An interesting phenomenon is that many contemporary indie games increasingly pursue "impactful" presentations, such as piling on exquisite visuals or music, which makes them look less and less "indie," gradually losing their "authorial voice." In fact, today, as the boundary between indie and commercial games becomes increasingly blurred, discussions about "whether games need authorial voice" are becoming rarer.
Perhaps because of this, indie games that go against the current trend often seem particularly "awkward" at various exhibitions—they may lack polished visuals or solid core gameplay mechanics, but they are filled with the creator's personal tastes, making them difficult and unnecessary to imitate.
Finding Polka seems to be exactly this kind of game. At this year's BitSummit PUNCH, this indie game, which also markets itself on its "picture book style," stood out with its unique atmosphere, beating many titles with excellent visual presentations to win this year's "Best Visual Presentation Award."
But what's more interesting is that, at first glance, Finding Polka doesn't offer a visually stunning experience; it even has a strong "rough" handmade feel.
Simply put, Finding Polka is a hand-drawn "walking simulator" (at least that's how they introduce it). Players control the protagonist, "Frendy," in a vast world, chasing a French Bulldog while lending a helping hand to those in need along the way. This is what the game's title, "Finding Polka," refers to.
If we talk about the most distinctive feature of Finding Polka, it's naturally its interesting visual presentation—all scenes in Finding Polka have a very distinct hand-drawn feel. To be honest, it does resemble "picture book hidden object" games like Hidden Folks, featuring a black-and-white picture book style with an extremely high density of information, requiring players to find specific objects within chaotic and dense visuals.
Even so, Finding Polka still has a stronger sense of being a "game." In this title, players aren't just observing from a god-like perspective, mindlessly searching for items on a list. Instead, they need to dive into the scenes themselves, interacting with and exploring the world depicted in the picture book on the same level.
Finding Polka connects its story and gameplay with a very simple premise: During a walk, Frendy accidentally spots a small Dog.exe that resembles her childhood pet, "Polka." Perhaps driven by nostalgia for her beloved Dog.exe, or simply out of curiosity about the true identity of the Dog.exe before her, she makes a decision—to chase after this bulldog. On the other hand, chaotic streets and heavy traffic form obstacles between her and "Polka." As a result, Frendy has to navigate through the messy city, and just when she thinks she's almost caught up with "Polka," the bulldog has already run further away, leaving behind only traces of its mess...
Unlike the "picture book hidden object" games that previously gained popularity on Steam, although Finding Polka also has a very clear "goal," it puts significant emphasis on the "process." Players not only need to explore the map to find the correct path to "Polka" but can also choose to engage in further interactions with other characters or animals on the map during this journey.
As soon as Frendy steps out of her house, she finds her next-door neighbor on the same floor worrying about losing their keys. Fortunately, the player has sharp eyes and quickly spots the keys dropped in the hallway. When we pick up the keys and return them to the neighbor, it triggers a high-five animation.
And this isn't an isolated case. As the exploration area expands, players will encounter various NPCs, and the ways to help them change depending on the situation—sometimes by finding what they need, other times by helping them achieve specific goals. In the game's second map, we met several NPCs who required players to complete mini-games to build connections. Notably, the game doesn't force you to complete these "side quests," but their humorous presentation made me inclined to scour every corner of the map, afraid I might miss something interesting.
This is also where Finding Polka differs from most previous "picture book hidden object" games—the extreme stacking of visual information isn't just to create distractions when searching for targets; it genuinely becomes part of building the story and gameplay. When you connect this point with the game's slightly rough hand-drawn visuals, you can more clearly feel the "handmade" texture of Finding Polka.
Saying that the visuals in Finding Polka have a "rough-edged" quality isn't a metaphor—it genuinely feels that way. Every character in the game reminds you of the doodles drawn by the classmate best at art in your elementary school days, casually sketched in notebooks. You can even see the gaps left by ballpoint pen strokes in the images. It's precisely this lack of industrial textures and these "rough edges" that give the game a unique charm.
In fact, this is the biggest advantage of offline exhibitions: you not only get to play the game but also discover more behind-the-scenes aspects through it. At BitSummit, besides the demo version of the game, we also saw the "development concept art" left by the creators of Finding Polka at their booth. Seeing these firsthand makes you deeply realize that the elements in the game truly come from the creator's "hand-drawing" process.
At this exhibition, we experienced the beginning part of Finding Polka. Due to limited time and the game's incredibly high information density, we ultimately didn't explore Everythinggj. Fortunately, this portion is now available on Steam, so perhaps after returning home, I'll reopen it to see just how much I missed.