A new indie studio is poised to enter the industry with a unique take on a standard trend. Its name is IglooSoft, and its working to deepen the pixel-based builder games that the indie world has become so fond of in recent years. The team's maiden game, Outworlder, aims to take the colony management gameplay seen in Starbound and Terraria and push it beyond charted territory.
One area in which Outworlder hopes to exceed its predecessors is combat. The IglooSoft team feels that combat is often a secondary aspect of these types of builder/management games. In order to make Outworlder a fuller experience, they will be amping up combat and exploration. Your adventures onto alien worlds will be just as important as the bases you establish on them. That being said, the pillars of character creation, crafting, and building are still there. IglooSoft even claims that the colony engine will allow "you to interact with your colonists in a way we've never seen in a 2D game of this nature."
Of course, a game is only as good as its team. There are many burgeoning indie studios at PAX West this weekend that will show off promising games and then never be heard from again. So what sets IglooSoft apart? The team is already stacked with industry veterans.
Heading Outworlder's is IglooSoft founder Rho Watson. Watson has ten years of experience on games like Gnomoria and Starbound. Yes, the very game that Outworlder hopes to be a better version of. The Lead Programmer is Tracy Owens, a man with mobile game programming and a variety of artistry skills under his belt. He was also a staple of the Minecraft modding community, so he knows his pixels. Also on that front is a bevy of talented pixel artists.
IglooSoft even has a plan to combat the issue of hyping up a debut game and then keeping fans waiting. They intend to release the game in phases rather than all at once. In fact, the first part "Creative Multiplayer" is due out late this year. So it won't be long before you can try out the game yourself and decide if hype is necessary. With gorgeous pixel art, an experienced team, and a plan to do an indie legend better, Outworlder is definitely a game to watch.