Tired of stodgy corporate games made by The Man and his minions? We’re playing the 31 best indie games for a change of pace —- and so we can judge them. Today, Star Guard! In A Sentence Little green man of maybe 12 countable pixels runs across the screen zapping games in a side-scrolling action game that would have made my Odyssey 2 a whole lot more fun back in the day.(new Image()).src = 'https://capi.connatix.com/tr/si?token=995c4c7d-194f-4077-b0a0-7ad466eb737c&cid=872d12ce-453b-4870-845f-955919887e1b'; cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "995c4c7d-194f-4077-b0a0-7ad466eb737c" }).render("79703296e5134c75a2db6e1b64762017"); }); State Of Completion Star Guard is done. And you can download and play it. Preferably soon, because it is good. Thoughts I’m skeptical of games that look old-school, because they often play old-school. In other words, they make you die a lot. Not Star Guard. Here’s a game that looks like it could have been rendered during the primitive years of game consoles but thankfully has some modern trappings. We’re talking about Defender-quality blasting action but with frequent checkpointing, armies of soldiers sometimes fighting on your side, hordes of enemies. And one other element is here that has no age: smart, sometimes vicious, and always-clever level design. Give me some good checkpointing Yono all app and I can handle old-school jump-shoot-and-die gameplay. Wrap it in a sharp, primitive visual style and back it with on-the-wall story text that paradoxically and preemptively one-ups Splinter Cell Conviction’s forthcoming use of the same, and you have a game deserving of its Independent Games Festival nomination for best design. Answers We Demanded Kotaku: What was the inspiration behind your game? Star Guard designer Loren Schmidt: My friend was vacationing on Venus, and there was this Wizard… Kotaku: How did you come up with the name to your game? Schmidt: It takes me forever to come up with names! I drew up lists of words that had the feeling I wanted, and started combining them at random. I originally wanted to call the game “Star Castle,” but there’s already a all yono app game called that. After a bit of deliberation, I decided on “Star Guard” instead. Kotaku: What do you do for a living now? What do you hope to do? Schmidt: go rummy I’ve been a student until recently. I’m hoping to make a successful transition into making games full time. I’ve got a couple of new games in the works: a little game called Tin Can Knight, and a more involved project called Tiny Crawl. I’m excited about Tiny Crawl. It’s a simplified RPG. I did an early prototype for the Assemblee competition at TIGSource, and I’m currently expanding on that. I’m doing a bunch of design right now- retooling the magic system and thinking about secrets and rare items. After that, I’m replacing all the pixel art with hand drawn assets. It’s a fun project. Make sure to check out the rest of the Independent Games Festival finalists as we head toward the March awards show.