This year, the Tribeca Film Festival (June 9 - June 20) celebrated its 20th anniversary. It also marked the inauguration of the Tribeca Games Award—a public, critical embrace of video games as an artistic medium.
Tribeca showcased eight unreleased video games as examples of interactive storytelling. The advisory board for this new venture includes film producer and director Jon Favreau (Iron Man, The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett), visionary game creator Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid franchise, Death Stranding), and filmmaker Nia DaCosta (Little Woods, Candyman, The Marvels). The diversity of the board, and each member’s unique expertise, shows how seriously Tribeca is taking this initiative.
Over the past two weeks, Complex had the opportunity to play all eight unreleased video games, including NORCO, the Tribeca Games Award inaugural winner. Here is a preview of what to expect from these titles, plus our initial impressions of them.
'The Big Con'
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Release date: Summer 2021
Sarcastic, cool, and laid back, The Big Con has a flat, colorful cartoon style that harkens back to Nickelodeon’s Doug and MTV’s Daria. You play as Ali, a teen girl from the mid-’90s who helps her mom meet ends by pickpocketing, grifting, and heisting her way from the local town square to the neighboring mall to Las Venganza (the game’s take on Las Vegas).
The game is loaded with problem-solving; you might need an item from a restricted area, for example, and you’ll need to find a way to distract the security guard or get her away from her post. And the main character Ali is very likable—a relatable, clever girl who’s a natural underdog.
This was the most fun I had out of the eight games, but it wasn’t my favorite game; more on that later. The Big Con is quite easy to control and very engaging; when my time was up, I wanted to keep playing, which is always a great sign.
'Harold Halibut'
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Release date: Coming soon
A dialogue-heavy game with a handmade visual presentation, Harold Halibut stars Harold, a research lab assistant. The game takes place 250 years into the future, after the destruction of Earth and some of the last remnants of humanity—Harold included—are stuck in a spaceship at the bottom of an alien ocean.
This is a game that demands your attention; you meet new people, have long choice-based conversations, and participate in multiple side quests while pursuing a main, mysterious mission. But your onscreen actions are largely limited to talking, walking, and using the right tool at the right time. Ironically, the enjoyment comes from embracing the dead-end quality of Harold’s life and developing the detached, humorous relationships he has with the ship’s inhabitants.
Some people you interact with won’t shut up; you feel Harold’s aggravation of wanting the conversations to end, already. Can boredom and tedium be fun, if that’s the entire point? Your mileage may vary.
'Kena: Bridge of Spirits'
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Release date: Aug. 24, 2021
Of all the games, Kena: Bridge of Spirits was the most familiar, gameplaywise, with a well-established, third-person shooter perspective and an art style reminiscent of Raya and the Last Dragon.
Kena is a spirit guide who must guide the Rot, a group of adorable spirit animals that can aid her in combat and manipulate the environment at her command. As the game progresses, Kena unlocks new magical powers, and by dissipating the negative energy blocking her way (represented in the game as these red, toxic bags of gas), can access new areas of the map.
You’ve likely played many games like this one. But this genre is rich with cinematic storytelling potential, and it’s not a surprise that Tribeca chose to celebrate it, or a game like it.
'Lost In Random'
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Release date: Coming soon
The developers alerted the press multiple times, via email, press release, and the game itself, that Lost In Random was incomplete. They wanted us to know that we were playing an incomplete version of the game, and to take that into account when giving our impressions.
Parts of it did seem a bit rough; the controls were not as precise or as intuitive as they needed to be, and there were several times where my objective wasn’t clear. It’s a sprawling, ambitious game, and to be fair, not that type of game that easily fits into a demo running time. There’s a ton of promise, should the team be able to pull off its vision.
You play as a young girl who’s on a quest to save her sister from a wicked queen who rules the kingdom of Random. Aiding you in this quest is a digital deck of action cards and dice, which determine what sort of defensive buff or offensive weapon you can use during the next enemy encounter. The art of Lost In Random is particularly beautiful and has a dark fantasy, Alice in Wonderland vibe to it.
'NORCO'
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Release date: Coming soon
The winner of the Tribeca Game Award, NORCO is a Southern Gothic tale, focused on a futuristic, dystopian vision of Louisiana suburbia. People live in the shadows of massive, polluting factories, and robots linger around—remnants of a time before things got so depressing.
You’re trying to find your brother, Blake, and you pick around the remnants of your town, looking for clues and running into familiar and odd faces. You point and click to search for objects and move about; if you’re in the kitchen, you point at the door to go into the backyard. If you’re in the backyard you click in the opposite direction to go into the front yard. It’s a very low-fi presentation, that creates a lot of its visuals through inference—lots of shadow to evoke move, lots of silhouettes against sources of light.
Especially worth celebrating: the writing is evocative and of literary quality. NORCO feels more like a rediscovery and reimagining of an old game genre, rather than the creation of a new one.
'Sable'
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Release date: Sept. 23, 2021
This is an open-world game starring the eponymous Sable, a teenage girl and member of a nomadic tribe, who must undergo a coming-of-age ritual. Her tribe lives in a vast desert, and Sable must traverse it on her Star Wars-esque speeder bike to get from puzzle to puzzle.
Sable acquires supernatural powers over the course of her journey; I gained the ability to float midair in a massive, protective energy bubble by the end of my play time.
I felt oddly attached to Sable, her insecurities, and her excitement at exploration and discovery. The game is very zen; there are no enemies attacking you, no pits of death for you to slip into. It’s just you, the endless sand, your bike, and your ongoing ritual.
'Signalis'
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Release date: Coming soon
A woman awakens from her containment pod in a spaceship, where you’ve been sleeping in some sort of suspended animation. She begins exploring the ship, which at first seems abandoned, but she quickly realizes she’s not alone, as monsters jump out of the shadows to attack her. This all takes place with no narration, and no expository dialogue. Any usable information can be found on notes and manuals, scattered around the different rooms.
Confusing and agitating the player is the point. But it should not grind the gameplay to a halt.
This game boasts atmosphere for days but might be too “sink-or-swim” for its own good. That’s part of what makes it terrifying, granted. But after I managed to find a gun, I tried fixing the ship’s reactor core. And the manual’s instructions were too general and cryptic for me to continue much further. I knew the rod was misaligned. I saw the rod was misaligned. And I still don’t know how to re-align it. Surely, the developers didn’t want their players agonizing over something so trivial, so early on.
What I did get to play was incredible, but Signalis is a very dark game (both literally and figuratively), and the developers might want to judiciously add a few more breadcrumbs to guide players who are lost.
'Twelve Minutes'
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Date: August 19, 2021
And lastly, Twelve Minutes was the highlight of the Tribeca showcase for me. My heart was in my throat the entire time.
You’re a man who goes home to his wife. She tells him she’s pregnant; you can decide how you want to react. But 12 minutes after you enter the apartment, a man who announces himself as the police forces his way inside. The scenario ends with you or your wife being knocked out or killed. And suddenly, you’re entering your apartment again. You’ve entered a time loop. And although you remember everything that happened, no one else—neither the wife nor the man—is any the wiser.
You replay this scenario, over and over again, in an attempt to survive, like in the movie Happy Death Day but with a lot less humor and a lot more suspense. Do you prove to your wife that you know what’s about to happen? Do you immediately start looking for a weapon? Do you comply with the man and try to pick your spot, or do you try and fight him from the moment he walks through the door? Time is precious.
Featuring the voice acting talents of James McAvoy, Willem Dafoe, and Daisy Ridley, Twelve Minutes is going to make waves when it finally becomes available to the public. I can imagine people trying to take the most outlandish action just to see the end result. And imagine: Thanks to the Law of Unintended Consequences, it might be that outlandish action that saves everyone’s life.
