The Rogue Renaissance: OuterSloth's Indie Game Fund Revolution

Among Us is, to put it lightly, a big game. As a result, OuterSloth – the developer rising to fame – is leading a creative tsunami of indie game development. The announcement of its inaugural indie-game development label, OuterSloth, comes on the heels of its smash success with Among Us. We’ll dig into how OuterSloth isn’t just funding indie games; it could be kickstarting an indie games renaissance.

OuterSloth: A Beacon for Indie Developers

With OuterSloth, InnerSloth has proven its willingness to repay the support of the community that brought Among Us to its worldwide success with a fund for other independent developers. Announced with fanfare at this year’s Summer Games Fest, OuterSloth is more than just a fund. It is a symbol of hope for indie developers everywhere, as it commits itself to support the bold projects that shine bright with creativity and innovation.

A ROGUE Wave of Support

What OuterSloth brought is not just money, but understanding. If the indie games scene is full of rogue spirits and jackdaw souls, then allowing them to fly free is engaging their primary natures to encourage creative work. To date, OuterSloth’s little enterprise has a broad wing span. Each of its six discoveries in the indie coding scene exists at a different stage of development. The Martian terraforming adventures of Mars First Logistics can be endlessly expanded because it is still in planning; Battle Suit Aces can be rebalanced and pared down to a narrower remit as long as it ‘feels like a game’.

Encouraging Creative ROGUES

For example, one of the games that’s caught OuterSloth’s attention is ‘Rogue Eclipse’, a game from Huskraft. Described by IndieGameStand as being ‘formula prepared, but shaken’, Rogue Eclipse promises innovation in the rogue-like genre. So by supporting Rogue Eclipse, OuterSloth isn’t just investing in its own content. It’s also nourishing the spirit of innovation that is central to the best of indie gaming.

A Look into the Roguish Future

But OuterSloth’s vision is larger still. The fund has seeds planted for the indie darlings of tomorrow, too, with upcoming, unannounced titles from Strange Scaffold, Visai Games and Coldblood Inc. In this outlook lies OuterSloth’s commitment to the future of indie gaming, and not just its present.

Rogue Storytelling: Beyond Games

InnerSloth’s push for a rogue product is in this sense much broader than just games. The announcement highlighted an animated TV series around Among Us currently in development, suggesting a higher-level narrative that could be lent a frontier feel of surprise and novelty. The point here is not just about a wealth of ever new products, it is even more importantly about the spatialised desire to move into and inhabit more than just one realm of entertainment products – in this case, the realisation of a multi-dimensional world of experience.

A Renaissance Fueled by ROGUE Creativity

OuterSloth’s existence and its backing of fellow indie developers show that gaming is having a rogue creativity renaissance. Developers like InnerSloth are at the helm of the industry, backing and lifting up each other. They’re helping gaming redefine itself with originality, variety and urgency.

The Spirit of ROGUE Gaming

But flying at the centre of OuterSloth’s mission is an acknowledgment of the piratical spirit endemic to indie game development: a spirit of audacity, improvisation, and risk-taking; of new horizons, novel possibilities; of ideas as limitless as the sea; and of a single impulse – to create.

Understanding ROGUE in Gaming

To elaborate on what this focus on rogue creativity and innovation means for games, let’s look at its application in the gaming sphere. Rogue-like games, which are games wherein the levels are procedurally generated, deliver permadeath, and feature immense difficulty, have been successful with people who want to experience a unique and difficult playthrough every time. By funding games of this variety and more, OuterSloth isn’t funding games. It is funding the future ventures of gaming’s creative culture.

Ultimately,

OuterSloth’s indie game development fund is about more than a cash injection for promising-but-unproven indie games. It’s about the beginning of a creative wave that will see indie games enter a new golden age. Supporting rogue-lite ‘foundations run amok’-style games such as Rogue Eclipse, any future projects OuterSloth chooses to support will be carrying the momentum that was created by the runaway success of Among Us. They’re not riding on a wave created by Among Us, but creating a whole new wave.