IAs you walk through the doors of this boutique gaming festival, you’re immediately greeted by a bullet hell-style shooter with a painterly twist. ZOE, go away!You dodge and launch attacks at breakneck speed before the game erupts in a euphoric shower of pointillist colors, dazzling the eyes and punishing the thumbs. Next to him is Left to read; at first glance a dark fantasy Quake clone, but one that tasks you with the odd task of checking text messages on a smartphone while making your way through a dungeon. These are subversive games that take well-worn design tropes and break them in clever, fun ways.
Rule breaking is a big issue Glasgow Indie Games Festivalthe latest iteration of an event formerly known as Southside Games FestivalThe event was held last weekend at Civic House, nestled in the shadow of the M8, the concrete scarecrow that runs through Glasgow and connects the city to the wider central beltway. On display are games that are more eccentric and smaller-budget than those you see on the shelves, all made by developers who live in Glasgow or a short train ride away. Co-founder Joe Bain sees these works as part of the “wider cultural landscape” of gaming and has sought to create a space that treats them as such. It’s a far cry from trade shows like Gamescom, where, beyond the bustling public halls, the machinations of the games industry can seem to move in lockstep, driven by capital.
During a panel on “unconventional games,” Glasgow game creator Stephen Gillmurphy, better known as the catamitesHe attacked what he describes as the medium’s “cult of depth”: his argument is that video games often consist of keys that open doors, skills that unlock paths, a design meant to take you beyond the depths of a virtual world, only to discover when you complete it that there is nothing meaningful at the end. Gillmurphy has transformed this thesis into a startling horror game of disturbing, deliberate monotony. Anthology of the assassinplayable in the show.
Elsewhere, attendees make peace with their dead virtual pets in tamagotchi seancean interactive fiction game that invites you to talk (out loud) to your beloved creatures (all I say is “I’m sorry”). The dark and captivating History of the apartment It’s in the same room, a miserable life simulator, part gangster thriller, part The Sims, with the alcoholic chaos of a John Cassavetes movie.
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At events like these, interactions are spontaneous. I meet up with another attendee to play at deciphering the language. Kevin (1997-2077)We are presented with an inscrutable pictorial and lexicographic text and few guidelines on how to read it. We wonder what it could mean and who Kevin is. We annotate the text, add our own words and images, and wonder what others think. Over the course of the exhibition, it becomes a piece of participatory art, a madcap exercise in collective problem-solving for which there is probably no definitive answer.
For decades, Scottish gaming has been synonymous with Grand Theft Auto creator Rockstar North in Edinburgh, but not today. Here, as co-founder Ryan Caulfield puts it, there is a wonderfully wide selection of the “weird and wonderful”. In an era when it can feel like the possibilities of gaming have contracted, when every other game seems to be a live shoot-and-loot game chasing perpetual profit, what a thrill it is to play a set of games with such an irreverent attitude to breaking convention.
