RPS Indie Awardoramarama

The Eurogamer Expo has been and gone, but RPS's brain-dumps about the games therein will continue over the days to come. YOU WILL LISTEN AND YOU WILL BELIEVE AND YOU WILL UNDERSTAND.

One of the things we did at the Expo as well as play games, however, was judge some games. Specifically, the 12 splendid titles selected with the help of the good folk of Mudlark to form the Indie Games Arcade. 12 games. A few good-ish men. Security guards who didn't want us to have an awards ceremony at a stand featuring our own logo. Whatever would we do?

Well, the first thing we did was play them, and then talk about them. These were them:

Gemini Rue, Joshua Nuernberger
Fractal, Cypher Studios
Okabu, Handcircus
Frozen Synapse, Mode 7
Revenge of the Titans, Puppygames
Tiny and Big, Black Pants Game Studio
Scoregasm, Charlie Knight
Nidhogg, Mark Essen
Skulls of the Shogun, Haunted Temple Studios
B.U.T.T.O.N., Copenhagen Game Collective
Swimming Under Clouds, Piece of Pie Studios
Hohokum, Honeyslug

Honestly, they were to a one excellent, and you should keep tabs on them all. Three games made the RPS approv-o-lymph glow just a little more vivaciously, however. Three games. A few good-ish men. Security guards who.. oh, I said that already.

So we settled on a format of two Honourable Mentions and one Grand Prize Mega-Winner. It was tough. Really tough. Tough like the skin on the face of an 80-year-old sea fisherman. Tough like the toes of that cat that had its amputated legs replaced with robotic ones.

Skulls of the Shogun (Haunted Temple Studios) and Frozen Synapse (Mode 7 Games), you are strong and honorable, and we salute you. And so we did, in fact, presenting each with a ceremonial glove with which to gently caress the first prize trophy. That sounds demeaning in retrospect, actually. It was, I assure you, meant to be celebratory. They seemed to think so too, fortunately:

Definitely not celebratory was the arrival of showfloor security just after I'd used my megaphone to blare goodwill at the goodly chaps at Mode 7 Games. Told to clamber down from the table I was stood on and to cease and desist all megaphonage for spurious and absurd health and safety reasons, it totally disrupted proceedings and meant in my panic I was horribly cursory towards Skulls of the Shogun, which I continue to feel very bad about. It is no reflection on your game, chaps.

Here's what it looked like before their thoughtful intervention. As you can see, thousands of lives were endangered:

No matter. Summoning a gruff (i.e. weedy) bellow that actually proved louder than the megaphone, I proceeded, Haunted Temple got their well-earned glove, and then we could turn to present the winner with his trophy.

The winner wasn't bloody there, of course, because the winner was Messhof from America - who quite understandably had not undertaken the trek to London to spend three days telling confused/disinterested console shooter fans how to play the excellent, excellent, excellent two-player swordfighting game Nidhogg. Nidhogg!

In Messhof's absence, we presented the trophy to a masked and bespectacled man (pictured atop this post) who almost certainly wasn't a former member of RPS' staff.

I'll be sharing the wonders of Nidhogg in a separate post shortly, but leave you with this video and a cast-iron promise that it's incredibly funny and thrilling to both play and spectate.

Congratulations, Mr Messhof. I'm still working out how, exactly, we can post you the below spiky glass trophy:

Thanks to all the games at the IGA, and to all those who played them.