This year’s Digital Dragons annual conference spanned over the course of three days and again took place at the ICE Krakow Congress Centre. With 2600 guests present, the conference delivered plenty of networking opportunities and speeches from industry professionals, as well as hosting the Digital Dragons Awards, a celebration of the best of the Polish games industry. Amidst the packed conference timetable and extra-curricular activities was the Indie Showcase, displaying a variety of titles from up and coming developers across Europe. 72 exhibitors set up their demos for guests to sample and competed to secure their vote for the community award.
Digital Dragons Indie Showcase 2024
While the Digital Dragons Awards celebrates the achievements of Polish developers and games they have released, the Indie Showcase Awards focus on the games presented in the Digital Dragons arena. This year’s winners are:
- 1st Place – Dungeons of the Amber Griffin, Frozengem Studio.
- 2nd Place – Follow the Meaning, Hiking Mind.
- 3rd Place – The Gap, Crunching Koalas and Label This Studio.
- Community Vote – Follow the Meaning, Hiking Mind.
- National Showcase Award – Dumbriel: Magnificent Adventure in Hell by Madmoa.
However, while these games caught the attention of both the judges and guests, I found a few other gems I thought deserved a mention. And so I award the following titles the honour of my rambling.
Coridden
Coridden is what I’d expect if the Pevensie children were transported to another magical reality instead of Narnia. The high fantasy, medieval theme is embedded with a tinge of sci-fi mystery, which kicks in when the siblings are gifted futuristic gauntlets endowing them with magical abilities. As the brothers and sisters venture into the Mesozoic inspired world, they learn to harness their new found powers, encountering beasts, collecting loot and progressing the story as they go.
Coridden is inhabited by numerous reptile-like creatures, who appear as a handful of species with different attacks and elemental damage. By using the Druid-like powers of the gauntlets, the player is able to transform into the defeated bite-sized dino. Combat is chaotic; the sparks of transformations and flashes of melee attacks creating a mesmerising lightshow as you clear caves and level up. Each of the playable characters have undefined classes and skills, allowing players to tailor their character to their preferred playstyle.
While it can be played solo, Coridden has been created with co-op in mind, with support for online and local multiplayer. Coridden is set to release later this year, with a demo currently available on Steam.
Videoverse
A pixelated love letter to online gaming communities, Videoverse is reminiscent of old-school social media platforms, such as the likes of MSN and Miiverse. You connect to the online world through the ‘Shark’ gaming device and its plug-in camera attachment, and join the community of the JRPG ‘Feudal Fantasy’. Controls are straightforward, navigating the fictional forum as simply as you would a Discord server. Clicking through pages, picking your responses and (mentally) kicking trolls. For the full online experience, you can even stare at the screen and disassociate, as a treat. Despite the comforting aesthetic and the overall premise of Videoverse being focused on wholesome friendship building, there is an underlying eeriness as you are faced with anonymous identities, the mystery of who is behind the screen forcing you to stay online for just five more minutes.
Videoverse and a demo are available on Steam.
Heading Out
A weird and intriguing narrative adventure with survival mechanics, signs of dark humour and many twists in the road along the way, how Heading Out unfolds is down to you and your decisions. Strategically selecting your next destination on the road map based on fuel consumption, you track your journey similarly to how you’d track your UberEats order. Each location introduces new environments and characters, interactions taking place through a series of illustrations, accompanied by a slightly chilling voiceover. I’m still unsure of the overall narrative of Heading Out, my experience consisting of wrestling a 12 year old for $5, being arrested for speeding and succumbing to the lure of sleep in a motel, where the fears I was running from manifested as nightmare fuel.
Heading Out is available on Steam.
Beat Slayer
Beat Slayer is a hack ‘n’ slash roguelike where you need to hit on the beat to build combos and defeat waves of enemy bots to progress. Gameplay is smooth; hitting, dodging and using special abilities becoming more addictive as you find the rhythm in the increasingly difficult levels. Upon defeat, you return to your dishevelled den where you can purchase upgrades with XP, feel slightly guilty about kicking the crap out of a friendly training robot, or equip a cheeky powerup cocktail at the bar. Beat Slayer is set in a gritty, run-down city, and the dull palette of the environment makes the hand-painted character portraits of NPCs even more striking. Chatting with these NPCs reveals your objective and the narrative behind the urban decay.
Beat Slayer and a demo are available now on Steam.
Ready, Steady, Ship!
Ready, Steady, Ship! is ideal for fans of chaotic multiplayer games such as Overcooked and Moving Out. Taking on the roles of factory employees, it is now your responsibility to fix the conveyor belts. Of course, this isn’t as simple as it should be, thanks to the purposely irksome physics which cause the workers to regularly mess up. Once the machinery is in place, it is time for pressing switches, pulling levers and delivering boxes, and also making boxes, and packing boxes, and moving boxes. What begins as a simple warehouse job soon becomes a whole factory of health and safety violations working against you as you try to efficiently complete tasks and achieve three stars.
Ready, Steady, Ship! is available on PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch.
Stunt Paradise
Side-scrolling car platformers are a simple concept that rarely miss. Using only the left and right arrow keys, Stunt Paradise propels you through the colourful and dynamic landscapes, launching off ramps into the void, trusting the cranes and other structures to shift into place in perfect time for landing. It may take some trial and error to find the right angles to jump off ramps, but once you’ve mastered the timing you will be able to pull off a backflip without bursting into flames. For those who like a bit more challenge in their relaxed stunt driving, there are stars to find and coins to be earned to unlock more vehicles.
Stunt Paradise is available on PC, Xbox and Nintendo Switch.
