Polish independent developer Sos Sosowski is the creator of one of the stranger sights at GDC Europe. He built himself a bright yellow arcade case by hand, one that from a corner of the lobby screeches out high-pitch tunes all morning next to stalls filled with straight-lace tech offerings. The arcade homes all of his game jam creations, which amount to literally hundreds of versions of his independent designs.
He tells Polygon he's not much good with tools, but he wanted to get the project off the ground and be able to show it off in places like this.
His games, he says, have no recurring themes beyond being connected to him. But they all have a quiet thread of indie, ad-hoc ethics to them. They're short, flash-based games, mostly comedy-driven in one way or another, all of which bloody.
One has you murdering ninjas by shooting their limbs off into smaller and smaller pieces, another called "Roadlike" has you driving down a one-way street and continuously accumulating experience as you hit pedestrians that you can't actually avoid.
To a degree Achtund Arcade thumbs its nose at the industry that it's taking part in at this conference. It requires no mainstream system to play it beyond one that the developer built himself; likewise all of the games feel as though they personally relate to Sos and a sense of humor that is derived from being an armchair programmer. The result is a project that is independent in the fullest sense of the word.
Check out our hands-on with the Achtund Arcade system.
