Release Date: 16/10/2020
Played On: Win
Available On: Win
Time Played: 2h 3m
Progress: Completed
Developer: droqen / torcado / Bibiki / Salman Shurie / Stuffed Wombat / Beethoven / Elliot Herriman / Bluish-Green Productions / Softerror Interactive / Sylvie / de Fault / Chard / Richard Campbell / Clovelt / Jok
Publisher: droqen / 10mg / Gesinimo Games / Bluish-Green Games Inc / Far Few Giants
This is something of a different post than usual, as I'll be talking about a collection of games instead of an individual release. From time to time I like to pick up a cheap little bundle of indie games that are nothing more than a showcase of the kind of creative and unique ideas that are out there. Sure it means I've bought a bunch of total stinkers in the past, but every now and then I get lucky and stumble upon a handful of excellent little hors d'oeuvres to wet my creative appetite.
One reason I love finding little indie projects is because it reminds me that the internet isn't all bad after all. I'm the kind of person who avoids social media where possible, and tried to minimise my exposure to all the negative influences that online life can bring. However, the way that the internet facilitates creative discovery and gives artists of any discipline a platform to share their work, always brings me back into the internet loving fold.
For many years, I've picked up various little indie projects here and there from single developers who are working on their games for any number of reasons. Some are trying out something knew, others are building prototypes as proof of concept showpieces, while just about everyone is trying to learn new things by pushing themselves creatively. What makes it all a lot of fun is that many developers choose to pop their half-baked ideas up on their web sites for anyone to download and play, which is an exciting prospect for someone like me.
I love seeing what kind of new ideas can be included in video games and how they might manifest differently to other mediums. As an artist and a writer, most of my ideas end up being strings of words or a mess of lines and colour, but seeing similar ideas turned into gameplay mechanics and systems design, is another thing entirely. Thus, whenever I've seen an interesting looking bundle of little games from indie developers, I've eagerly made the purchase.
They're not all winners though, and I have picked up my fair share of absolute stinkers here and there. Not only is it true that all ideas are not equal, but just because you try it doesn't mean it's something that should be shared. What's more, there are certain developers who like to talk up their games more than they ever deserve, some will even flat out lie and oversell their unfinished prototype as a complete product. Suffice to say that game developers are just as human as the rest of us, and the addition of money makes some less than trustworthy.
Hence why picking up an "experimental" bundle of games can be a real roll of the dice where you're just as likely to strike out as hit a home run. Often it's not even the entire bundle that fails, and only a handful of the games on offer will prove to be worthwhile, but even that can feel like a win in many ways. The point being that bundles of little indie games really feel like the lucky-dip of the gaming world, so sometimes it's worth highlighting the ones with more killer than proverbial filler.
To that end the 10mg Collection is a bundle that managed to keep me captivated through every title, even when it lost me in a few places I could still appreciate the art for what it was trying to do. Essentially this is a collection of ten, ten minute games, hence the name. Each game is developed by a separate team and each one showcases a few unique ideas that may or may not hit you in just the right way.
On their own, each game in the bundle costs about two to three bucks each, but you can pick up the whole collection for fifteen of your hard earned dollars. This might seem a bit high for a bundle of indie prototypes, as most of the others I've come across are either free, or just a few bucks at most. However, while I don't think the full individual price of roughly thirty dollars is all that reasonable, the fifty percent bundle discount brings it down to a price point I can accept. Mostly because I've tried so many similar bundles in the past, and this one has been curated in such a way that there's a lot of variety between the games, and each one works well and has been made with focus. You can tell that each title in the collection has aimed to hit the brief, which seems to have been something along the lines of making a ten minute game with a gimmick that elevates it above its short and low budget status.
I think that for the most part, each development team managed to achieve their goal and this is truly a collection of interesting and diverse ideas. While not all of them really worked for me personally, a couple of other folks I know were playing through the collection at the same time and what we found was that there were some specific preferences that cropped up. Suffice to say that even though you might not enjoy every entry in the collection, there's enough there to make it worthwhile, and the rest is still interesting and only takes about ten minutes to play either way.
Thus, overall I think the 10mg Collection is a fine example of how these kind of bundles should be put together. It's nice to see a theme running through each game, even if it's only the length, but at the same time it's nice to see each team being given the time to make whatever they want. This sets a bundle like this apart from the regular run of prototypes and game jam games, that are either incomplete or rushed and low quality. Hence why I have no problem recommending this collection to anyone who likes to experience new ideas that make your brain see things a little differently.
The following are my thoughts on each of the individual games and there are some light spoilers along the way so by all means go and play the games and come back later if you'd like. If you have any interest in unique ideas that may or may not work, you should go and grab these games and have a go!
The first game I played from the collection was 10mg :), which is basically a series of minigames that subverted my expectations of what games are asking me to do. There's a Breakout style game where the ball sticks to every square it hits and grows until the screen runs out of colour. A Pong variant starts you off with a huge bat that shrinks every time you hit the ball, while I clocked up seventeen laps on an oval racetrack, before realising that I should have driven off into the distance instead.
10mg :) might have been one of the most satisfying games in the collection, as it was easy to understand the gimmick it was chasing, while it managed to use the same subversive design again and again without it getting tired. I love being surprised in games and this one repeatedly had me laughing with each twist and turn.
Next I played 10mg: Always Down, which I was expecting to dislike as it proudly advertised itself as a platformer, which is much less than a plus in my world. However, this was one of the games that I ended up liking a lot more than friends I discussed it with. The basic premise is that you platform your way down through a series of caves and passages. There are animals to avoid on the way down, and even though you can jump and go any direction you want, the level is design in such a way that you only end up travelling deeper and deeper underground.
It reminded me a little of how Thomas Was Alone joked about the idea of every platforming character feeling the need to go up and to the right (as most games progress in that direction). However, in Always Down, you only ever have the option to head down until the very end, which culminates in an expressive outpouring of the idea which I won't spoil here. For whatever reason, this one hit me a little more than other folk, so take that with a big grain of salt.
10mg: Cover Me In Leaves is the first of a couple of visual novels in the collection, and it didn't really work for me all that well. This is another that friends and I disagreed on, as one of them loved the execution of this story, while I found it to be quite lazy and not very well written.
I suppose it's meant to be some kind of light horror themed story about death and ... well I don't really remember if I'm honest. However, what I do remember is the art in the game, which looked like a series of photos that had been put through some harsh photoshop filtering to make everything look a bit surreal. I often say that visual novels live or die by their art and this one didn't really excite me very much at all.
Interestingly enough, 10mg: HANDMADEDEATHLABYRINTH Issue 0 was one that I enjoyed overall, despite it being a top-down dungeon crawler, which is another genre I typically don't get all that excited about. Except, this one was clear about what needed to be done and I liked the short length and relatively abrupt ending.
There's really nothing to spoil except the ending, as you're just a dude who has to explore a small dungeon and kill things before they kill you Along the way you get some magical powers and fight a couple of bosses, and probably die a whole lot while you figure out the best course of action in each room. In fact the whole experience was kind of frustrating until the final boss, where things take a bit of a silly turn and I was left feeling like the frustrating crawl that preceded it was worth the effort.
Even though I played it on my own, 10mg: Locked In is meant to be played in local multiplayer where each person takes the role of someone in an argument. The game features a husband and wife who are arguing over what they want to do with their daughter whose behaviour needs attention in one way or another. Naturally, one parent doesn't want to do much and just let her grow out of it, while the other parent wants some proper intervention with professionals and all that good stuff.
Despite being intended as a multiplayer experience, I still had fun playing through the arguments as both sides, while trying to argue from both perspectives instead of just my own. There isn't a whole lot going on past the dialogue in this game, but as a neat little visual novel experience, I'd say it's up there in the collection. Plus, it's a nice enough story depicting some of the issues that could arise as a result of real-world lockdown and having to spend more time in close proximity with others.
One of the most dissonant titles in the collection for me was 10mg: Sealed Estate, as it's a top-down horror mystery, which doesn't sound like my cup of tea at all. However, I really enjoyed the art style and the high contrast lighting effects that made exploration a lot of fun, even though there's not all that much to explore.
Essentially you're running through corridors in an estate where furniture and found notes provide abstract clues about some kind of evil that's hunting you. The further you go and the more rooms you enter, the weirder everything becomes and you eventually start getting chased by disembodied eyes and picking up telephones with nothing but static on the other end. I'm not sure if I'd want a full game like this one, but as a short little experience I actually quite enjoyed myself.
Interestingly, I thought I might enjoy 10mg: You Are Such A Soft And Round Kitten, but I ended up disliking it a lot more than friends and it might have been one of the lowest points in the bundle for me. Not least because of the hideous art style that I couldn't even begin to enjoy on any level. However, don't forget that art is purely subjective and even though I hated it, I'm not saying that it's bad. For what it's worth, the game definitely has an art style that's consistent and deliberate, it just so happens that I really don't like that kind of thing.
The gameplay itself is more about figuring out the gimmick along the way than actually using that gimmick to its full potential. The first half of the game feels like some fairly dodgy platforming and exploration, while the second half ends up being a simple walk to the end. Once you figure out the gimmick of this game, there's really no more challenge and it's simply a case of getting to the end.
From my least favourite in the collection to the one that I enjoyed most of all. 10mg: SNAAK had me surprised and intrigued from start to finish and I very much enjoyed its combination of known mechanics. It's basically a blend between Metal Gear Solid and classic Snake, which also featured in 10mg :).
The idea is that you explore a Metal Gear inspired facility as an entity that moves as a snake would in the game Snake. Along the way there are turrets to avoid, sealed doors to eventually unlock, and barriers to pass through. The fun part is that you can move from one orange line to another as the snake. There are a few puzzles along the way that utilise this mechanic, until you reach the final puzzle that has an elegantly simple solution, but it took me about ten minutes just to figure it out. The satisfaction I was left with at the end of this game made me feel like a true genius, even though the opposite is no doubt true considering how long it took me to finish the game in the first place.
The final visual novel in the collection is 10mg: SLASHER, Interrupted, which features a group of friends hanging out and telling ghost stories. Each friend has their own personality quirks and are into different things, so at regular points in the story they will interrupt with suggestions about what happens next.
Thus, it ends up being a mad-libs kind of story telling game where you get to choose different options for what happens next along the way. Although I'm not sure this particular game was all that well suited to the ten minute format, as I feel as though the format would work best if it were applied to a much longer story that had many more branching paths. As it is, you can only end up picking about three or four different ideas, so the story seems much dumber than it needed to be. However, everything in this game is put together really well, the art is a good quality (though not really my taste) and the writing is actually okay.
Finally one of the most interesting games in the collection is 10mg: Stroke, simply due to the fact that not only was it a pleasure to play, but I couldn't really think of a proper genre to put it in. The game is about a dude who has to take his wife to the hospital after she suffers a stroke. As you wait around for her to be treated, you're given the chance to talk to the rest of your family and choose how to deal with the emergency emotional situation that's risen in each of them.
I suppose what I liked most about this one was the gentle way that the story gets told and how it felt very realistic and possible in the real world. The game's Steam page says that it's a memory turned into a game, so I have to assume that the subject matter is based on real life source material, which I am always a fan of. Ultimately though, this is a very quiet and simple little game that tells a sensitive and nuanced story very well.
So there you have it - a few standouts and a couple of duds along the way, but overall an interesting and fun collection that I would recommend checking out. Whether I enjoyed it or not, each game in the collection delivered on their promise of trying out a unique idea and for being a complete game despite the short running time.
As far as little indie game bundles go, I'm pleased to find a bunch of devs that have organised themselves into a quality collection like this one. I'd love to see more creative minds get together and take the freedom of a game jam, but extend it into make some short little games that are well developed and are able to stand on their own two feet. What makes this collection special is that most of the gimmicks used in the games wouldn't really translate well into a longer game with larger scope. However none of these games outstayed their welcome or turned into a boring repeat of the same thing over and over, which is a clever way to try out something new without beating it to death.