Screenshot Weekly – Strongly-worded Debates Between Space Monsters

Welcome back to Screenshot Weekly !

! Every Tuesday, IGM brings you exclusive looks at upcoming games in various stages of development. The featured image introducing each game will always be original, and made especially for IGM, so you’ll see them for the first time right here! (Make sure to click the pics to see them in their full screen glory.) Without further ado, let’s take a look at this week’s screenshots:

Gataela

It’s always nice to see a successfully crowdfunded project progress towards delivering a finished product to backers. Such is the case for Gataela , which earned a pledge total of over $5k. According to developer Paige Marincak, “ Gataela is an RPG for iPad, Windows and Android tablets, Playbook and PC. It’s about a country which has just recovered from a civil war a decade ago, and how the act of one young man ends up potentially throwing the country back into it.” The game is set in an early-Victorian/Steampunk universe, which comes across in the screenshots, particularly in terms of the clothing characters wear. In terms of features, Gataela is said to sport a huge, seamless world (Marincak told me the game is a whopping 384,000 x 384,000 pixels large), two different battle systems (traditional JRPG-inspired turn-based combat, and a debate system for conversation-based confrontations), and multilingual support. Gataela is currently in its second round of Beta testing, targeting a full release in August.

Monster Flight School

I never personally got into the mobile game phenomenon of endless runners, or the tap-based games that Flappy Bird popularized. In fact, I make a point of trying not to cover games that are utterly derivative or direct clones. So when I first saw screenshots of Monster Flight School without hearing the pitch, I was ready to write it off. But after looking at the features list, it seems deserving of a chance to prove itself. The dev team at Rotary Games tells me that “ Monster Flight School is the next generation of tap-tap-tap games — on steroids!” The game includes bosses, multiple levels, destructible obstacles, and “many cute monsters to choose from.” Beyond that, the game includes 5 different zones to tap through, each with a different visual flavor, skills and abilities to facilitate obstacle dodging and boss fights, and “happy, upbeat music that gets your fingers tapping.” There will also be leaderboard support for high score tracking. Those interested in joining the iOS TestFlight Beta can email hello@rotary-games.comto apply.

Space Box: The Journey out of the Box

Space. SPAAAACE. Polish indie developer Tomek Graczyk is looking to tell the “seemingly innocent story of a box lost in space” with his project titled Space Box . But as he reveals, the strange premise “is actually a way of showing some of the most important matters for Tomek’s like: Freedom and creativity.”  As Graczyk describes, “the journey itself takes place in quite an unusual way: By drawing a ‘jump vector’ on the screen. The whole journey gets a big twist when Space Box realizes he can do a ‘ space turn’ – a 90 degree turn both left and right.” The concept of Space Box emerged years ago, born out of an urge to experience something different in terms of interaction with a game. As the dev puts hit, “bored by the flood of commercialism and schematism in video games, Tomek decided to take matters into his own hands and make a game that would surprise himself. As the player progresses through the game, the Space Box starts to realize that not everything can be seen from his perspective – from inside the box .”

That’s it for this installment of Screenshot Weekly . Be sure to come back next week to see more exclusive looks of the latest indie games in development! Let us know in the comments section what upcoming indie games you’d like to see featured in a future segment. As for any indie developers who would like to see their screenshots featured right here, feel free to send an email to IGM at editors@indiegamemag.com with the Subject Line: “Screenshot Weekly.” Or, if you’d like to be part of our Magazine’s Screenshot Monthly segment, include that in the email as well!