Summary
ID@Xbox never seems to get as much traction asNintendo’sIndie World. Last month, there was a lot of speculation thatHollow Knight: Silksongwould appear at Nintendo’s event,but when it didn’t, there didn’t seem to be much appetite to get hopes up the second time around for Xbox. There was just as much chance of it appearing at either, although far more chance that, as happened in the end, it would skip both. But ID@Xbox put on a far better showcase with far more interesting games.
There was a lot of disappointment in the wake of Indie World based around Silksong, but I didn’t think that was a very accurate picture. Silksong or not, Nintendo had little to offer beyond ports of games already out elsewhere and generic fuzzy pastel wholesome gimmicks. They all seemed like the same type of indie game, and not even the best version of it.Xboxhad more variety, and my eyes were most drawn to Keylocker.
ID@Xbox Deserves More Credit Than It’s Getting
I had heard of several of the games at ID@Xbox already, excited to various degrees forLost Records: Bloom & Rage,Dungeons of Hinterberg, and33 Immortals. But there were others at the show I didn’t know about until watching, and there was far more range on show than Nintendo was able to offer. Though some games had a quirky fluffiness to them - All You Need Is Help chief among them - there were war games, dark horror affairs, grounded narrative adventures, fantasy epics, and in the case of Keylocker, rhythmic cyberpunk showdowns.
Describing itself as a cyberpunk mash-up ofChrono Triggerand Mario & Luigi RPG, it’s a turn-based battler that incorporates real-time rhythm into the heart of combat. You’ll need to match up button combinations to ensure your attacks hit their target, and even survive a journey along a Guitar Hero-style fretboard to slay your foes. The rhythm genre is being merged with a lot of disparate game styles these days, and Keylocker is not the first to try it with the RPG - Infinite Guitars and Cadence of Hyrule beat it to the punch - but where other games go too heavy on the rhythm aspect, this seems to be a modern twist of Chrono Trigger before anything else.
I’ve got a lot of time for the art style too. Pixel art is second only to gaudy pastel for its overuse on the indie scene, but the funky colouration and inventive use of battle grids makes me a little warmer towards Keylocker. It would have been very easy, and I’m sure pretty tempting, to ape Chrono Trigger more directly. It wouldn’t be the first, or even the hundredth, indie game to do so. Instead, it feels like it marches to the beat of its own drum (five paragraphs before a music joke, that’s got to be worth something).
Keylocker Is Not Just Another Pixel RPG
But it’s away from the combat where the art most intrigues me. The cutscenes and key art have a darker, more anime look to them. The pixelation is dropped for more stylish imagery and that helps breathe life into the neon-lit, cigarette-stained night sky of the cyberpunk genre. And this imagery is backed up with a tone of rebellion, too.
In the game, you are constantly fleeing from the “church-police” who hunt down “devious denizens who do not respect the Law of Silence”. It’s a little bit campy and Footloose, but the idea that you are rebelling against an authoritarian state trying to crack down on creativity gives the game a little bit of bite. It’s not exactly a commentary on the corruption of capitalism that fuels wars and misery for its own end, but it at least has something to say. Indie marketing has shifted so far into wholesome escapes from any facet of reality or opinion that even this Kevin Baconised rebellion feels like it stands for something powerful.
2024 is an important year for Xbox, withPlayStation tapped out until April 2025and theNintendo Switch 2 reportedly internally delayed out of this year. We know the green team has some big triple-A games it will hope can hold steady in the calendar, but ID@Xbox proved Game Pass' little indies that could are going to play a crucial part too. Keylocker may not be getting much attention, but it’s an important weapon in Xbox’s armoury.
