14 spectacular indie games you may have missed at E3 2018
Better late than never
We know E3 2018 was quite some time ago now, but there's no reason why we can't jump back and look at some of the games we checked out at the time.
Specifically, we're looking at the entrants to the Big Indie Pitch at E3 2018, our own special event where indie devs can show off their game to a handful of journos and industry experts to get direct feedback on how their mobile game is looking.
As ever, there was a wide array of titles, spanning VR and mobile, with entrants from across the globe swinging by to show us their wares.
But there can be only one winner, and this time around the coveted baseball bat went to Spellfast by Built Games, a multiplayer word game which impressed our judges with its simple but engaging gameplay.
Want to know more about the other games on show? Click the link below and you'll learn everything you need to know about the games of the Big Indie Pitch at E3 2018.
First Place - Spellfast
Spellfast is a unique, real-time competitive multiplayer word game in which two players face off to create the biggest and best words they can, before firing them off at each other to deal damage to their opponent.
Big words mean big scores, but you also need to watch out for the smaller words sneaking through your defences to chip away at your health. It may seem simple, but there's a hidden strategic element in there which will satisfy even the most hardcore word game fans.
Second Place - Guardians of War
Guardians of War takes a few cues from Clash Royale, but it throws in a healthy dose of ideas, including a four-person free-for-all mode, alongside 2v2 battles, co-op battles, and your regular one-on-one real-time strategy.
Outside of battling, you'll be collecting units and levelling them up, as well as brewing potions which can give you an advantage in battle. Throw in some boss battles against enormous creatures and you have a very interesting game indeed.
Third Place - ARia's Legacy
Pitched as the world's first augmented reality escape room, ARia's Legacy puts you in the middle of your very own world of puzzles, filling your room with all the tools you need to uncover the secrets and escape each predicament. Think The Room, except it's YOUR room.
There's 50 levels to work your way through, each offering a different experience and helping you uncover more about the missing Aria to unfold her legacy.
Saving Princess Maya - Episode 1
A story-focused Gear VR experience, Saving Princess Maya – Episode 1 sees you exploring a stylised fantasy world, solving puzzles with a vast inventory of items and meeting fantastical characters as you go.
There's over five hours of gameplay to experience, with the promise of humorous exchanges and interesting characters, alongside captivating puzzles to keep you intrigued as you push through the story.
Treasure Castle
Harking back to the days of old, Treasure Castle is a retro text adventure first launched in 1987 and now making its way to mobile 31 years after its initial release.
Rather than having you fiddle with a virtual keyboard, Treasure Castle instead offers you contextual buttons for each action, making the game smoother and easier to play, along with an easy to access inventory system, which should make keeping track of your various items a lot simpler.
Orbulous
Orbulous looks to shake up the match-3 genre by taking away the ability to shoot the orbs, instead tasking you with spinning the game board around to catch matching orbs, creating combos and pushing your scores even higher.
It starts off fairly easy, but before long you'll have different orbs flying at you from all sides, and it'll take quick wits and a fast finger or thumb to stop your pile overloading.
Trigono
Trigono reminds us slightly of Super Hexagon - simple graphics, thumping beats, and hard-as-nails gameplay. You play a small triangle inside another triangle, and you need to bounce off the inner walls to avoid dangerous objects trying to kill you, and incoming threats from the outside.
There are 94 levels to sink your teeth into, and its simple controls are easy to pick up but difficult to master, so you'll be spending plenty of time with this one.
Burst!
Looking for a little more education in your rhythm game? Burst! has you covered then. Not only are you tasked with exploding fireworks in mid-air in time to the beat, but you'll also need to switch the chemical elements of these fireworks to change their colour.
The aim is to teach people about the chemical components of everyone's favourite explosives and show other developers that education can be snuck into fun games after all. Neat!
Mash Dash
A cutesy puzzle-platformer full of square animals and silliness, Mash Dash has you navigating small square spaces, picking up items, and avoiding enemies, all the while trying to open up a Light Beam and move onto the next level.
There's a bunch of different power-ups to help you on your journey, and plenty of different obstacles to face as you go, so there's plenty of variety on offer to keep you entertained.
Salad Hunt
Salad Hunt is a family-friendly on-rails shooter, in which you need to take back the kitchen from sentient vegetables trying to trash the heck out of everything in there.
It's up to you to fling whatever you have to hand at these pesky critters so you can save your kitchen. And there's no zombies, guns, or violence in sight, so it's perfect for all the family.
Romantasia
Romantasia is a fantasy story-focused game in which you'll need to fulfil objectives given to you by a magic card, find romance or feuds and solve them through choose-your-own-adventure dialogue options, and the odd bit of card-battling.
There are tons of different cards to play, each having wildly different effects on your opponent, so building your deck - as well as your relationships - is the key to victory.
Evertile
Taking more than a few visual cues from Supercell's Clash Royale, Evertile has you placing a deck of tiles onto a grid in 1v1 simultaneous battles across the Internet with friends and random strangers.
There are chests to unlock, tiles to level up, new arenas to fight in, and more emojis than you can shake a stick at as you battle it out to be the best.
Follow the White Rabbit
A VR mystery adventure, Follow the White Rabbit sees you taking on the role of a magician who's been a charlatan all his life. However, one day his magic actually works, his white rabbit buggers off, and you need to go out and find it.
Expect puzzles aplenty as you navigate the stylised 3D world, finding clues, repairing machines, and trying to piece together what on earth is happening and where your blasted rabbit has got to.
Silent Wolf
Unfortunately, no information was available on Silent Wolf by the time this write-up occurred. But thank you for entering the Big Indie Pitch!
