Indie | Experimental Gameplay Project: Bare Minimum

By Chris Evans

The Experimental Gameplay Project (EGP) is the place to visit right now if you’re looking for a selection of great little games from some of the most exciting indie developers out there.

The idea behind it is simple: every month a theme is chosen and developers then have to create a related game in a maximum of seven days’ work. The role of the theme and the limited development time means that some very interesting titles have been created. August’s project was centred on the phrase ‘bare minimum’, and three very different games caught my eye for their innovative takes on the month’s theme.

//Practise makes perfect
Michael Todd of Spyeart created Broken Brothers, a real-time strategy which definitely has potential to be taken forwards to a full release (Michael plans for a beta to be ready in November). The task: follow the instructions from a creature known as Malakai who has lost his brothers, and harvest hope from fountains to unlock better units. It’s a simple game to get to grips with, yet is one that is extremely rewarding to play, with a real sense of accomplishment to be gained from helping Malakai.

“I pulled out two of my previous art styles that were very stark and minimum, and started playing around,” says Michael. “The concept of Malakai and his brothers appeared, and I started programming. This game has lots of possible ways to go, so a larger version of it is in the works. I’ve been writing down ideas for perks, levels & AI for the past week. I’ve got tons of stuff I want to work on.”

Broken Brothers is a perfect example of how developers like Michael can put their ideas into practice before thinking about taking them further. As Paolo Pedercini of Molleindustria tells me about the EGP: “it’s a fun way to be prompted to get things done. I’m a time-management disaster, you know. It’s also a good platform to test idea without the serious big-project kind of anxiety.”

Kyle Gray of Henry Hatsworth fame had some more in-depth ideas about game design and what the EGP means. “Tim Schafer famously says that there’s a golden goose in your head that either lays golden eggs, or doesn’t,” he says. “For me, game design has always been more like digging for oil. You might have a notion that there’s something worth looking for deep down there, but you have to dig through layers upon layers of crap to even get to the level where it might exist. Prototyping is the equivalent of taking that high-powered drill they had in The Core and shooting through multiple layers at a time - only instead of taking a known suicide mission to restart the Earth’s core, you’re hoping to kick start a game idea that no one else has done before. EGP is a bit like that, and whether I hit pay dirt or crap, it’s always fun.”

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