Apps World 2015: Cool Games from the Indie Gaming Village

The “Indie Gaming Village” at Apps World North America earlier this week was indeed a village compared to the rest of the bustling convention.

To even find it, you had to wade through a dense expo floor packed with booths advertising app analytics services and monetization solutions.

Sure enough, though, there it was: a small corner on the second floor of San Francisco’s Moscone West convention center, housing a modest selection of phone and tablet games either recently released or up and coming.

Here were a few of my favorites:

Sleep Furiously

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I probably spent the least time with Sleep Furiously at its Apps World stand, but it was easily one of my favorites – the idea is an easy sell.

Basically, words stack similar to SpellTower. You tap and drag to string neighboring words together to form sentences.

The sentences can be as nonsensical as you want, but they must be grammatically correct, which is where the puzzle aspect comes in.

It isn’t particularly challenging – the hardest part is trying to decide what kind of absurd combination you want to put together, rather than trying to locate which one you can, but that’s what makes it fun and unique.

You can buy Sleep Furiously on the App Store or Google Play.

# Letter Words

If you’re looking for a word game with a challenge, Flow State Media has a whole series of them.

I wrote about 4 Letter Words yesterday, since its not-too-big, but not-too-small scope makes it feel like the “default” in the series, but there’s also 3 Letter Words, 5 Letter Words, 6 Letter Words, and 7 Letter Words.

In each game, you get the set amount of letters and have to form the only possible word or words before time runs out.

This game’s a high score chaser, so the quicker you are, the longer you can go before time’s up.

The challenge varies in each game in more ways than you’d think. Sometimes the smaller word ones will throw something so obscure at you, you’ll end up racing the clock just trying to put every possible combination together.

Sometimes it’s easier to figure out a word the more letters you have, though you’d have to be a Scrabble champion to know half the vocabulary that 7 Letter Words has in its word bank.

They’re out free on Android from Flow State Media’s developer page on Google Play.

ZenBlock & Death Block

These are actually two separate games from the same studio, Polycarbon Games. Both share the same general mechanics, but differ greatly in presentation.

ZenBlock is a minimal two-player puzzle game with the same slow-paced, yet tensely competitive nature of a game like Dots and Boxes (that old pencil and paper game).

Your goal is to match three boxes in a row on a grid by tapping on squares to claim them. It’s a competitive, turn-based game, so after you claim a box, your opponent gets to do so as well.

Because you’re both playing on the same board, you can try to sabotage your opponent’s efforts by blocking their way with your block, or lying down a “zen block,” a permanent obstacle that gives neither of you points.

You can play against AI if you want, but I found playing against one of the developers a lot more fun.

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Death Block takes this exact same mechanic, but adds a storyline and characters. Death has decided to let a game called Death Block determine the fates of a few very bad people. Beat them and they’re sent to the underworld. Lose and they’re given a second chance.

The team actually launched a Kickstarter for Death Block, which includes a browser-based demo of the game. On the Kickstarter, they promise online multiplayer as well as local.

Neither Death Block or ZenBlock is out yet.

The developers also tell me they’re working on a 3D rhythm-based platformer called Tech Hop.

Speaking of local multiplayer, 2Play Tap was a lot of fun. Two players get assigned a color, and then attempt to tap as many orbs of that color as they can. It’s all played on one screen though, so you can accidentally give your opponent points by tapping their color.

It’s a bit like Bloop, only with power-ups. Swipe special ability orbs in your direction to add them to your action bar, then tap that ability whenever you want to activate it.

There’s one that washes the screen with your opponent’s color, so you can easily see your orbs but they can’t see theirs. Another freezes all the other player’s orbs in place so they're unable to score for a limited time.

2Play Tap is a quick and competitive game that is unfortunately not out yet.

We’ll let you know when it is.

The Barbarian

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The Barbarian was easily the most ambitious game of the lot. It was pitched to me as a mobile RPG that fully embraces the RPG genre, rather than simplifying a few borrowed elements to fit the platform. No casual free to play elements here. This is a $10 game.

What I noticed about The Barbarian immediately, besides the intensive 3D graphics, was how intuitive the control scheme was for tablets. Rather than a static directional pad positioned awkwardly in the lower left corner, you get a dynamic one that works more like an analog stick and appears wherever you press down with your thumb on the left side. It worked pretty well.

Obviously this is only something you can play on a powerful mobile device, but if you have that and you’re serious about your action RPGs, check out The Barbarian on iOS.

It’s headed to Android and Steam soon.

Puzzle Mayor

And now for something completely different. Puzzle Mayor is a casual game that combines the mechanics of match-3 puzzles with simplified city building.

Your job is to click and drag tiles next to ones of matching color and tier to upgrade them. Three farmland tiles may combine to create a barn, and so on.

I didn’t play this one for too long, and didn’t get a chance to see much of how the in-app purchases worked, but those are all things the game has.

Despite this, it seemed like a nice, casual puzzle game for people who want a bit more of a theme and a purpose to their match-3s.