E3 2015 - Loot Interactive Bring Indie Gems To All

What is truly great about E3 is it is not all about the next Call of Duty or the newest hardware, smaller indie teams can also show their games off, getting a lot of exposure they might otherwise miss out on. One such group was Loot Interactive, a California based team that helps bring titles released on other platforms and they had three games on the show floor that are all coming to PlayStation 4 and other platforms really soon.

First up is Whispering Willows a game that is part horror, part adventure and all around beautiful to look upon. The game is due out later this month on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita has you in the role of Elena, a your lady who has come to a spooky mansion to search for her missing father, but as she arrives she ends up down in the catacombs below the mansion and must make her way out.

Of course, nothing is straight forward and here things are different, specifically Elena is different as she can Astral Project, as in her spirit can leave her body and go and explore the world. That is something you will need to do in order to progress anywhere, there will be doors that have a switch on the other side of it, but you can send your spirit off to take control of the switch and open it for you. When you do this, you can swap between a ghostly version of yourself and a wisp, which allows you to enter smaller areas, but you won’t be able to possess anything in that form.

What you need to be careful of is that while you are in spirit form, your spirit can not be harmed, the same thing cannot be said for your body, if you leave it alone to long and something comes and kills your body, you die completely. There are creatures that you must flee from and doing so requires you to leave your body so you can let your body escape, it adds a level of thrill to it, which is fun. Elena has an amulet around her neck that grants her this ability but it also lets her interact with the ghosts around the world and in doing so, she can solve their problems which will get her things to help her progress.

The game will take most players around 6 hours or so to complete, but for others who want to know everything about what is happening, there are notes littered all around the world that will help to explain the story and world even more, meaning the game could last a while longer if you want to collect everything.

The second game that Loot Interactive were showing off is called Back to Bed and the premise is as the name sounds, to get back to bed. Except you are not controlling the character who needs to get back, you are controlling a portion of his mind. Bob has a habit of sleep-walking, but when he does he usually wakes up and does not get a full nights sleep, which no one likes, so you take control of his sub-conscious and must direct him through dreamworlds to get him back to bed, so he can rest up for whatever the day throws at him. 

To do this, you must make sure Bob does not walk off the edge or run into anything that might cause him to wake up, but the catch is, he is always on the go, so you need to think quickly. The worlds take inspiration from MC Esher and will have you taking walks up walls and around paths that make no sense, but they totally do. As the levels progress, Bob will have to avoid gaps and alarm clocks and more, with each offering up new challenges to overcome, in one instance the alarm clocks, which walk faster than Bob, were always hitting him whenever he followed their path, so using an apple to make them turn, you can get them out of the way and then get back to getting Bob, back to bed. 

The concept sounds simple, but if you think of any of those games where you must get a ball to the goal, this takes that and ramps it up to a 15. The game looks to be challenging, so the 30 levels that come with the game should keep players on their toes for hours, but if you happen to get past all of them, a second mode will unlock that will actually swap them all around and offer even more of a challenge.

The game is due out in the next few months for PlayStation 4, 3 and Vita and looks like a lot of fun. The final game that Loot were showing off was Velocibox, which sounds like a strange name, but the concept is straight forward, you are a box that gains velocity as you move. The goal is to avoid the obstacles as you move forward and collect 5 boxes to move to the next level, the problem is that the world is always moving and all you can do is move left or right and flip the world.  

The first level starts off nice and slow, but it does not sit there, it just keeps cranking objects out for you too avoid, some are just pillars you need to move around from, others are across the entire ground and need you to flip the world to avoid, it is hard to explain here, but once you play it makes sense. What surprised me is that only 9 levels come with the game, which originally released on PC and at first I thought 9 seems like way to few, but when I was told that no one had made it past level 3 at E3, I thought perhaps that might enough.

But when you do pass all 9 starter levels, another 9 will unlock that will offer you even more of a challenge. While Loot did not make the game, they are bringing it to PS4 and adding some new features to the game, such as on PC whenever you died, you had to start back at level 1 and get back to where you were, but now you can just start back on the level you were on. Velocibox sounds simple, it looks simple but it is as far from simple as you can get and that is a good thing.