Overview: One time hero is a medieval fantasy style game which makes use of death as one of its primary mechanics. You begin as a lowly level 1 hero, unable to kill much beyond the stereotypical rats and animals. However you as a player don't earn any experience from killing creatures or any gold. Eventually players are intended to die to a stronger creature the further they venture out from the starting area, and once they do the camera will change from the view of their hero, to that of whichever creature had killed them. Each time the player dies they will respawn again within the other creature, bursting it apart as they appear on the battlefield.

Mechanics: The player is given instructions that the weaker their hero is completing specific sections, the further ahead they can progress and the more they unlock. This means players can early on feed themselves to a strong creature to clear an area and increase their levels, but would get less rewards and clear out less of the game. If they wish to take on the area again however they can purposely kill themselves to a weaker creature to push their level back down and increase the rewards given.

The more skilled a player is, the more they are rewarded for playing at a deficit than a less skilled player might be.

Overview: Set far into a dystopian future in the urban streets of manhattan you play as Rust. A nobody who quickly finds himself becoming public enemy number one after breaking and entering into a building that was supposed to be another abandoned building - not a hidden research facility. After a series of mishaps you slowly begin to find that your arm has been changed, and with it comes some rather strange properties. Any object you touch with your hand falls into a strange quantum state where you are able to adjust the objects density and movement. Simple coins can become weapons, or even turn a can into a black hole.

Mechanics: With your hand you start off with a relatively small meter, allowing you less power over certain objects (i.e. in the beginning you aren't able to grab an entire building and make it collapse upon itself). Over time this power will grow, eventually getting uncontrollable leaving the player with a distinct moral choice.

Objects you grab can have a number of properties changed about them. Depending on how the player changes the arm state (essentially like equipping a different weapon) they will be able to do a number of different things. The main state is the gravity adjuster. Select the entire brick path of a run down alleyway as you are being chased, and reverse its gravity, causing those chasing you to fling into the air. Alternately you could select the bottom section of a nearby lampost, massively increasing its gravity as someone runs by, completely crushing them.

Players will need their powers to make their way through the city, solve puzzles and fight off a relentless force.

Overview: A platformer set in a strange land where you discover you have to power to both eliminate space entirely, and create space where there should be none. You can use your powers to expand the world or remove areas you have no need for. However you soon discover that the more you abuse your powers, the more you have to deal with the mysterious 'spacekeepers' who have arrived to stop you from altering the fabric of space and time to a disastrous level.

Mechanics: Within Seamer the main mechanic is the ability to draw out a space of the world and remove it entirely. This can be used to 'pull' yourself closer to a platform, or (for example) make it easier to reach a specific spot on the map you need to get to. There are 'spacekeeperthat will arrive to disrupt your abilities however, often blocking off sections of timespace to hinder your progress. Puzzles are built from this often by having a multi step process, where you could remove part of a cliff outside of the limited timespace to make a shaky edge fall onto one of the spacekeepers, killing them and allowing you to move previously restricted timespace.

Often you'll have to do the opposite however in regards to creating space. This can be used for things such as hiding from the spacekeepers by creating a gap in the ground to hide yourself within.

*Sorry about crappy pencil sketch. Was out and about and unable to do anything digitally*

Overview: Assimilation is a third person multiplayer title where the core idea is to grow your character through other humans you find (both NPC and other players on the map) in a persistent online world. The world map is intended to be enormous and exist on a single server, and is intended to have a specific end point to the game.

Mechanics: To begin with most players will be absorbing the NPC's around them in an effort to get the first bit of growth happening. As they continue growing larger however they will reach a point where NPC's give little in regards to overall mass gain relative to their overall size, so it becomes important to seek out other players. Assimilating another player will give you their mass combined with yours - yet the other player will be given a choice at this point. From here they can continue to exist as a part of your organism, or simply start again. Should they choose to remain part of your organism they can request to 'break away' from you to assimilate others on their own. The host player has the option of accepting or denying this request, and can choose the amount they want to let the other player break off with. At any time the host player can call back the other player to combine the organisms once more.

You will move slower based on how much mass you end up obtaining, and as such the largest players on the map will move far slower than the newer players. Eventually however the game is intended to end with a single player becoming large enough to 'devour' the entire planet, at which point the game will permanently end.

Overview: When young I would often play through an old point and click series called "Hugo" which (despite probably not being scary at all played in a modern day context) absolutely terrified me as a kid. I feel as though using the old horror idea of less is more can also very much apply to the horror aesthetic. Something about the pixel art style of ambiguity and sparseness seemed to inspire a kind of fear when married with the clumsy way of moving in old school adventure titles.

Aokigahara is an old school style point and click adventure game aiming to give older players the exact same sense of unease I felt as a child. The name comes from the Aokigahara Forest in Japan, also known as "The Suicide Forest" (See documentary here). You play as an unnamed character who aims to enter the forest and set the angered souls at peace however you can.

Mechanics: As you explore the forest you will often encounter pathways blocked off by ghosts, or have random encounters with them. You may also find bodies, along with living people camped out there. Each situation is to allow for the player to help these ghosts or people out through talking to them and providing guidance.

For the living you may talk to them and try explore their problems, with each one allowing for some kind of key 'thing' that gets them to open up. In each conversation you will get to a point where you are presented with a kind of ethereal word cloud where you can select words that you think pertain to their situation (i.e. 'Love', 'Family', 'Stress') etc. The more you progress with the character the more you will see them open up to you, eventually getting to a point where they are considered 'saved'.

For the dead a similar mechanic exists, but rather than being able to give them peace through talking alone you often have to find clues in the forest itself that would match up with them. You have to listen to their story, pull out what clues you can and present to them pieces that you may have found that might have been remnants of their former life.

Overview: Born into one of 10 tribes of vicious orcs, its up to you to work your way up through the tribe rankings and become the leader of the tribe. From there you will conquer other existing tribes and try to take over the entire landmass. Should you die in battle you are reborn into the tribe as a young orc, and will have to work your way up again in battles to reach your prior rank.

Mechanics: The game plays out as a third person brawler game where a great degree of freedom is given to the player in regards to ranks, weapons and tactics. While the player can micromanage every tiny detail (cannot micromanage within battle) it can also be entirely automated, depending on how much depth the player wants to go into.

To begin with the player has to fight other members of their tribe as they rise to power. From there each battle will increase in scale depending on the power of the tribe they attack. Battles are typically kept relatively small however, typically limiting the amount of warriors to about 30 on both sides at a time. This is to keep in tune with the narrative, and the fact that each unit they come up against shouldn't feel like disposable cannon fodder, but instead making them more formidable foes.

Overview: You play as a werewolf in a remote town within early 1900's England. The player themselves is unaware of the fact that they are a werewolf up until the first full moon occurs in the game. Up until that point they are simply the towns mayor where the game acts as a kind of simple building sim (trying to incentivize players to build the town as large as they can before the first attack) - with the player attempting to bring in more people to help its growth. Eventually the first full moon rolls around, your character transforms and you go on a rampage throughout the town.

From that point on its up to the player to try and manage the city in a number of different ways. They can trying to thin out the population of the city to make it less dangerous the next time an attack rolls around, or possibly build defenses against himself to try and save as many people as possible. Townsfolk will become suspicious and its up to the player to try save the town while protecting their secret.

Mechanics: During the werewolf sequences the player has to eat a certain number of people every minute otherwise they run the risk of dying. There is a HP bar up the top that slowly decreases as the night goes on. At the end of each rampage night the player must find ways to protect (or destroy) the town up until he next full moon. Building defenses makes it tougher during a rampage, but will draw attention and suspicion away from you. Building up the towns agriculture to allow for more wild animals to feast on will also help the player keep their hunger levels down throughout the night.

As the game progresses the player ultimately is working towards a number of different end states. A cure to their disease, a sustainable agriculture development with enough animals to eat, a sustainable defense system where few people die etc. Alternately there are also negative end states, such as having eaten the entire population, being figured out or simply having your entire townsfolk desert the village.

Overview: Contact is a choice heavy adventure title based in a modern vision of our world. Within this world a disease has spread across the entire human race, leaving skin mottled, damaged and decayed. The younger a person is, the quicker they seem to fall to this disease. With this the human race is beginning to die out one by one. People have become desperate and savage in their last moments of life. You take control of 4 of these people one by one, with the way you play the game affecting the story of the others.

Mechanics: You start one character, going through their arc and making decisions around this world that you live in. People will live and die based on your choices, with each one having long term ramifications. Your character has the potential to survive, but is designed to be tough.

When you finish this characters arc you will switch to one of the next characters of the 4, beginning directly after your former characters arc ends. Depending on how the story of your previous character played out, it will adjust the story accordingly. Different NPC's and settings will be changed and killed off depending on what choices you made prior.

The idea is that its impossible to save every single one of the 4 characters, and that based on the choices you make you have to choose whether to save your current character, or make choices that allow for the next character to have an easier time surviving. Ideally, the player will feel a strong connection to each of the characters, so will end up hopefully regretting saving a former one with their choices, or vice versa.

A player is rushing through a park at night, illuminated by the lamps overhead. His torch is all out and he knows he has to reach the building before being discovered. Suddenly up ahead the light begins to flicker before cutting out. After what feels like an eternity the light flicks back on, and in its place stands a figure.

Overview: In Salem players are put head to head in an asymetrical multiplayer title where one player acts as the horrors of the night, with the other being the player trying to complete objectives before being killed by the other. The survivor player must use light to his advantage to navigate through the world.

Mechanics: There are a number of different maps with a number of different possible scenarios. The scenarios are randomly generated at the start of each game, with the survivor player being the only one to know them. In the beginning the 'horror' player must place elements throughout the map that trap and catch the other player, along with the intention of scaring them. While they can place a number of damaging elements in the beginning of the map, they are far more limited once the game actually begins.

As the game begins, the 'horror' player must use their abilities to try and trick the other player, scaring them out of areas and disrupting their goals (perhaps trying to ward them away from an area you haven't placed traps in, or in a reverse way trick the player into thinking that's your intention) - The survivor player on the other hand must search for supplies such as batteries, matches, and anything they can use to safely navigate through the dark. Light can be used to kill off the other players horrors, so is an extremely useful (and limited) commodity.

Overview: is an experimental music game based around the idea of constructing a character through the way you play the music track. Each song the player goes through creates a new character who goes on to populate a small spherical world. Depending on the number of characters there are within the world, structures can begin to form. The way they are built is tied to their character traits and creation.

Mechanics: With each song the player plays along to the further their character will progress visually. Should they mess up the song as they press keys to the beat the character will become less colourful and intricate, slowly dissolving infront of the player. Depending on how the character is built by the end of the song they can then use this to populate their 'world'. Each worldspace will be overall affected by the characters that inhabit it, and depending on how they were built, the structures they build will reflect this.

The way the characters look and react however isn't inherently tied to how well the player did with the song, it also works off the music the player decides to import and use to play the game. Should the music be low tempo and calm, the character build will adjust itself accordingly.

Overview: Dotted throughout the land there sit ancient structures taking on the form of giant men. Some rumored them to be what came become, cast in stone by a vengeful god. Some say they were crafted by man himself and were simply forgotten over time. Perhaps they were simply beings who tired of moving about the world.

Your village elder has advised you to never step foot on these structures for fear of awakening things you do not understand. Yet, you cant help but feel some kind of mysterious force drawing you towards them. The game begins with you stepping outside the village late at night as you make your way towards these strange structures in the distance.

Mechanics: Your goal is to make your way atop these structures one by one. Each one acts as its own vertical platforming puzzler intended to take a good 30 minutes per tower. They differ however with the game being a kind of metroidvania style game, where you must collect different abilities and strengths before taking on different beings throughout the map. Upon reaching the top of one of these structures you will awaken it, granting you a new ability and a thanks from the creature who suddenly begins moving. The new ability will then allow you to climb another structure you were unable to before.

You are however given a certain degree of freedom, as the game (unbeknownst to the player) has an invisible 'tier' system. The first tier towers allow for you to climb them at any point in the game with your base abilities, while the second tier varies but mostly needs about 2/3 abilities gathered from tier 1, and finally tier 3 will require roughly 80% of the abilities gained from tier 1/2.

Overview: Quantum Seek is a hide and seek style game played through a series of 3D and 2D shapes and spaces within which the player can hide. It is a simple 2 player title where you must try and hide from the other player, but are given a number of options to run from them with, using portals, rotating worlds and making use of different dimensions. The world is a randomly generated cube within which a number of different props and environmental pieces are attached to help the other player hide within.

Mechanics: One player is placed in the world 10 seconds before the other, while the other has to wait temporarily. Within those 10 seconds the player must use whatever they can in the world to hide (and run if the other player gets near) - with the ability to turn themselves 2-dimensional to slip between cracks in the world, flatten against surfaces, or go 3-dimensional to run through portals to help them escape or confuse their opponent. On top of this, the person hiding can also temporarily turn into an environmental prop on the map (with an energy gauge that decreases quickly) they can also only move at 80% of the speed of the hunter to give the hunter the chance to catch them if spotted.

The hunter however is given a few upsides and a few downsides to even the gameplay out. If they get closer to the other player the background of the game will pulse slightly faster and faster depending on distance. However they also are unable to rotate the world freely to look around it (unlike the hunted) and have to actually walk and run around it to find the other player.

As soon as one player is caught, they get a small 10 second screen (could be something interactive like a cube building itself loading screen, or perhaps a preview of the world so they can try memorize what props are in the world, and if the other player is out of place) with it then swapping roles of them as the hunted now tries to hide.

Overview: Within BIRDBIRD your goal is to wake as many people as possible within the timeframe given. Each stage has you chirping trying to create a distinct beat to wake up your current target. As you progress you'll be given different effects to alter your birds chirps in strange ways to increase the complexity and mechanics involved in waking people up.

Mechanics: In the early stages of the game you are given 3 different chirps (LOW-MED-HIGH) that you have to time with the beat to wake up the sleeping person. The player however is given control over the beat based on how fast or slow they chirp, where they will be given feedback by the sleeping person to let them know what tempo and pitch is more annoying to them.

As the game progresses however you will pick up more and more ridiculous effects, equalizers and mechanics to play with e.g. You can unlock a dubstep wabbler which you can use by rotating an analog stick when chirping to distort your chirp. This seems to work well on older people, while a jazz flute seems to work better on younger people.

BIRDBIRD is intended to be a quick fun puzzle game, where the faster you figure out the persons weakness, the faster you can wake them up. The faster you wake people up, the better your score.

Overview: My Steel Hands is an experimental team based shooter where you have to 'construct' your person from the ground up through the parts you find in each match you play. You have an enormous degree of customisation in which can change a number of factors for your character (how fast you move, how durable a limb is, how tall your character might be) - mostly based around the limbs you end up attaching.

Mechanics: Each player is essentially a torso with a number of basic robotic limbs attached - with the torso and head remaining exposed to act as the main target in firefights. The limbs themselves are hugely customisable, and meant to be constructed in an almost 'sandbox' type manner. The more matches you play the more parts you'll unlock that can be used however you see fit i.e. If during a match you unlocked a large drill piece, while it would make sense to swap out a hand for it, you could theoretically replace your characters foot with it.

As the customisation is one of the most important pieces of the gameplay, there will be a robust physics system built around it. That means that theoretically a player could build a completely un-usable mech thats unable to walk (but the game will have a kind of automated warning to help let players know that a certain combination might not be the best)

With this the hope would be that players would constantly iterate and get creative with different builds that they find are particularly useful, and through that create a kind of customisation metagame.

You can also play in the 1v1 betting game mode (unlocked after a player reaches a certain level) where you will face up against another player solo. Whoever wins the match will get to keep every piece of hardware the other player used throughout. Should a player go into the match with just average common pieces then its not a massive loss if they did lose them, but also would be harder to win. If they went in with stronger rarer pieces on the other hand it would give a far greater risk and reward situation for the player.

Overview: Inspired by the 'Cube' movie series, you play as a strange creature acting as a sort of overseer for a labyrinth. Each cube shaped room is connected to another in a massive interconnected device. Your goal is to ensure none of the captured humans you have in your labyrinth escape as the game grows increasingly complex and frantic over time.

Mechanics: You start with a basic 3x3x3 cube structure, where each cube acts as its own trap room. You have a variety of different room style traps at your disposal, some of which have to be micromanaged as groups of humans enter them. The only rule with the overall construction of your structure is that there always has to be one exit leading from the middle to the outside - however trap rooms can be expensive, so sometimes a plain room to help them take longer to reach their destination will be needed (so often multiple exits will end up existing as a necessity of resources)

As the game progresses, further and further groups of humans spawn within your structure in a tower defense like fashion, and you will have to manage them in a three dimensional space. The structure will grow larger and larger and as such will get harder until you ultimately lose. The player essentially has to kill as many people as possible before you eventually get overwhelmed and some escape.

Overview: Set far into the future you are a scavenger of the old world remains. Passing through the empty unlit suburban streets at night, you enter dark decrepit houses one by one trying to find anything of value to bring back to your campsite. On rare occasions you will hear a distant rumble of raiders driving around the nearby streets. They travel in packs, often trying to find squatters - individuals who have been forced to live in these strange solitary buildings people used to call home. If found the raiders at least know they can eat tonight.

On this night however you hear the rumbling getting louder as a group of them appear from afar. Praying that they don't come in your direction you suddenly see light cast itself through the dust filled windows overhead. The rumbling stops, coinciding with the footsteps of numerous men. They are heading right for you.

Mechanics: This game is a stealth based exploration title where you are mostly given the environments of vast suburban streets, typically your goal is to find whatever objects you can that can be useful and get back to your campsite before the sun rises. Each day plays out with this simple task, however in each of these houses you can find a number of different randomly generated things. Oftentimes there are other people (can be hostile or non hostile), wild animals or even rare weapons to collect.

Theres a very small emphasis on combat, as the vast majority of the time its in your favour to avoid it. To further this point you will sometimes find yourself unlucky enough to have to deal with a raiding party. These often consist of 3-4 people travelling in a vehicle trying to hunt out scavengers like yourself. The player will be unable to take them out unless they have extremely powerful lategame items, or by planning their attack out very carefully - but the potential benefits can be enormous.

The game is intended to be a desolate, atmospheric and harrowing kind of experience, where the player constantly feels vulnerable.

Overview: You must duel your opponent in a number of battles across the ages, starting with ancient times as early cavemen, having to beat each other to death with rocks. No matter who the victor is, it will then progress to another time period, i.e. Aztecs, Edo period Japan, World War 2 - with the weapons adjusting to be appropriate to the time period.

Mechanics: The game plays out as a simple 2D game where you are given 3 different styles of attacks. In a sort of 'Rock Paper Scissors' format each one of the three attacks counters another, and is countered by one. You die quickly to a single attack before moving onto the next time period. The weapons however will play out slightly different depending on the period. Guns in particular become more about the players ability to aim and shoot quickly. They will still have to do it with a keyboard, but the aiming is handled by holding down a button, and the longer its held the more accurate the 'cone' of aim becomes.

Once you complete each of the games time periods, you are given a score of who of the two of you emerged victorious. While intended to be played by 2 people, it can be single player against the games AI.

Overview: This is a simple kart racer built from a voxel engine, allow for completely destructible courses and opponents. Should a player be so inclined, they could spend enough time destroying parts of the course that they could leave a hole across a section of the road.

Mechanics: Each player has a rechargeable 'voxelmeter' which recharges over time. With this they can do a number of different things, but the most important mechanic is that they can construct their own road while simultaneously driving. A full meter wont last long enough that a player can build their way to the exit immediately, but they can use this in different ways. If they are building a track they can either build a useful one which gives them a shortcut, or even potentially build 'decoy' tracks which lead to a trap.

One of the major points of the gameplay is leaving physical traps and holes within the road, over ridges where other players might not see it. But the other players can also place 'voxels' within the world to construct barriers, alternate paths, and even other decoy cars. Other players wont be completely stopped by things such as barriers (as they can crash through them) - but it will slow them down.

The courses themselves are often quite freeform, sometimes being impossible to get to the finish with the level as it currently stands. This could be things such as two pieces of track free floating in the sky that aren't even connected in any way, but players have to find ways to get across before the other players. In this sense its less of a lap based game, but more of a point A to point B racer.

Overview: Within this title you are tasked with escaping from death in a combination between old school adventure games, and modern day endless runners.

Mechanics: The game plays out as a multi-path style point and click adventure title where you have to work your way through areas and solve puzzles before inevitably reaching your doom. The game is intended to be played just once (whenever possible) - where the players have to build their own specific narrative that is mostly unique to each story. Each area has 3 different paths to go down depending on how you solve the 'puzzle'/situation - in a very grey area they are typically split into good, neutral and evil choices. The evil choice is typically the fastest way to make it through the level, but the most morally questionable, while the good choices work in the opposite way. That being said it doesn't matter what choice the player takes as the morality of the choices is only something they will have to internalize, the game will not punish or reward you for it outside of how much time it takes.

Each area you enter has some specific theme surrounding the idea of death and others mortality, you then have to choose how to solve it before death comes for you. Should you kill the person or someone in the room you can leave them for death to 'collect' to buy you more time.

Overview: On a ancient earth-like planet, you are the sole survivor of your tribe, worshipping the sun each day, the almighty god of your former tribesmen. One day you wake up and find yourself practically glowing & upon touching the ground you find yourself propelled in the opposite direction at incredible speeds. Sensing you have been blessed by the almighty sun, you decide to travel to the capital of your lands to get revenge for your people,

Mechanics: The game plays out as a third person action title where the primary mechanic is to use this rechargeable sun energy to propel yourself through the world. Using a strong sense of physics, you can 'explode' sections of your body to propel yourself in that specific direction. This opens itself up as the player is given fairly free reign on the physics interaction, allowing for freeform interactions with this mechanic, with the idea being that both your momentum/movement and only source of damage are tied to the same key presses.

Environments are entirely destructible tied to the same physics system, allowing for the player to cause huge havoc, while simultaneously using pieces of the world as weapons (i.e. exploding yourself into the air, then landing in the centre of a pyramid to fire bricks outwards in a kind of primitive shrapnel bomb)

Through this the player has to progess to the capital city and use their powers however they want to cause as much chaos as possible.