by Joseph Carlson
This is a follow up documentary to the hugely successful 2012 Indie Game: The Movie. I'll say this though, it didn't follow through that great. There is a few moments of brilliance here. Showing what the creators of Super Meat Boy went through after the launch of the game. Most of the experience being great. Getting fan art from around the world and Edmund McMillen hanging the pressings of Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Issac on the wall for selling one million units is cool.
But that's about all when the film falls off the rails. The filmmakers take us to game jams and then talk to game developers large and small and how they are creating projects that they really love. They don't really follow up in any meaningful way with the original cast.
They interview Phil Fish. He tells us Fez is finished but not out yet. Then later in the documentary they screen Indie Game: The Movie for him and he loves it. They show Jonathan Blow at a convention answering questions with the people from the movie. They never follow up with Jonathan Blow about what he's making now. Phil Fish doesn't talk about his next project or even if there is a next project.
That's the big problem with the movie. The filmmakers show us a lot of things but not how those things relate to each other. With the first movie at least all of the people involved were working on their game or at least had just finished their game and they were all facing similar struggles and setbacks.
With the follow up movie I don't really know what the message was. I guess there are still people making independent games and that seems to be pretty neat. I kind of knew that already though. It seems like some of the footage is ripped straight from the 'extras' content of the first film.
I was really disappointed with this movie. I wanted to like it. Especially with so much time passing and knowing now what some of the developers have worked on since. I wanted this movie to be a continuation of the first. Sadly, none of that happened in the movie whatsoever.
Let me know what you think in the comments below.
Indie Game: Life After is now on Netflix.