While the Media Monkeys and their Junky Junkies will laud praise upon Silicon Valley developers, they’ve been missing out on the development of two of the most original and fascinating indie games of the year. Both of them were developed on the same street – the Pilestræde in Copenhagen, mere steps from the tourist haven of Nyhavn.
Max and the Magic Marker and LIMBO cleaned up at the IGF, with Max grabbing the D2D Vision Award and LIMBO sweeping both the Excellent in Visual Art and Technical Excellence awards.
Two fun facts about the developers:
1) Press Play (Max and the Magic Marker) and PlayDead (LIMBO) shared a table at the IGF awards.
2) Press Play and PlayDead are separated by nothing but a floor in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Their games border on mirror images. Max’s adventure spans a vibrant and colorful cartoon landscape, using the Wii-mote or a PC’s mouse to draw shapes to progress through a slowly but surely perilous environment that has delighted players of all ages.
Diametrically, LIMBO is a monochromatic, slow-paced and bloody odyssey – the dark journey of a young boy trying to find his sister in a world dead-set in stopping him at every turn through a series of logic and environmental puzzles – and absolutely no markers.
Both games – remarkably different in subject matter and release-date (Max having just been released mere days ago and LIMBO being months away) – have both been lauded with praise.
IGN’s Matt Cassamasina described Max as a a “WiiWare Gem,” and Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo called it a “tight, carefully designed experience.”
LIMBO’s time with the press has led to such praise as Eurogamer’s Will Porter saying that it’s “…liable to be mentioned in the same breaths as Portal or Braid, potentially even Another World,” and much of the gaming press salivating to play it when it’s released in the Summer.
So, forget your preconceptions about where the greatest games in the world are made. The Danish are already kicking down your doors and filling your rooms full of genuinely innovative gaming – and that’s just the stuff we’re allowed to tell you about.