements channel where every quarter our team will post instructions on how to
submit your game..
We want to thank the community for being so active - thank you again to everyone who submitted
their titles, and to all of those who voted on the games to find this month’s favourite.
We were amazed at the variety and high-quality level of all of the submitted games.
Picking only 10 to show was not an easy task.
If your game was not selected, remember you can always participate in the next showcase!
Now, let's get to the games!
We are Ask Gamedev and this is the 2021 Ask Gamedev Community Member Game Spring Showcase!
Welcome back!
We make videos on how to elevate your game development and inspire others.
If after watching this video you want to continue the gamedev conversation, check the video
description for a link to our Discord server.
We are now making fresh Ask Gamedev content on all of the major social networks, so be
sure to check us out there too.
Let's kick off our list with our Spring Champion, Tiny Thor!
Congratulations on being voted #1 by the Ask Gamedev Discord Community!
Tiny Thor is a 16-bit retro-inspired platformer developed and published by the indie studio
Asylum Square.
The game features a child version of Thor (Norse God of Thunder) wielding his legendary
weapon Mjölnir throughout a vast number of worlds filled with destructible content, daring
enemies, and light puzzle elements.
Thor can use his hammer to smash through levels thanks to its unique, bouncy hammer-throwing
action mechanic.
With a straightforward "When it's Done" status as its release date on Steam, the team at
Asylum Square are taking their time to build their dream retro game.
This dream was first conceived back in 2012 by Asylum Square's Lead Developer Joe Manaco
during a 48-hour game jam.
His inspiration came from video games that he grew up playing, like The Adventures of
Lomax.
This inspiration pushed him to email Henk Nieborg, one of Lomax's co-creators, and ask
to collaborate on a game.
Henk really took a liking to Tiny Thor and became the lead artist and animator for the
game.
Tiny Thor will be available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
In the meantime, you can wishlist the game on Steam and follow Asylum Square's Youtube
Channel for video updates on their development.
Check the description below for links!
Congrats again to the team at Asylum Square!
Now here are the runners up in no particular order:
Next on the list we have Fashion Police Squad by Mopeful Games.
As the title suggests, Fashion Police Squad is a hilarious and exhilarating 2D over 3D
FPS game about fighting fashion crime using attire-enhancing weaponry.
Play through the eyes of Sergeant Des, a Fashion Agent capable of Sewing, Saturating, Whipping,
and Blasting away fashion perpetrators.
Mopeful Games, developers of Fashion Police Squad (F.P.S.), is a team of 3 close friends
based in Helsinki, Finland.
Right now the title is still in development and the release date for the game is yet to
be announced.
That said, they have managed to create something very unique already and are starting to push
a lot of swaggy and stylish updates and content on their social media... just as Sergeant
Des would want it.
UK-based gaming news website 3 Bit has already dubbed Fashion Police Squad as "Duke Nukem,
but with much more sass."
We'll be sure to put links in the description of this video so you can follow their development
updates on Twitter, and wishlist their game on Steam.
Next up on our top-voted games is Festival Tycoon, a solo developed game by Johannes
Gäbler.
Festival Tycoon is a simulation game with real-time strategy elements that revolves
around building and managing a music festival.
With its blocky low-poly isometric design, the game features a minimalistic and modern
user interface and establishes a well-defined cycle between building the festival and managing
the live event.
In the building phase, you can place objects, book bands, fund your event, hire staff, sell
tickets, do marketing, and even buy insurance.
During the live event phase, you can manage your staff, make sure everyone is having a
blast, and enjoy the festival you created.
Johannes started to develop Festival Tycoon as a side project in early 2019.
By the end of that year, he won the SUBOTRON Pro Games Live Pitch, which awarded him funds
to start allocating more time to the game's development.
In 2020 Festival tycoon was selected to be part of the NRW GREEN Virtual Indie Expo 2020
and got funded by the Vienna Business Agency.
This led Johannes to seek additional help in art and music, and commit himself fully
to the task of developing his way to an Early Access release in 2021.
He is co-publishing the game on Steam with Future Friends Games, a marketing and PR company
responsible for co-publishing games like Omno (which was featured in our video about the
best Solo Developed games of 2020) and Exo One, a game that is making quite a noise in
the indie game community lately.
You can wishlist Festival Tycoon on Steam now.
The future of gaming is at the grasp of your fingers, literally, with the fourth title
on our Spring Showcase: Ziggy's Cosmic Adventures.
Developed by Stardust Collective, a brand new game development team, this VR-only title
delves into a mixture of comedy, action, and beauty that only outer space can bring.
Navigate through vast and treacherous space-scapes, face your enemy in intense arcade combat,
and balance your time to manage all of your ship's systems in a ridiculously dorky set
of panels, switches, buttons, miniature squishy aliens, and more.
In a video about the development of Ziggy's Cosmic Adventures, Alex Clarke, one of the
gameplay programmers at Stardust Collective, tells how the team was born at the same time
the game's idea was conceived - during GMTK Game Jam 2020.
They didn't know each other previous to the game jam.
They all met in GMTK's Discord in a section dedicated to people who want to find teammates.
The game came out at number 54 out of more than four thousand games, and this position
was enough to encourage the team to transcend the game jam and fully develop their idea.
Since then Upload Vr has called the game a brilliantly immersive and silly space sim
adventure, and Unreal has shared a stunning pic of the game as one of their featured Screenshot
Saturday Games.
Right now, the game is set to release in Fall 2021 and you can wishlist it on Steam.
What happens when a young and talented electronic music producer also develops games?
Well, Duamo is what happens.
Hailing all the way from Saint-Petersburg, Russia, solo developer Makscee gave life to
this minimalistic neon puzzle game.
Perhaps the most important part of this game is the relaxing and hypnotic atmosphere created
by top-notch sound design.
Let's listen to some seconds of its gameplay…
Inspired by the figures, colors, and musicality of Tetris, Duamo is a perfect showcase for
the skills and capabilities of its developer.
Makscee has been uploading games to itch.io since 2018.
In February 2021 he released a demo of Duamo featuring the core gameplay loop.
One month later he released the game, complete with all its sound and that neon atmosphere
that makes it so vibrant.
By April, he released yet another game: Abstract Fish Colony Sim which he developed for the
Syberian Game Jam 2021.
While Duamo appears to be in a very early stage, it already looks very compelling.
You can download version 0.1 from itch.io.
We'll leave a link to it in the description.
At number 6 on our list, we've got Jupiter Moons: Mecha by RockAndBushes.
Jupiter Moons: Mecha is a roguelike card-battler set in, you guessed it, Jupiter's Moons - and
features, you guessed it again, awesome Mech battles.
Take the seat of a Mech Bounty Hunter and explore a futuristic plot where corruption,
megacorps, and pirates have spread across the whole solar system.
Fight your way through an infinite number of procedurally generated adventures, build
your skills, and perfect your deck to become the most powerful Mech Pilot in Jupiter.
Jupiter Moons: Mecha is scheduled to come out on Steam before the next Jovian year.
As a Jovian year is equivalent to about 12 earth-years, we take this as RockAndBushes
is taking their time to deliver a well-polished Mech Gem.
Next up we have a project combining a basketball, a hoop, a grappling hook, parkour, robots,
explosions, cyberpunk elements, and random props like airplanes, buses, and used tires...
If you think this is mad, you should check our Grapple Hoops' Steam tags.
Grapple Hoops is a fast-paced action platformer where your final mission is to dunk your ball
in the hoop at the end of each level.
To get there, you'll have to improvise throughout the level doing crazy stunts and dealing with
all the robots that come your way.
Earlier this year in January 2021 Andreas Georgiou released an alpha build of Grapple
Hoops.
In the time since, not only has the game gathered more than 8,000 views on YouTube and 1,000
followers on Twitter but Destructoid has already called it "the unholy union of Bionic Commando
and NBA Jam" while PC Gamer has called it "the Titanfall basketball game I didn't know
I needed".
The game is set to release in 2021 and you can download the demo on Itch.io, Gamejolt,
or Steam.
If you want to get a notification once it's released, don't forget to wishlist Grapple
Hoops on Steam right now.
The 8th title in our Spring Showcase is Drova - Forsaken Kin by Just2D, an indie team of
developers based in Germany.
Drova is an action-adventure RPG set in the fantasy land of Draheim, where you can explore
a foggy and dim-lighted land filled with intriguing secrets to uncover.
All the art in the game is being beautifully crafted, along with its music and programming,
by a team of seven developers.
On their Twitter account, Just2D announces they are currently looking for a publisher
and they are constantly pushing posts about their development updates.
In December 2020 they released a prototype of the game through itch.io which you can
get under a "name your own price" model.
The prototype is meant to help the team shape and polish their development, and so far it
is getting amazing feedback from its followers.
You can wishlist Drova - Forsaken Kin on Steam, where it is expected to release in 2023.
You can also join Just2D's discord server to chat with the team and others interested
in the game.
We'll leave links on this video's description.
Next, we have Path of Kami Prologue, a beautiful story-driven exploration puzzle game about
a recently deceased wolf named Kazeyo.
Help Kazeyo progress through the trials of the mortal world as you explore a hand-painted
watercolor-esque world based on Japanese history and mythology.
Path of Kami Prologue is the debut game of CaptiLight Studio, and it's just a prototype
of the full Path of Kami game that they are aiming to produce.
In order to fully develop the game, CaptiLight Studio is currently crowd-funding through
ifundwomen.com.
Deana Galbraith, founder and creative director at CaptiLight Studios, has high hopes for
the project and wants to encourage more women to enter the game development industry.
The game's release date is yet to be established.
Right now, you can wishlist Path of Kami Prologue on Steam and you can also download a Demo
from itch.io and Gamejolt.
Last but definitely not least, Based in Vancouver, Canada, and created by solo developer Sergio
Garces, the tenth game of the Ask Gamedev Community Member Game Spring Showcase is Mech
Armada.
Mech Armada is a post-apocalyptic turn-based strategy roguelike game in which you command
a team of Mechs to fight through hordes of demonic creatures who are set on eradicating
humanity.
Put together Mechs with more than 70 available parts, fight in ever-changing scenarios with
procedurally generated content, and face epic bosses.
And... if you die, you'll start all over again!
Sergio Garces is the sole developer at Lioncode Games.
After working for over 20 years as a game developer on bigger teams, he decided to go
solo in February 2020... just one month before the global pandemic!
Since then Sergio has gone all-in on Mech Armada.
He has done all the code and design in Unreal Engine 4 and has sought out contractors and
freelancers for his art and music.
As of this writing, Mech Armada is set to release in Summer 2021 and you can add it
to your Steam's wishlist to be notified the moment it's released.
You can also join Lioncode Games' Discord server to chat with the dev and join the community.
Thanks for watching!
For more Ask Gamedev check out this playlist of Ask Gamedev Community Game Showcases, or
this video of 100 gamedev tips from the community