Earlier this year, Draknek and Friends announced a new grant aimed at helping underrepresented individuals fund their puzzle games! The fund offers grants of $5,000 and $20,000 specifically aimed at diversifying the puzzle game industry. Along with this funding, it is also offering mentorship opportunities in partnership with Astra Fund. Now that some time has passed, the 12 recipients have been announced;
ISLAND_NAME_HERE
ISLAND_NAME_HERE has you playing as a developer of a tropical island game. You can edit a bunch of different object properties in order to achieve your goals for the level, then access more of the story. If you make a mistake, it’s fine, you can then reverse what you are doing and try again. There aren’t time limits or consequences in this game, giving a more relaxing puzzle game with a story to pull you along.
Lost Twins 2
Lost Twins 2 is an adorable puzzle adventure game where you are guiding Ben and Abi back home. The lighting within the game is striking, showing satisfying pictures that intrigue. It looks like one of the key puzzle elements to Lost Twin 2 is going to be from sliding puzzles, allowing rooms to be connected differently, so that you can discover more within them and move through them in new ways. This puzzle game doesn’t have timers or any sort of enemies and instead is meant to be a puzzle game for both young and old, focused on discovery.
Castle of Glas Sequel
Released as apart of the Cartomancy Anthology, Castle of Glas is a plant themed puzzle game that came out in August of this year. For those who do not know, Cartomancy Anthology is a collection of 22 games made by a bunch of different developers, released in a bundle. Castle of Glas is an isometric puzzle game that is focused on deep reflection within the game itself. It will be very interesting to see a stand alone puzzle game and how it differs from the bundle version.
Follow their development through their website.
AiliA
AiliA is a deep and meaningful puzzle game about loss and acceptance, played through bending and manipulating the world around you. You are looking to save your lost twist sister, Lia, who has been trapped inside a mirror. Using mirrors, you can bend the world around you, making new paths appear that can actually be walked on using the reflections you see. This game has over 70 hand-crafted puzzles, providing a lot of content. The demo can be played on itch.io.
Paquerette Down the Bunburrows
Paquerette Down the Bunburrows is a game we actually previewed earlier in this year, which was made for the Ludum Dare. It’s a challenging game where you need to lead bunnies down the rabbit hole, but they keep hopping away from you. You need to end up getting the bunnies to a dead end, and then pick them up, to take them deeper into the hole. Over time, there are new mechanics that are introduced, to keep things interesting. You can play the demo on Steam.
DokiToki: Time Slows Down When You’re In Love
DokiToki: Time Slows Down When You’re In Love is a first person puzzle game full of escape room style puzzles. You can freeze and manipulate different objects throughout a school to reach the exit of each level, while playing Ai, a girl who is so in love that everything around her stands still. She is looking to find the boy she wants to confess her love to! But there are just so many classrooms of people to work through first. The art style in this game looks really cute too.
Catacomb Creeper: Re-Vined Edition
Created as apart of the Indiepocalypse 27, another bundle of games by a bunch of different game developers, Catacomb Creeper: Re-Vined Edition has been selected for funding. This game is about seeds that have fallen into the catacombs, growing into roots. You are one of these plants, trying to grow your way out of the Earth.
Timeclone
Timeclone is a simple looking but super challenging puzzle game, created by a solo developer who is known within the puzzle game genre. Timeclone is about collecting dots that then create new timelines; with your previous moves going through again, until they run out of moves. These dots do give you a new move, but you will need to start manipulating the previous timelines to solve these puzzles; which is quite the brain challenge! There is a demo on itch.io.
Cutting Edge (working title)
Another game created for the Ludum Dare, Cutting Edge (though this is a working title), which is listed as a game about digging holes. There isn’t much other information on this game, and I couldn’t seem to get the demo build on itch.io to run apart from a message screen which said thank you for playing my presentation. The game has very positive comments on the Ludum Dare page, stating it is very unique and interesting!
On the Peril of Parrots
On the Peril of Parrots is a mysterious, narrative driven puzzle game where you are taking control of an Artificial Intelligence instance, who is solving puzzles. These puzzles are tile based, where you need to change all of the tiles to a single color while moving forward – going back to tiles that are already colored will result in you losing. While the puzzle aspect of this game seems simple and straight forward, the narrative puzzles within are captivating and curious.
Konkan Coast Pirate Solutions
Konkan Coast Pirate Solutions is a game about helping pirates complete pirate-releated goals. The map itself is divided into various different tiles, which then can have turning sequences placed onto them, to control where the ship goes. Once you have decided what commands to place down, you will then hit start and watch the boats go on their path. The game has lots of hazards and different types of ships within it, providing a lot of content.
Hackshot
Hackshot is an interesting, physics-based puzzle game where you are hacking the source of pop-up ads. It’s meant to be a twisted puzzle take on artillery games, where you are a hacker with different projectiles, mixing and matching abilities, to hack different systems. There is something familiar about this game that I cannot quite put my finger on and the concept behind it is pretty interesting too. There is also a free demo on Steam.
Those are all 12 games that have been selected for funding from the Draknek New Voices Puzzle Grant – we cannot wait to see what comes of each of them!