A new year means a new year of gaming to which to look forward. While there are a few AAA co-op titles set to release over the next few months that we're excited about, there are also quite a few independent co-op games that are slated to come out within the first 6 months of the year. So, without further ado, we present to you our most anticipated indie co-op titles of 2013, in no particular order.
This is a very recent one to show up on our radar. Really Slick, the one-man independent game studio run by a former NASA employee, is currently developing this cooperative “cave shooter” that draws inspiration from classics like Asteroids, Lunar Lander, and Choplifter. The demo for the game was fun and while there wasn’t a lot of direct interaction between myself and co-op partner, e.g., sharing health/lives, rescuing your ally, there were some interesting moments. The physics at play within the system means one player can boost/float past enemies to draw their attention and fire, while the other player lazily swoops in to shoot them down. No release date has been set just yet, but it should be out some time in the second half of this year.
Check out our interview with Terry where he discusses what to expect from Retrobooster, some of the difficulties he’s faced in the game’s development, and what else he may have planned.
With the rise of “Western” RPGs like Mass Effect, Skyrim, and even Diablo, to a degree, the RPGs that were more directly based on the pen-and-paper style (such as Baldur’s Gate) seemed to be on their way out. However, these RPGs are not entirely forgotten, or gone. Larian Studios, developers of the Divinity series, seems to be comprised of gamers that miss those days as the next entry, Divinity: Original Sin, will be “a return to the roots.” From item combination and management, to dialogue where both main characters have a say in what the party does, this RPG seems to be shaping up to be the kind of experience that will attempt to truly immerse the players into the world as much as possible and capture some of that pen-and-paper charm.
Divinity: Original Sin is currently slated for a Q2 2013 release. Watch our discussion with Swen Vinke, Larian Studios’ founder, about the cooperative elements of the game and why they decided to make this kind of a game.