There are, by my count, 1732 indie games coming out every day now, which makes promoting them (for devs) and covering them (for us) almost impossible. One trend I’ve enjoyed lately, though, is an attempt to market a game not just by showing the game, but by showing what went into making the game.
The Dungeon Experience is a good example of this, but another one popped up over the weekend for Lunark, a “modern take on the 2D cinematic platformer genre”, by which its developers (mostly just creator Johan Vinet) mean its in the same vein as classics like Another World and Flashback.
Those were two games defined not just by their cinematic aspirations, heavy on cutscenes and dramatic framing, but because they achieved a lot of that via rotoscoping, the technology where people act scenes out on film then animators recreate it in a game/show/movie.
Lunark, appropriately, does much the same thing, but what I was so happy to see over the weekend was the footage behind the animation, which reveals that for every scene involved a dramatic sci-fi chase or some complex alien machinery, there was…a dude in his kitchen sitting on a shelf, swinging on some bars at a children’s playground or lovingly touching his floorboards:
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If you’re into what you’ve seen here, the official pitch for the game is:
Set in a future where the Moon has been transformed into a vessel for humanity’s survival, LUNARK is a 2D adventure inspired by ‘90s classics. Run, jump, hang, climb, roll, and shoot through gorgeously animated environments while overcoming traps, solving puzzles, battling enemy droids, and more! Uncover the dark origin of humanity’s new home in this epic story of survival, revolution, and mystery.
Lunark was released back in March, and is available on Steam, Switch, PlayStation and Xbox.