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Chicago Indie Video Game Developers and Games That You Should Check Out
 
I love Chicago and I love indie games so I want a place to talk about them. I plan to use this as an ongoing thread to talk about various projects people that I may or may not know are involved in that are either upcoming or already released. Also, you can check out Indie City Games and IGDA Chicago for more information on the Chicago indie video game development scene.

Obviously one game everyone should know about by now is our very own Dapper Dave's Boot Hill Heroes, which you can go help Greenlight on Steam. A single player / local co-op Western (as in, taking place in the wild wild West) RPG with an SNES-flair and a Jake Kaufman soundtrack, of course it is going to be excellent.

Releasing on PC and Vita erm... soon?



URL to share (right click and copy)
01/30/14, 01:16    Edited: 04/23/14, 05:16
 
   
 
I was introduced to an interesting game by Chicago's The Men Who Wear Many Hats today. If you liked Papers, Please, it's very worth checking out. It's kind of a similar concept only instead of checking for people's papers, you're checking the app store to see what apps you can get pulled down based on an ever-increasing-in-complexity set of trademark rules that your company wants you to help them enforce.

It's called Intern Saga: Trademark Lawyer and you can play it right here on Google Play.

Obviously inspired by the whole Candy Crush nonsense.

Also it was "banned" by the Apple app store. Not actually banned, more like rejected outright because of the content involved. Basically because it rips on the broken Apple app store system, among other things.
05/11/14, 07:40   
Congrats to our very own Dapper Dave for getting his Boot Hill Heroes Green Lit in the latest batch. Coming to Steam soon!

Now all of you Steam Nuts will have no excuse if you ignore his game!
06/27/14, 21:28   
A musician turned developer friend of mine is launching his game Pivvot on Steam today, which is a "strategic avoidance" game in the vein of stuff like Super Hexagon. The iOS version got pretty good reviews and the Steam version is essentially the same game with new enhancements like local co-op, etc. And he did the soundtrack himself, which is pretty sweet.

Also it has leaderboards, including friend leaderboards, and I was in the beta and pretty high up on the leaderboards, so you can try to beat my times / scores!

Check it out!

07/14/14, 21:08   
@Zero

That looks really cool.
07/14/14, 23:15   
Dawn of the Plow is on sale for 99 cents right now until August 6th. Made by a great Chicago guy Dan Fitzgerald. On iOS, Android, and desktop PC...

08/01/14, 08:32   
Edited: 08/01/14, 08:32
Can't go wrong for just a dollar. Bought!

(Pssst. Get it on itch.io so he gets a bigger cut of the profits.)

08/01/14, 08:50   
I'm not sure if they count as Chicago anymore since they ditched us to move to Dallas and hang out with Kris Wright (shut up everywhere in Texas is the same place) but ex-Chicago developer Ragtag Studio now have a Kickstarter up for their game Ray's the Dead, which I have definitely played and enjoyed. It's an interesting game, tough to explain... a bit of Pikmin, some stealth, some action. Nice mix.

Some Jake Kaufman music tracks. (What DOESN'T he work on?!)


Planned for PC, Mac, Linux, and PS4.
08/20/14, 03:16   
It does look a little bit like a zombie Pikmin but not entirely. Interesting so far and the music is actually really top notch. 80s nods for sure and that Graveyard Theme is no doubt a nod to Thriller. So good. I'm very curious about this one... so much so that I backed it!

Ray's The Dead


Don't be a deadbeat! Bring this game to life!
08/20/14, 05:50   
I've played the demo and it is Pikmin-esque in the sense that you gain more and more zombie followers and point and click to send them out to do individual tasks, etc. And different zombie types can do different things, etc. I'm not sure how many zombies you can collect, I only got about 10 or so in the demo but you can probably get more than that eventually.
08/20/14, 05:58   
The Battle Chef Brigade Kickstarter is live! It's basically like a sword action based Cooking Mama type game? Maybe? Great people working on it.
09/24/14, 23:04   
Hey guess what? Our very own Dapper Dave is releasing Boot Hill Heroes on Steam today! 50% off! $5! If you like classic RPGs you would be dumb NOT to buy it.
10/10/14, 20:55   
"Willy Chyr is a first-time game designer, yet his debut effort, Relativity, is among the most anticipated games of 2015."

Wired article

PS. Both Shirley and I called that this game was going to be big way back when we first saw it like a year or two ago.

01/15/15, 23:10   
Have you played Killer Queen, Zero? Super fun, and apparently there's a big community based around the game in Chicago.
03/07/15, 16:37   
There is a HUGE community built around it here, oh my gosh. Everyone is constantly talking about it, it is in one (or more?) or our arcade bars, people meet-up just to play it...

...and yet somehow I haven't managed to play it other than the 2 minutes or so I snuck in when I was working Bit Bash. I still don't even understand how it works.
03/07/15, 19:28   
Edited: 03/07/15, 19:28
It looks really complicated when you're just watching. I was surprised at how fun it is! There are three different ways to win--kill the other team's Queen with either your Queen or some soldiers (who control like Balloon Fight or Joust), bring enough berries back to your hive, or ride the snail at the bottom of the screen to your side.

It's funny, having there be one all-powerful Queen reminds me of the Golden Snitch in Quidditch and how everyone says its such a poorly-designed mechanic. The Queen in Killer Queen is kind of like the Golden Snitch except it ties in really well to the rest of what's going on (the Queen being the most powerful bee means that she can take out the other team's berry-carriers really easily), so everything else isn't just completely arbitrary. The snail adds a ton too.

We were talking to the developer for a bit and he said that it actually started out as a field game. Like, played on a football field with balls and brooms and stuff. Pretty crazy what it's become. Sounds like it won't be coming to consoles every, but there's really no match for the authentic experience you get with the arcade cabinets.
03/08/15, 23:16   

03/13/15, 20:36   
Hey everyone my buddy's Fire Emblem / etc. inspired SRPG Telepath Tactics just went up on Steam. A 6 year in the making labor of love. I helped him test it out in the past, it's pretty deep and has user made stage building and everything, it's nuts that one guy made this. It definitely feels Fire Emblem inspired but it has a bit of Disgaea in it as well with the tons of moves for each character and more interactive environment stuff.

Temporarily discounted to $13.49.

BUY IT ON STEAM HERE!!!

If you don't want it on Steam for some reason, he has other purchasing options here.


From his about the game page:

The indie lovechild of Fire Emblem and Super Smash Brothers, Telepath Tactics is a strategy RPG with destructible battlefields, bridge- and barricade-building, and the ability to fling enemies off cliffs and into lava.

Play through a story-driven campaign with dozens of unique characters in a steampunk fantasy universe filled with telepathic generals, tribes of bipedal komodo dragons, and knights who ride atop giant, armored praying mantises:

It was deep winter when young Emma and Sabrina Strider fled slavery in the mines of Kovit. Exhausted and on the verge of starvation, they were found and taken in by a tribe of Lissit, reptilian warriors, who raised the sisters as their own. Now Emma trains tirelessly, bent on revenge and the prospect of rescuing their ailing father from bondage. But the years are never kind to a miner, and time grows desperately short. The sisters will need all of their wits—and the help of some unlikely allies—if they are to succeed…

Shove enemies off of cliffs! Fling enemies into environmental hazards like traps, water, and lava!
Destroy walls, freeze water, build bridges and lay explosives, changing the face of the battlefield to your advantage!
Build an army from among 23 different classes; learn more than 110 distinct attacks as you level up your characters, then promote those characters to powerful prestige classes!
Deal with merchants to keep your army well-supplied; make hard choices about your priorities both on and off the battlefield.
Play with friends in 2-6 player hotseat multiplayer matches with randomized item drops, multiple play modes, and support for army alliances!
Use the Telepath Tactics map editor to build your own campaigns, and download other peoples’ creations to play!


Hmm. In other news... Relativity (the game I posted about above) just got backed by the Indie Fund. A lot of the games the Indie Fund backs end up pretty huge, like Antichamber, Dear Esther, Monaco, The Swapper, Framed, etc. so that's neat news.
04/18/15, 04:33   
Edited: 04/18/15, 04:35
Willy Chyr showing off Relativity in Sony's booth at E3.

06/18/15, 08:35   
Awesome developer / musician Whitaker Trebella released his third game today. Piloteer is $2.99 on the iOS app store. It'd basically like QWOP with a jetpack. Getting good reviews so far.

06/26/15, 08:22   
Congratulations to Chicago studio Trinket for winning the first ever Reboot Indie Game Awards at Indie Pop Con this year. They took home $10,000 and a erm... skateboard for some reason.

Their game is called Battle Chef Brigade and it is sort of a mix between the Iron Chef and Monster Hunter... in 2D? You have a limited amount of time to both hunt for / collect ingredients and then make your dishes. Check it out here!

06/29/15, 22:16   
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