My FAVORITE Indie Game Studio

Drinkbox Studios,

Originally named “Not a Number Software” which was founded by three developers in Toronto Canada. The programmers were Chris Harvey, Ryan MacLean and Graham Smith who founded the company after being let go from Pseudo Entertainment. They brought on a couple more people as well, Stephany Goulet and Augusto Quijano. They worked small jobs to make money to fund their own studio and Toronto had a lot of grants available at the time for indie games that they looked into acquiring.

Now, this isn’t a documentary piece or full background in the game company as a whole, I have not done that much research. My point for this article (and podcast) is just to talk about little about their games and what made me such a big fan, since they recently announced a their new game, Blighted, at the Summer Game Fest.

Before we get there, lets take a look at their games briefly, starting with “Tales From Space: About a Blob.”

About a Blob was inspired by classic 1950’s monster movies and is a platform puzzle game where the more you consume, the bigger you get so you can consumer bigger items. It had mostly positive reviews from critics and seemed well received overall.

The sequel “Tales From Space: When Mutant Blobs Attack!!!” Added different blobs, different powers and improved upon everything from the original. They were approached by Playstation for this game, asking if they wanted to be a launch title for the Playstation’s new handheld stystem, the “Vita” and it was. So originally, I didn’t play either one of these games at launch, or until I found out about the game studio itself.

Now lets get to where I was introduced to the studio that would go on to become my favorite indie game studio at this time. “GUACAMELEE!”

Now granted I first played the “Super Turbo Championship Edition” of the game and not the base game or the Gold Edition. I will say though, that to date, this is still BY FAR my favorite Metroidvania style game. The combat is great, the puzzles are challenging in some of the rooms. The way it introduces the each new ability to you is seamless. It has you using combinations of each one back to hack and it feels so natural. Its like a martial art that involves a game controller. The bad guys that have different defenses that match you different powers, you can swap from the land of the living to the land of the dead? It has an extremely engaging story and not to mention the amazing artwork.

Speaking of the artwork, I HAVE to mention this. Their artist Augusto did a GDC panel about the artwork of the game. It is one of the mist enjoyable art panels I have ever watched. Its currently unlisted, I have a link to it on my X/Twitter page and I heavily encourage everyone to watch it. He mentions the inspiration behind the artwork, being homesick while living in Toronto and wanting to make a game based on his hone Country of Mexico.

There are so many warning, advices and suggestions that you hear as an indie dev about scope of a game, what to include or leave out, that he gave examples of that really hit the points hard and solidified those pieces of advice. It was such a well prepared and done speech.

Guacamelee 2 has a FIGHTING CHICKEN. You can TURN INTO a fighting chicken. You could turn into a chicken in the first game. But now you can fight as the chicken. So like the “Tales from Space” series, this team really lnows how to inprove a great thing. Make good, great and make great, incredible. Guacamelee 2 took everything from the original and made it better. The challenges were tougher, more powers, more features and included some things they wanted to include in the first that they held back. One of my favorite sequels in video gaming.

I bought the game day one and like a true nerd, I took the day off of work and played it all the way through like I was binging a Netflix series. And say what you want, I am not ashamed. I went back and got the Platinum on part one, but I’ll be honest, this one got me. It was tough and I haven’t 100% it yet, but I will. Its an excuse to go back and play it. These two games solidified my faith in this company and it became my favorite Metroidvania series to date.

Having beat it so fast, I knew there wouldn’t be a part 3 for possible years and it would be unreasonable to be hopeful for anything in the near future. And if they made another side-scroller brawler, how could they even top it if they did? And if they did, would it get old? Would it be recycling the “formula that works?” Didn’t matter, because they didn’t do that. They made a new game with a different style, different mechanics and a different but still completely on-brand art style. “Nobody Saves The World.”

“Nobody Saves The World” is a Legend of Zelda inspired top down action RPG with class elements similar to Final Fantasy Tactics. You are a pale slab of skin of a person at the start who finds a magic wand that allows you to transform into 18 different forms as you unluck them, minus the ones added with the DLC that was released.

Different forms and attacks have different elements to them and similar to “Guacamelee!” enemies are guarded until hit by one of these color coded attacks breaks their barrier. You can mix and match attacks with different forms and make some insanely strong builds.

The dungeon crawling element presents some hard challenges, especially in the New Game + rub after you beat the game. The story telling was charming, the gameplay was fun, it was a game I could not put down until I finished the first playthrough. It is another game I highly recommend that every gamer play.

I don’t want to get into any spoilers so I won’t dive too deep. But the side quests are all unique, the different missions you do for different guilds, the bosses, all great.

If I were to give any negative to this game for the sake of not sounding too much like a fanboy, is the grind to max out each form does get a little bit tedious. Specifically the quests where you have to use two different mive types or different moves from other classes to stagger or kill enemies. Its a very small complaint, but repeating that loop, though not overly difficult or too long, does just become tedious. And that might be my fault for not taking breaks while playing and spreading out some of that grind. Maybe don’t binge like I did.

And for everyone wondering…

Severed was an action adventure game released on mobile, PS Vita and eventually the Nintendo Switch. It was highly anticipated and received great reviews. I used a touch screen slash method similar to fruit ninja. I haven’t played it and like I said, this isn’t a documentary or history of all the companies games but I thought it was worth mentioning since I’m sure it is a fun game I do plan to play it at some point.

And lastly, there latest announcement at the 2025 Summer Game Fest, “Blighted”

Like I mentioned about “Tales From Space” and “Guacamelee” Drinkbox has always taken a game and improved every aspect of it in the sequel. Though “Blighted” is not a sequel to “Nobody Saves The World” it is similar as a top down action game. And with the track record of this studio, I feel like everything they learned from “Nobody Saves The World” will be applied and improved upon in this next title. They seem to always do these in twos and the results show exactly why they do it.

So all that being said, I have enjoyed watching the growth, the behind the scenes, the continued success and amazing work being done at Drinkbox Studios and look forward to any future projects they put out, show or even talk about. I haven’t seen a bad project from them yet and as not only and indie game fanatic, but a video game fanatic in general as well as an aspiring dev myself, Drinkbox Studios currently holds the title for my favorite Indie Game company.

As always, stay decent and indie-cent! Thanks for reading!