The Best Indie Games Of E3 2012

08.06.2012
You could be forgiven for missing the IndieCade pavilion amid the massive booths and pressing crowds of E3 2012. Nestled in a quiet corner of the L.A. Convention Center, this tiny oasis of independent game design is packed with laptop PCs running games made by students, artists and independent game developers.

All sorts of folks submit their games to in the hopes of having their work featured in the annual IndieCade festival, and from that pool of submissions the IndieCade team select a variety of games to show off at E3. This year the booth includes weird board games, iPad games, and even a fantastic music-based multiplayer jousting game played with Playstation Move wands.

Some of the best indie games at E3 are running on PC, creative and colorful games that provide a welcome respite from the glut of gritty shoot-em-ups that dominate E3 2012. Here are a few you should pay attention to.

Open your text editor and just start mashing the "X" key. Make sure the word wrap option is switched on; notice how your text passes the right edge of your window and pops out of the left? That screen wrap effect is the main attraction of The Fourth Wall, a fantastic 2D puzzle platformer from a team of game design students at the Digipen Institute of Technology.

While playing The Fourth Wall you can hit the Control key at any time to freeze the screen in place instead of scrolling to match your movement. Once the screen is frozen your wizard can warp from one edge of the screen to the other, using the screen wrap for his own navigational needs. You solve puzzles and progress through levels by using your screen wrapping abilities to warp through walls or leap seemingly impossible obstacles by falling through the floor and out of the ceiling.