The Coolest Aussie Games We Saw At The South Australian Game Exhibition

The South Australian Game Exhibition (pleasantly abbreviated to SAGE) was held over the weekend just gone. Now in it’s third year, SAGE is a massive showcase of some of the best South Australia’s game development scene has to offer. This year was no different. There were 35 studios and individual developers showing off their work this year to SAGE’s biggest attendance yet.

I made my ways to SAGE on Saturday and took a look at a bunch of games that caught my eye. These are some of the ones that left an impression.

I firstly found myself in the ELEVATE showcase, where The RND Department’s CUBE drew my attention pretty immediately. Pleasant pastel colours paint a game world constructed of cube structures, drenched in a dreamlike haze. You control a cube which can move around and climb atop structures as long as they aren’t taller than itself. With these simple rules you navigate around levels, activate switches, crush other cubes and grow larger. I was particularly smitten with the way the world seems to become smaller as your cube grows. You can see past levels as you play, and how small they are now.

You can play the demo yourself from The RND Department’s Itch page.

If there was ever a way to get my attention, it’s by demoing your in-development GameBoy game on a tiny black and white CRT television. Yakshini Lokam doesn’t just look like a GameBoy game – it is one. Going by the developer Orlando Mee’s past works, you’ll likely be able to load this game onto a cartridge and play it on real GameBoy hardware. Yakshini Lokam is an adventure game with inspiration from Indian myth with elements of puzzle and strategy games, with exploration happening in an overworld and encounters in a turn based grid.

You’ll find more information on Orlando64’s Itch page.

The winner of Best in Exhibition was also some of the most ridiculous fun I had all day. Pro Jank Footy from Powerbomb Games is a fast paced, easy to pick up game of Aussie Rules football with a twist. Whenever a player scores a goal, their opponent gets to choose a modifier that will be in effect for the rest of the match to try to even the playing field. The moment the ‘No Umpires’ card got played in my game things went utterly wild. Tackles? Marks? Out of bounds? When there are no umpires none of these rules matter, and it became glorious chaos. Things got even stranger when we played a modifier that surrounded the entire boundary line with goal posts. No matter where you punted the ball, you’d score something. Commentary from Aunty Donna’s Broden Kelly is just icing on the cake.

I didn’t find out until after playing that the game’s development team includes David Ashby and Dario Russo of Danger 5 fame, which maybe explains why it’s slapstick humour hit so perfectly for me.

No playable demo for this one yet, but keep an eye on Powerbomb’s socials for updates.

Nestled in the back corner away from innocent eyes were Hell Byte Studios. They described their game Blood Reaver to me as Call Of Duty Zombies but with a dark fantasy twist. You’ll be blasting waves of fantastical hordes amongst gothic architecture, collecting their blood to fuel your blood magic against them. Ranging from time stops to lightning strikes, Blood Reaver looked like a neat twist on the Zombies formula, especially for enjoyers of heavy metal, dark fantasy nastiness.

This one has a demo available on Steam, where you can wishlist it as well.

I almost missed this one, but happened to be walking past their booth on the way out and caught a glimpse of something that looked extremely Baldur’s Gate. Authentically styled after classic CRPGs of the 90s, Scourge of the Dinosaurs features a three act story, tactical party based combat and as the title implies – dinosaurs. If you ever thought CRPGs missed an opportunity to capitalise on the dinosaur craze of the 90s, this one will be worth keeping an eye on.

You can see more of the game and wishlist it over on Steam.