6180 the moon is a puzzle platformer with a simple, well executed mechanic and delightful music. Levels are quick to restart, not too long, and accompanied with audio and visual cues.
There was an SNES programmer! His game was impressive technically, but lacking in gameplay. You moved a character left and right, collecting stars which floated down in different patterns. I was told the parallaxing background was the result of a hardware addition that came just at the end of the SNES lifecycle.
Onikira’s in the realm of high skill-cap 2D combat games like Guacamelee. You feel both very powerful and fragile. Avoiding damage is about reading enemy tells and controlling your space. The lens flare-esque filter makes for cool shadows, and makes every scene a cinematic experience.
Onikira’s made in Duality, which is an open-source Unity alternative for 2D games. I was told Duality encourages good programming practices, compared to Unity, where you make a bunch of attributes public so you can edit them. It provides a level editor as well. Seems like you’d only use Duality if you needed or liked that it was open source, because it doesn’t have nearly the support that Unity does, or the Asset Store. The Visual Studio support that Unity enjoys is also pretty huge.
And apparently Seattle has a growing indie game scene.