From the 21st to the 24th of September 2023, Thinky Games was at the Tokyo Games Show 2023 — an international smorgasbord of video games from around the world. I gazed in awe as bright lights and familiar songs filled the air. With eleven halls in total, there was plenty to take in, but our primary focus is on indie puzzle titles — which were located in Halls 9-11 (Indies and Merchandise) in a nearby building.
There, the crowd was a little more sedate — various indies met up to exchange ideas and long lost friends reconnected on the global stage. As we wandered the Indie Game Area and the Selected Indie 80 booths, we saw many innovative games. Here’s are my four picks:
Paper Trail (Demo Version)
Paper Trail is a game where you cleverly fold the background by using perspective when solving these crafty 2D puzzles. You can fold the environment around Paige, the main character, and even her positioning is the difference between crossing the bridge and having it just out of reach. This puzzle game is accompanied by the soft watercolor illustrations that make it feel like you’re in a fairytale.
I played the first two worlds to completion — first a starry forest, and then a bright swamp with a pair of frog catchers following my every move. Within these worlds are three additional stars that require extra steps to solve, but reward players with a bonus unlocked level. I did my best to collect them all, and the game’s flip side viewer helped p things into perspective. I could check what was on the other side, and fold the paper so that both sides lined up perfectly.
Paige walked to a specific square with a simple click, and by double-clicking, she upped the pace. Well-crafted NPCs peppered the story with useful tidbits about the world, and offered a variety of interesting personalities to interact with.
If you haven’t seen Joseph’s interview and playthrough mash-up with the devs of Paper Trail, Newfangled Games — do check it out over here.
Opus: Echoes of Starsong
SIGONO INC. is well-known for their breathtaking landscapes and emotional storytelling. But within the worlds they weave, puzzles provide crucial moments of interaction and lore for the player. They are not accessories to pad out the game, but key parts of the story.
In Opus: Echoes of Starsong, you play as Eda, a woman who can detect mysterious sound waves known as Starsong — and she runs into Jun, a descendent of the very people who harnessed this power.
Jun wields the Synthscepter, a recording device that can store various frequencies of Starsong, and Eda is a Witch — a group of people that can harmonize and detect Starsong. When a chance encounter at a market leads them to teaming up at a space pirate base — these two souls must band together to find answers and discover a hidden story behind the Starsong.
Opus: Echoes of Starsong uses sound to solve puzzles left behind by the ancient peoples — and it is not simply a matter of waving the Synthscepter in front of a locked door and hoping for the best. You had to channel and attune the Starsong to progress further. With visuals reminiscent of GRIS, this game truly brings a keen eye to the art of storytelling and puzzles.
Currently, SIGONO INC. is working on Prism Peak, a gorgeous departure into the realm of visual photography where you play a photographer lost in an ethereal realm trying to find their way back.
Out of the World
Wandering the Selected Indie 80 area, I came across a rather curious setup from a solo Japanese developer Toyota Ryuto. A simple stick figure with the words,【 In this world, "only what you see" is true. 】
This is his deceptively simple puzzle game, Out of the World. In it, you control a resigned person navigating a world that can only be perceived if they are looking at it. Close your eyes, and the very floor you stand on vanishes without a trace.
The bleak monochromatic world’s increasing difficulty requires precise timing to reach each exit. Close and open your eyes to find gaps in the walls and floors to reach your next destination. In a world bleaker than a Black Mirror episode, keep on keeping on as you push further into the darkness. If you see hope, then it must be real.
Electrological
Meet Electrological, the brainchild of solo Japanese developer Yutaka Kinjo. I first came across this game in unityroom, a cooking pot of browser-based Unity games. This early prototype soon grew into the free Steam demo, with the full game slated to release in 2024.
By using arithmetic chips, build and connect circuits to solve each puzzle. Try to hit a high score, or shoot for the moon with the plus-minus-zero result. Lacking a timer, Electrological allows players to really consider the various possible solutions and allows creativity to flow. When they say math is fun, they mean Electrological.
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