circleWhen you walk through the doors of this boutique video game festival, you’ll be immediately greeted by bullet hell shooters with a painterly twist. ZOE Go away!you dodge and fire attacks at breakneck speed, and the game plunges into an intoxicating shower of pointillist color, dazzling the eyes and punishing the thumbs. Leave after readingAt first glance they seem like dark fantasy Quake clones, but they give you the bizarre task of checking text messages on your phone while slaying your way through dungeons. These are subversive games that subvert well-worn design tropes in witty, playful ways.
Violation of the rules is Glasgow Independent Games Festival,Previously Southside Game FestivalThe event took place last weekend at Civic House, tucked away in the shadow of the M8, a concrete eyesore that cuts through Glasgow and connects the city to the wider Central Belt. The games on display are quirkier and lower-budget than you’ll find on the shelves, all made by developers who live in Glasgow or are just a short train ride away. Co-founder Joe Bain wants to create a space that sees such works as part of games’ “wider cultural landscape”, and treats them as such. It’s a far cry from trade shows such as Gamescom, where the machinations of the games industry feel capital-driven and moving in lockstep across a bustling public hall.
During the “Unconventional Games” panel discussion, Glasgow-based game maker Stephen Gill-Murphy (aka Katamiteswas a sharp rebuttal to what he called the media’s “cult of depth,” arguing that video games are often designed to lead you deeper into virtual worlds, opening doors with keys and paths with abilities, only to discover at the end that none of it made sense. Gil Murphy turned this argument into a masterful horror game of unsettling and deliberate flatness. Murderer’s AnthologyIt’s playable in the show.
Elsewhere, participants make peace with dead virtual pets, Tamagotchi Seanceis an interactive fiction game where kids talk (out loud) to the animals they love (all I say is “Sorry”). Darkly fascinating Apartment Story A harrowing simulator of everyday life in the same room, it’s part gangster thriller, part Sims, and all the booze-soaked chaos of a John Cassavetes film.
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Spontaneous interaction is important at these events. I gather with other participants to play a language decoding game. Kevin (1997-2077)We are presented with cryptic pictures and dictionary text with little guidance on how to read it. We wonder what on earth it all means and who Kevin is. We annotate the text, adding our own words and pictures, and reflecting on the words and pictures of others. As the show progresses, it becomes a participatory work of art, a mindless exercise in solving a collective puzzle that perhaps has no clear answer.
For decades, Scottish video games were synonymous with Edinburgh’s Rockstar North, makers of Grand Theft Auto, but today that’s no longer the case. As co-founder Ryan Caulfield puts it, there’s a wealth of “weird and wonderful” to choose from. In an age when what’s possible in video games feels shrunk, when every other game seems like a live-service looter-shooter chasing perpetual profit, there’s something thrilling about playing a series of games with such convention-defying irreverence.
