Something Shiny:
The Indie Character Battle Contest

Who Wins in Popularity: Shovel Knight or Meat Boy?

Jul 07, 2016
Indie Character Contest Title

Who is a more important character in gaming: Max Caufield or Ori? Could Sans from Undertale take on The Kid from Bastion? Which character might be more popular?

Over at Downloadable Content, our friend Brian has been running a contest for years now, called character battles. There’s a theme every year, from Final Fantasy to Nintendo, and 64 characters are lined up into brackets, ala March Madness style. You predict who would win, who would make it to the top of a popularity contest, and then, over the course of the next month, the votes begin. Which character out of 64 choices would be the most popular? There’s prizes, of course, as motivation, if you get into the top three.

This year, we’re particularly interested in the thematic choice of using Indie game characters. Typically, these character contests boil down into a few well known favorites: Cloud vs. Sephiroth, or perhaps Mario vs. Bowser, but with there now being over 58 games being used as inspiration, this contest is much more up in the air. Huge differences in characters are going to show up. Max Caufield is a teenage photographer with time bending skills from Life is Strange, but how in the hell can you stack her against Cthulhu, from the bizarre RPG Cthulhu Saves The World

I’m excited to see how this one plays out. Right now, I’m sharing the contest with all of you to see how popular some of these characters really are. Although I’m not a huge fan myself, I could absolutely see Sans from Undertale winning it all, just because of how well that game has done in the public eye. As a huge fan of SuperGiant Games, I’ll be rooting for Red from Transistor or The Kid from Bastion, just because I love the worlds that they inhabit.

What do you think? Enter the contest and take a look at all of the rules here. You can enter into the contest until 11:59 pm on July 8th. I hope you join me in the contest… even though I’m sure I’ll be winning that $60 for Playstation Network for myself very, very soon.


Wyatt Krause

Editor-in-chief, Co-founder