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I-Illusions' Element4l wins Pocket Gamer's Big Indie Pitch at Gamescom 2015

Dynamic states

I-Illusions' Element4l wins Pocket Gamer's Big Indie Pitch at Gamescom 2015

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At Gamescom 2015, indie developers from around the world descended upon Cologne to attend our Big Indie Pitch event and show their upcoming games to a panel of judges.

As usual, creators get three minutes to show and explain their game before being whizzed off to the next pair of judges. At the end of the whirlwind event, the panel gets together and pick three winners.

The top developers win advertising cash to spend on Pocket Gamer.

The winning game was a shape-shifting platformer called Element4l, which is all about swapping between four states - bubble, stone, fire, and ice - to overcome obstacles and solve puzzles.

I-Illusions released the game on Steam a couple years back to critical acclaim. Now, it has retooled the game for iOS and Android.

Strong competition

Second place went to a game called Chicken Jump which has pintsize daredevils leaping over oncoming traffic. Not a great lesson for kids, but a fine game.

Simple, but satisfying - and with a Crossy Road-inspired monetisation scheme based around purchasing new character skins. Developer Firepunchd will bring the game to iOS and Android.

And the third place winner was Brazilian firm Aquiris Game Studio and its love letter to arcade racing games, Horizon Chase. The game calls to mind 80s and 90s classics like Outrun and Daytona with its simple controls and high contrast colour scheme.

There were many more deserving games that didn't quite make the cut, including 1DER Entertainment's goblin shooting game Tiny Archers, a hammer-obsessed hack and slash called Runic Rampage from Electrocosmos, and Incorda's tricky music game Dub Dash.

The judging panel included Ben Murch of Warhammer Quest developer Rodeo Games, Teemu Mäki-Patola from Badland studio Frogmind, Everyplay evangelist Oscar Clark, Pocket Gamer journalist Rob Hearn, Video Gamer journalist Simon Miller, and veteran designer Jon Hare.

We thank Samsung for supporting the event, and you can see our photo gallery from the event here. 

Editor, PocketGamer.co.uk

Forget schools and textbooks: anything Mark knows, he's learnt from games. His eclectic knowledge of rock music comes from Guitar Hero and his in-depth repertoire of skating tricks is thanks to Tony Hawk. Just don't ask him to fix your plumbing.