The Boston Festival of Indie Games was only a one day event, but it was packed with so much content that it's taken three days to go through it all. Games ranged in scope from near-AAA to student project, all running side-by-side and getting equal attention from the convention visitors. This trilogy of features covers what I played in my six hours on the show floor, but that was only a slice of everything available. I wish I'd had time to hit Mendel but it was always busy when I walked by, and Barricade looked interesting but the show wrapped up before I got to it. Basically, don't take this as the highlights of the show but rather a cross-section. So for Part 3, much like Part 1 and Part 2, here's the final batch of games presented in no particular order barring the final entry, which is the one I cast my ballot for as show favorite.

GunGunGun- A simple arena shooter in the vein of Super Crate Box, except with a scrolling playfield and a western theme. A lady outlaw stole from a pack of bandits and now she's trapped on a train, beseiged by the vengeful gang and with the law hot on both their heels. Getting out alive is unlikely and if she's going down it's going to be in a blaze of glory. Starting off with a simple pistol she runs, jumps, and shoots her way across the train cars, picking up new guns as enemies drop them and fighting for every last second of life. As is standard for the genre nowadays she shoots twin-stick style, aiming with the right stick and firing with the trigger. Enemies come in four styles and can drop eight different weapons, and it doesn't take too long to get used to each gun and figure out a personal favorite. Lady Outlaw automatically grabs whatever gun she runs over (health powerups too) so you'll need to either be careful with your movements to avoid losing what you've got or adaptable to sudden changes as you play. It's not a particularly complex side-scrolling arena shooter but the art style is appealing and the action flows nicely. Plus the beta is up free to all at itch.io, so go check it out and give the Greenlight a bit of loving while at it.

https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/3607085/type/dlg/sid/UUhgUeUpU34625/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8R6Peoga5c

Marblehead- The Modular Robotic Bipedal Laborer, Heavy-Duty, is a robot designed exactly like its name implies. It can attach bits to its frame to increase its capabilities and the MRBL-HD unit is designed for serious work. In its simplest form it's not much more than metallic tube-arms attached to a domed head with an antenna, spider-like in its walk and the ability to hang off walls.  Attach a heavy ball unit to the underside, however, and all of a sudden its mobility and inertia get a drastic improvement. Rolling around the Metroidvania levels has a good feel to it, and it's good fun playing with the dash move to pick up huge air off the curved ramps in each area. Marblehead is, however, a student project, and while the physics feel good there's no avoiding that it's got a bad case of programmer art. Level design also needs a bit of attention, with areas that look like secrets actually just being out of reach. As a first effort, though, it's very promising, with a great central gameplay mechanic being put through its paces in a platformer world designed for its abilities. Marble Head is free over at itch.io.

https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/3607085/type/dlg/sid/UUhgUeUpU34625/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GNI0M6dU_w

RYB- Cold, unfeeling logic doesn't seem like the best place to build a playground but decades of great puzzling have proven otherwise. RYB has no time limit and no pressure, but its simple rules hide a devious, colorful game of logical gymnastics.  Each piece of a board's design needs to be a specific color, as defined by the pips inside. A triangle with a blue pip will have a neighbor that's blue, but there's no way of knowing which one without using that information in conjunction with the pips on other pieces. Uncolored pieces may have new information on them, or maybe they just fill in completely and tell you nothing new. They can be jerks that way. Eventually the dots will combine into multiple colors, such as a red pip on one piece and yellow on another indicating an orange piece in between.  One “if this then that” statement flows into another before you can make a single move on the board, sorting out which piece turns what color in a careful and precise sequence.  It's a deep dive into pure puzzle solving that combines simple shapes and color with the logical gymnastics of the Hexcells series. RYB is currently available on iOS and coming soon to PC.

https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/3607085/type/dlg/sid/UUhgUeUpU34625/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvWcLcBdfa4

Underworld Ascendant- The Ultima Underworld games are a long time gone but their legacy is still felt today. Being able to create your own path through an RPG, taking quests in whatever order you like while being able to perform such advanced actions as looking up and down in a fully-realized 3D world was a revolution at the time, way back in the early 90s.  Underworld Ascendant may not have the Ultima name attached at the front but it has everything else to create a worthy updated to the series legacy, including a good percentage of the original development team.  You play as the Avatar, explore the Stygian Abyss, and can access areas that will be familiar to long-time series fans, and there's no mistaking the game's title font, so while the title is missing a single word at the start the game is far more than a simple spiritual successor.  After a successful Kickstarter completed in mid-2015 the game entered full development, but it wasn't until earlier this year that the new art style tied the project together.  What had been a standard first-person fantasy turned into a world with a style based on playing with lead miniatures, and everything got remade with a hand-crafted look that's much chunkier but also instantly likeable.  The game behind the art style is an open world RPG, or as open as the underground gets, letting you go anywhere in a world run by the three factions of Dark Elves, Dwarves, and mushroom-people Shamblers.  The BostonFIG demo was the pre-alpha prototype made available to backers earlier this year, and you can see it in action below.  There's still a lot of work to be done, with the vertical slice of the Stygian Abyss being the next major milestone, complete with more gampelay systems and actual roleplaying in a town with all three factions.

https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/3607085/type/dlg/sid/UUhgUeUpU34625/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJHpb46-WCY

Authentic Octopus Game- Science teaches many things with the goal of expanding our horizons but apparently it's never turned its sights on octupuses. Authentic Octopus Game attempts to right science's oversight by teaching through play, following the journey of an adventurous octopus as it makes its way through a Gameboy-style platforming adventure. The goal is to open a box, which is guaranteed to be worth all the effort of jumping and shooting your way to it. What's in the box? Why does the octopus need to open it? These are questions for the narrator to deal with, and it provides regular information and judgment on your actions in a slightly sarcastic, always entertaining way. On the one hand Authentic Octopus Game is a middling-decent platformer that gets by on its sense of humor, but on the other it's got a great sense of humor so the game is playing to its strengths.

https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/3607085/type/dlg/sid/UUhgUeUpU34625/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsiZq76kY6o

And finally, the game that earned not only earned my ballot for Audience Choice but took the whole category as well as the Compelling Gameplay Loop trophy at the post-event awards ceremony:

Ape Out- This may be a bit anticlimactic due to the complete lack of assets available for the game, and its web site is little more than a static image, so I'm afraid you're going to have to take my word for what a great roguelike action romp it is. Ape Out stars an ape in an overhead-view escape from its cage, rampaging through a complex of rooms and corridors while grabbing and pushing the guards blocking its escape. The ape has a total of two moves available, but its overwhelming power makes it incredibly deadly. Grab a guard and carry it around as a shield, or push it into a wall to turn your captor into a vivid splat. Even better, you can push one guard into another to take both of them out at once, which somehow refused to stop making me laugh no matter how many times I did it. In addition to splatting guards against walls you can also grab pieces of defeated enemies to throw, and while it's not a killing attack it does buy a brief moment of stun-time against anyone it hits. Guards get bigger and quicker on the draw the farther you go, although I have to admit I only saw up to level 2 so it's hard to say what other surprises might be waiting.

While this may sound a bit simple, it's simple in the way of a good arcade game, and the art puts in a fantastic job at making the action fun to watch.  Ape Out has a unique art style that's influenced by minimalist painters like Saul Bass, plus a little Jackson Pollock thrown in for good measure.  The ape is solid, unshaded orange, guards are white with a little color detailing on the weapons to let you know what you're up against, and the levels are all blue-grey floors and dark grey walls.  In motion it looks fantastic, with the heavy solid colors getting a rough painted texture and animating smoothly as new lines of sight reveal what's ahead.  You can see a little of it in action right here, but be warned this is an incredibly low-quality off-screen recording.  On the plus side, there's no resisting the killer drum beat.

And that was Boston FIG- six hours of walking around, looking at a wealth of gaming, and talking to any developer who wanted to chat.  Like any good gaming show there were plenty of surprises and unexpected discoveries, and while there was a lot I didn't bother with (nobody plays everything) there were also games that turned out to be excellent on taking a second look.  The wealth of great gaming is incredible if you can figure out how to find it, and Boston FIG did a fantastic job at shining the spotlight on local talent that deserved a chance to shine.