The 2012 Indie Game Challenge: A glimpse at indie excellence

In life we make a lot of assumptions. We assume that the world beyond our front door exists even though we can't see it, or that when we close our eyes at night, the universe doesn't blink out with the lights.

But what if existence was defined by perception? It would probably be a pretty great video game.

Closure isn't meant to be the punchline to an epistemology thought experiment or some moving example of Gestalt psychology. But it draws it's ideas from a deep well of philosophical discussion, and its name from a handy trick of the mind that's used in most comics.

Perhaps you've never heard of reification, but you've probably seen it. It's the idea that the mind's eye will fill in the gaps for what the actual eye doesn't see. That illusion of a whole when only a part is seen or described is called "closure" in comics. It's basically letting your mind see something within nothing.

Closure's creators Tyler Glaiel and Jon Schubbe wondered: What if the unseen didn't actually exist?

Closure's high contrast world is seen in the light cast by glowing baubles. You can pick them up and carry them like flashlights. The light they cast falls in a shimmering circle around you. Step outside that light, into the perfect black that fills most of your world and you risk falling indefinitely.

Closure is a game without its namesake. There is no whole absent its perception. What you see is what you get. That basic tenant creates levels of moving landscape viewed in the tight circle of light that surrounds you. As the game expands on that idea, and the number of light sources increase, the complexity of your journey grows.

Jumping from one pool of light to the next isn't a jump over shadows, it's a jump over an endless pit. Moving spotlights create elevators of light and mass. Shadows poke holes in walls and floor.

Schubbe tells Vox Games that the game includes more than 100 levels, spread over three areas and one bonus, "very difficult" section. The game, Glaiel says, will be coming to the PlayStation Network within the next couple of months. (You can already play a very early version of it for free on their website.) Once the PlayStation 3 version ships they'll begin work on a new version for the PC and Mac.

Earlier this month the game won the grand prize at the Indie Game Challenge, standing out among an impressive assortment of games and talented developers.

Not bad for a game that started out as a pet project by two students.

"We worked on it in our free time," Glaiel tells Polygon. "We were a little bit surprised when we won, but we had very high hopes for it.

What do you think of Space Invaders, Tempest, Galaga, Ikagura? How about Seikilos epitaph, Adagietto or Starships?

Music as video games, specifically music as shoot-em-ups, has probably been done before, but not to the degree Symphony delivers.

Developed by Empty Clip Studios' Matt Shores and Francois Bertrand, the game plumbs the depths of your music collection to deliver not just a soundtrack, but enemies, weapons, power-ups and a rhythm of play.

The backstory of the game is that a demon is corrupting your music collection and you need to play through each song, taking out the flowing enemies with your spaceship. Every song creates a unique item you can attach to your ship. More importantly though, each song becomes a level formed out of the silence and sound of that particular composition.

"I DON'T THINK ANYONE HAS TAKEN MUSIC AND COMBAT TO THIS LEVEL."