GIMME INDIE GAME: TOUCH MY PIXEL/NATHAN J’S SCARYGIRL

I’ve been anxiously awaiting this one since the above trailer first appeared the week of GDC, but now it’s here: Melbourne studio Touch My Pixel and illustrator/vinyl toy producer Nathan Jurevicius have officially unveiled their collaborative Scarygirl game.

As it turns out, it’s a far more intricately constructed game than you’d normally imagine springing from a promotional web campaign (see: DGPH’s similar, but mechanically far less complex Molestown).

Fit in amongst its indie-developed brethren, it’s somewhere quite near Amanita’s Samorost games (and his previously blogged Machinarium), only, obviously strip away the point and click scheme for more traditional platforming, and replace Dvorský’s signature gnarled organic photoshoppery for Nathan J’s already well-established style.

What it retains from games like Samorost, though, is that sense of wonder that you get from exploring a world (and Scarygirl‘s world is rife with nooks and crannies to be explored) entirely unlike the worlds games have given us before — exactly the kind of magic I’ve been talking about since founding Offworld that comes when an outside artist brings their fresh perspective into games.

It might not be quite as tightly built as the best of the past several decades of platformers, and makes some cute and easily forgivable minor mistakes along the way (see: my reticence to jump on the spiky-headed enemies in the first level before accidentally realizing it wouldn’t hurt), but with its iconographic narration, richly constructed environments and collectible diversions (provided by a series of console cartridges that unlock minigames), it’s a fantastic experiment and addition to the year’s indie output.

Scarygirl game home [Nathan J, Touch My Pixel home]