There’s no escaping the fact that SXSW Sydney – Australia’s iteration of Austin’s tech, music and film event, now in its third year – is absolutely beset by brands. In Tumbalong park on Saturday, families who had arrived for a free concert for kids meandered around the garish yellow CommBank Tour zone, as a line wound its way into the giant L’Oréal tent. But metres away at the International Convention Centre, inside the halls dedicated to gaming, the corporate influence was more muted.
With the global gaming industry downturn continuing with no end in sight, big studios are continuing to keep a wary distance from Australia, with its high cost of living – meaning that even at a conference that screams synergistic brand-o-rama from every pore, indie developers took centre stage. Larger teams were rare; most projects on show were the results of solo developers or couples. And, much like Australia’s gaming scene more broadly, many of them were punching above their weight.
The two Australian games with the biggest backing at the showcase still felt relatively scrappy. SXSW’s game of the year, Mixtape, from veteran developers Beethoven and Dinosaur (who put out the enjoyable psychedelic journey The Artful Escape in 2021) and mid-tier US publisher Annapurna Interactive, is a gleeful 90s coming-of-age tale that feels like an Edgar Wright-esque comedy mixed with the animation style of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
Set for release later this year, the game is a nostalgic ride through all the best parts of a well-spent youth: skating downhill on a lazy afternoon as Devo blasts off a dinky cassette tape; headbanging to Silverchair on a road trip; sneaking booze into a party, and escaping the cops in a barely controllable shopping trolley. My 20-minute demo had me grinning ear to ear, with at least one absolutely incredible joke involving controllable tongues that made me burst with laughter.
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Pro Jank Footy, meanwhile, is the brainchild of the Danger 5 co-creator David Ashby and collaborator Tyler Roach, backed by film distributor Umbrella, making their tentative foray into gaming. It’s a ridiculous, arcadey take on AFL that harkens back to SNES-era sports games; after each goal, the losing team picks one of three absurd powerups (seagull attacks, giant players, resetting the score back to nil-all, etc) before play resumes. The live demonstration in Tumbalong park – commentated by Broden Kelly of Aunty Donna, who also appears in the game – drew a small crowd of mostly families, but the brave few who risked humiliation on stage in return for a neat scarf seemed to be having a pretty good time.
But there were highlights to be found in games with even less-established backers. One of my favourite experiences on the floor was the hyperkinetic shooter Hyper Primate, which casts you as an ape with an assortment of cobbled-together wooden guns, blasting other animals in search of giant floating bananas. The game has an unashamedly amateur look, but the movement mechanics felt absolutely sublime as I slid, dashed and jumped around a jungle arena at dizzying speeds.
Another gameplay triumph was solo effort Huedini, a frantic top-down game where you rapidly match colours to avoid or absorb enemies and other obstacles; even after a very brief session, I could sense the game’s simple-seeming mechanics had the potential to build to a brain-melting complexity.
The Victorian government’s strong support for indie developers continues to pay off, with multiple projects (including Huedini) funded by VicScreen; my other picks from that cohort were Way to the Woods, a gorgeous adventure game following a deer and fawn with light-related powers in an overgrown cityscape, and the charming postie puzzle game Letters to Arralla, which tasks you with deciphering picture-based addresses as you get more familiar with the gentle island community (also, everybody is a root vegetable). There was a surprisingly strong contingent from South Australia, too, from Pro Jank Footy to the intensely satisfying minimalistic cube-rolling puzzle game Toya, which proved a calming oasis in the midst of a busy show floor.
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Even the international guests mostly fit the showcase’s grassroots spirit (with the exception of one game, Sony’s Ghost of Yōtei, which wasn’t playable but did have a well-attended talk). Strong projects from small teams included A Week in the Life of Asocial Giraffe, a point-and-click social anxiety puzzler out of the US; Abyss X Zero, a 3D Zelda-style action game from Brazil; and Crescent County, a pastel-coloured broom racing simulator from a UK-based developer.
A common complaint about previous iterations of SXSW Sydney was the price tag, with even the cheapest week-long access pass for games costing more than $100. This year, entry to the games exhibition was free on the final day, which meant there were families and kids everywhere. Party games like Cow Chess (a project from a Sydney-based duo which involved neither cows nor chess and felt like a cross between Worms and Super Smash Bros by way of Terry Gilliam) and Chained Beasts (a co-op Roman gladiator game, except every player is bound together by chains) benefited hugely from the madcap energy of a sea of children running gleefully for any game they could get their hands on.
There were, frankly, too many indie games to play in a day – a nice problem to have. Other parts of SXSW Sydney might be consumed by brand activations, but at least for video games, the indie spirit lives on.
