Independent titles kick off Berlin Games Week

The now-concluded Quo Vadis video game festival is considered one of the most influential independent video game festivals in Germany.

As part of the ongoing Berlin Games Week, it's the place where small companies and gaming enthusiasts get to take the center stage, with the hope of getting funding, or even the chance to have their game purchased by a major gaming firm.

Around 3-thousand people attended this year's Quo Vadis video game festival. [Photo: AP]

Katharina Kuehn is the founder of the "Golden Orb" gaming company.

She's developed a tablet-based game for children called "Cinderella."

The game is based on the classic fairytale and follows Cinderella through the hard times at the castle, the ball and the wedding to a prince.

There are a lot of tablet-based children's games on the market, but Kuehn says that their princess game is different.

"All the scenes are made with lots of fun and interactive details that the child can discover. The child can also influence the story. There are lots of games for children but most of them are with in-game purchases or advertising. We don't think it is correct and we are therefore offering a game that you can fully buy and also play offline and children are not confronted with advertising or opportunities to buy things."

Students at the Mediadesign University in Munich are taking advantage of the festival to show off their machine-based game.

One of the students, Alina Petersdorff, says small indie game makers are still limited in scope compared to what the large companies can produce.

"The games from the major companies are of course really cool. That's why they are established, but I think sometimes the indie games have really small but good ideas that the big companies don't think of or think it is too risky to make. So, for new ideas can be tried when you don't have a big company behind you and also don't have much to lose."

Nikolas Crisci, developer of "Will Glow The Wisp," drew inspiration from the classic game "Sonic the Hedgehog" where creatures called Wisps live on a separate and colorful planet.

"The graphics are quite special and it comes from me not being an artist. Instead I was trying to find a graphic that I liked but one that I can also work with. That's why I decided to work with this particle effect, it worked well so I decided to develop it."

Beyong the main trend of virtual reality, there are no overriding themes this year.

Instead, the festival has featured a wide variety of games.

However, most of of them can be equated to an art-house movie.

Simon Fistrich, head of the festival sponsor, Computec Media, argues that technology isn't always going to win out over creativity.

"I like to compare it to movies, like Transformers for example. Of course, it is cool, but sometimes indie developers are braver. They are making brave things that you can compare to art-house movies where it takes a while for people to understand it before you realize it is cool. So sometimes there is a difference, but sometimes there also isn't."

The two-day Quo Vadis festival has been running since 2003.

Around 3-thousand people attended this year's event.