The most crazy, intriguing game on our radar - Snow Siege
TD + Tetris + card collection. With invading snowmen
I saw a lot of games at GDC 2013; most of them were part of Big Indie Pitch.
Organised and scheduled by Jeff Scott from 148Apps, it combined 24 game developers and 10 journalists into a busy 2 hour period.
That meant just 5 minutes per game but even within those constraints, we saw some gems.
Nothing was quite as mad - and intriguing - as Snow Siege, however.
North of the borderIt's being developed by Milkbag Games, which consists of two well known Canadian indies: Matt Rix (of Trainyard fame), and Owen Goss (aka Streaming Colour. He's made a bunch of games, one of which is called Monkeys in Space: Escape to Banana Base Alpha).
Anyhow, we caught up with Rix to check out the game. According to Twitter, Goss was back in Canada doing his tax return.
(During GDC. That's so Canadian.)
Evil snowmenAs Rix describes, Snow Siege a combination of tower defence and Tetris with collective card elements.
Gameplay-wise, it's turn-based so to start - during the game's 'night phase' - you set up your defences.
You get to combine complex stacks of Tetris blocks interspersed with more conventional elements such as guns and missiles.
The cards you have in your deck enable you build different units, although you're restricted by the number of build points you have each turn.
They come mostly at day, mostly...During the enemy's turn - the 'day phase' - wave on wave of snowmen, including snowmen in tanks and aircraft, will try to over run your base.
As well as the defences you built up - and which fall down on the snowmen - you get to control a jetpack-equiped boy, who will fire at the snowmen and is used to collect the coins you need to unlock more cards.
This combination means the game will offer multiple different ways to play, from those who want to be very passive and strategic, building large falling structures, to a more weapons-heavy approach.
Hopefully, Snow Siege will be released in late May, early June for iOS and Android. It will be free-to-play.