Interesting games on itch.io: May 10

I’m a big fan of itch.io for the freedom and open platform that it allows for developers to be creative, experimental, and directly canvas the audience for feedback for games that are not yet ready for primetime on Steam and its ilk. In addition, itch.io allows you to be transgressive, subversive, and downright dangerous. It’s a true “art gallery” for game ideas and creative developers, and it should be celebrated for that.

What makes itch.io a little difficult at times is finding things that are interesting to play. Discovery is a real issue when great ideas are buried among high school projects and nasty little efforts to scam a quick buck from players. With that in mind, I thought what might be helpful to readers would be if I did a brief write-up of interesting games that I’ve come across on itch.io each week. In many cases these games will be unfinished or “in development,” but I’m highlighting them because they promise something special and are well worth keeping on the radar.

Note: I also haven’t played these games. I highlight them as interesting based on the itch.io description and concept. Where I find the time to do actual reviews or other coverage, I will compose separate articles on the game in question. These aren’t so much an endorsement (or piece of criticism) as they are a head’s up.

Naturally, if you want to pick up a couple of the Dee Dee visual novels while you’re there on itch.io to support our work here, I would be eternally grateful! There’s a new one that recently came out, Sade!

A Quaint Tale

This is a cooperative game for two players. Basically, because all the humans have gone into lockdown, the hot chips that form a less-than-healthy core of the seagull diet have disappeared. Now you need to find a way to feed your starving flock. This game is a student project, and if the art is anything to go by… these students have a long history in game development ahead of them. This game really does look premium.

Well now, does this have some real potential or what. Wonhon is a stealth-action, top-down game about revenge in 1920’s-era Korea. You play as a young girl who is killed in an attack on her village. The Korean God of Death appears, giving the girl the ability to turn into a ghost and possess living creatures. She needs to use that ability well to pick her way through hordes of enemies and exact her revenge. 

Remember Crazy Taxi? Of course you do (or at least should). It is one of the all-time great arcade “racing” games. Pizza City looks like it’s a riff on that, and that’s just perfect. In Pizza City, you need to deliver pizzas, as fast as possible, by driving your motorcycle around while also maintaining the balance of the pizza boxes, so they don’t fall over. In other words, this game is the ultimate training simulator for Dominos Pizza delivery “experts”, and they should probably play it, because they don’t often get either thing right.

Looking at the game, it looks like it’s quite refined for what it’s looking to do, which is especially impressive when you consider that it was made in about 40 hours for a game jam. Playing it will remind you that we don’t get enough Crazy Taxi-likes. What a game that was.