Tribeca Games Spotlight 2023 featured seven unique indie games across various genres, with interviews of developers.
A Highland Song
- Developer: Inkle
- Publisher: Inkle
- Platforms: Windows, Nintendo Switch
- Release: 2023 (Release date TBA)
A Highland Song is a narrative adventure game based in the Scottish Highlands. You’ll play as a teenager embarking on a journey to find the sea while traversing majestic mountains and dangerous valleys, bracing cruel weather, and meeting some interesting people along the way. The game focuses on platforming and aims to tell fascinating stories about wild Scottish highlands. Alike all Inkle’s games, A Highland Song promises to mesmerize gamers with a deep and interesting narrative.
Goodbye Volcano High
- Developer: KO_OP
- Publisher: KO_OP
- Platforms: PS4, PS5, Windows, Mac
- Release: August 29, 2023
Goodbye Volcano High is a cinematic visual novel about a pair of best friends and bandmates, looking at the end of high school, with the end of the world right around the corner. Oh, did we mention that they are dinosaurs? Players will be able to embody Fang and Trish in this sim, weighing their options, looking for love, and their next hit song. A cross between a musical and dating sim, Goodbye Volcano High urges gamers to make bold choices, fall in love, and create endless possibilities in the characters’ last chance at adolescence.
Chants of Sennaar
- Developer: Rundisc
- Publisher: Focus Entertainment
- Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, Windows, Nintendo Switch
- Release: September 5, 2023
Chants of Sennaar is a puzzle-based action-adventure game inspired heavily by the myth of the Tower of Babel. Gamers play as a traveler passing through a strange city, solving puzzles using a myriad of different languages created by annoyed gods to create confusion and discontent among the city’s residents. The aim of the traveler’s journey in the game is to establish peace among five different kinds of people who live there, by solving puzzles using languages as keys. The game will also incorporate certain stealth and action gameplay mechanics.
Nightscape
- Developer: Mezan Studios
- Publisher: Mezan Studios
- Platforms: Windows
- Release: Late 2023 (release date TBA)
Mezan Studios’ debut puzzle platformer indie will let you play as Layla, a budding astronomer with magic powers, who will retrace the fallen stars back into the night sky to recreate broken constellations. The Qatar-based studio has incorporated various elements from Arabic mythology to create a mesmerizing 2.5D experience with Nightscape where players can learn more about Arabic constellations, that are wildly different from Greek and Western counterparts.
Stray Gods
- Developer: Summerfall Studios
- Publisher: Humble Bundle
- Platforms: Windows
- Release: August 3, 2023
Stray Gods is a roleplaying musical visual novel that incorporates some of the classic characters from Greek mythology. You will play as Grace, a seemingly ordinary woman who has had the power of song reluctantly thrust upon her. In this game, players will be able to make choices to progress the story and form romantic relationships with one of the possible four companions. Grace has to solve the murder mystery of the last Muse before her mysterious relatives come forward to claim her life.
The Expanse: A Telltale Series
- Developer: Deck Nine, Telltale Games
- Publisher: Telltale Games
- Platforms: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Windows
- Release: July 27, 2023
A detailed look and behind-the-scenes footage and interviews of The Expanse team were showcased during the Tribeca Games Spotlight 2023. The Expanse is an immersive Telltale series that is set to serve as a prequel to the Amazon Prime series of the same title. The game follows the leader of a deep space scavenging crew, Camina Drummer, as they hunt for treasure along the Belt. The game intends to offer every gamer a unique experience, based solely on the choices they make. True to its name, The Expanse has a massive map, with every deviation and action from the player registered as a unique story point. The developer pride themselves on offering the players an experience of complete immersion, as the players will be making their own story through this game, rather than following along a pre-designed narrative structure.
Despelote
- Developer: Julián Cordero and Sebastian Valbuena
- Publisher: Panic, Inc.
- Platforms: Windows
- Release: 2024 (release date TBA)
Despelote is a slice-of-life soccer game based on the streets of Quito, Ecuador in 2001. You will play as an eight-year-old boy in a city full of excited, irritated, busy, and meddling people, kicking the ball around, as Ecuador climbs out of a burgeoning financial crisis. A single ray of communal hope emerges as the country’s soccer team comes closer than ever to qualifying for the soccer world cup. The developers have described the game as ‘a soccer game about the people.’
Source – Tribeca Games Spotlight
