re: indie games you’ve liked
–
xenosphere – literally only played/finished it just now at time of writing. delightful, strange one-button platformer. electrondance has a full writeup on the game, but here’s a truncated backstory: 1neila1 is a streamer with a decent-ish following. she does games, occasionally illustrations and doodles. one day she talked about wanting to build a portfolio to enter the games industry. someone went “well, how about making a little game for a start?” that someone happened to be a game dev (nifflas), and they collaborated and xenosphere is the resulting game.
it’s a short, 30-minute-ish game. best experienced as blindly as possible... well, i guess: mild jumpscare warning (and the devs are a bit of a little shit [adoring] about it, too. jeez).
osu – click the circles to the beat. is it objectively a good game? well, the underlying mechanics are solid (the mechanics that are taken wholesale from osu! tatakae! ouendan! for ds, westernized as elite beat agents. these games are objectively good). but if you’re not into anime/otaku culture at all it’ll turn you off: you can definitely build a sizable songlist of non-otaku songs, but then the culture, the everything else surrounding the game would still be a turn-off. but otherwise! simple mechanics, surprising depth. everyone needs one of these games where you’re just at it until you’re good at it because it feels good to be good. i don’t know if it necessarily needs to be osu. i just feel duty-bound to mention it here because i’ve played it for more than a decade now, it’s my most played game by far, and i have bittersweet feelings about it almost purely because it’s just been with me for so long, that memories of me playing the game and my feelings of everything else that’s happened over the years begin to mix together.
soulstone survivors / 20 minutes till dawn – putting them together because they’re both of the same genre (“bullet heaven”; it’s a vampire survivors, basically) and for me they serve the same purpose (to occupy me while i listen to podcasts or the radio). soulstone visually looks a bit like dota 2 to me, which i find appealing. may not be the case for you though. it can easily be “figured out”: it’ll be very clear to you which builds are viable (as of end of 2024 when i last played it, small collection of those i’m afraid), and which builds are pretty much challenge builds. which i don’t mind! i love 7/10 games that you can “figure out”. 20 minutes till dawn is more stylish, the weapons/upgrades feel more polished, and the characters are all really cool women. it’s probably the more appealing one to you lot.
fights in tight spaces – kill–er, be james bond. or a non-problematic equivalent. a tile-based slay the spire, pretty much. very, very stylish. i’m not a Gamer so it was pretty notable to me that i find the game so stylish that it ameliorates the frustrations of me trying to figure out the game (it is not a hard game! i pretty much finish every run i start now! i’m not a Gamer!!). the dlc allows you to use Gun.
dicey dungeons – roll the dice, it feels nice. roguelite with dice rolling, by the capable hands of terry cavanagh. cute, great art, charming characters, banger soundtrack by chipzel.
awaria – fix machines. avoid attacks. kiss ghosts. the attacks really ramp up as you progress through the game (even if it’s a short one). but you learn and you keep trying. you need to kiss the ghosts.
a short hike – i’ve always found the gameplay loop of genshin impact enjoyable. unfortunate, because gacha games are evil, and also it’s like a 130GB download WHy do you need 130GB of game. what do you put in there (i guess for the most part uncompressed art and sounds). so i’d always mused about a “genshin impact” that’s shorter and has “worse” graphics and hey. i finally checked out a short hike after getting it on an itch.io palestine bundle a while ago. it just feels really nice to run around and climb around and fly around in this game. the characters are great, too.
(a game is a “genshin impact” to me if you can climb _any_ vertical thing) (i know that genshin nabbed that off botw but still it’s a “genshin impact” to me) (“but a short hike doesn’t have any combat” incidentally i’ve been checking out the psp monster hunter games... split the difference! play a short hike for the exploration and monster hunter for the fighting! don’t play gacha games!!) (monster hunter portable 3rd on psp is 1.3GB and a short hike is 300MB. see? why would you ever need 130GB of game.)
kingsway – a nice, light roguelite, leveraging windows 9x Aesthetics. as in: you literally fight enemies on windows 9x-style dialogue boxes, clicking on dialogue box options to attack or use magic/items and such. though ultimately under it is a pretty basic rpg with real-time battles, with not that much depth; i still find it a good podcast game (maybe exactly because of that).
the murder of sonic the hedgehog – one of the most enjoyable april fools’ jokes i’ve ever experienced. a highly polished short visual novel. i only know of sonic stuff through cultural osmosis, but the characters are fun, the writing is fun. the main “challenge” minigame can be a bit repetitive, but again, it’s a short game.
citizen sleeper — i just love rolling dice. an rpg where you struggle to keep yourself alive. do odd jobs and buy medicine for your failing body. the main conceit is that you roll a few dice at the start of the day, and that dictates what you can do: some actions you simply do better when you have a higher dice, some actions require specific dice to pull off. strong themes, strong writing, cool art, a lovely, very lived-in world (which is high praise for an offworld slum, isn’t it?).
in stars and time – unfortunately i’ve never gotten around to finish this game. i had thought about writing out my thoughts about it and Finding Excuses as to why i’m not finishing it and i’ve never gotten around to doing that. but anyway: it’s a cute jrpg. specifically, an earthbound-like, if you will (i see 2v already mentioned off and The Big One. hiya). trans themes deeply baked into the game, both explicitly in text and also in an allegorical, subtle way (and the two actually run in parallel instead of being related, which i find amusing). an elemental rock-paper-scissors combat taken literally: the elements are rock, paper, and scissors. but the main thrust of the game is the looping gameplay. and the writing that’s strong enough to bear that load. i will be going into some spoilers here so skip ahead if you like: you’ll be going to the same places over and over again, hearing the same dialogues over and over again, and it grates on siffrin and it grates on you. the game gives you a “doze off” button which lets you skip dialogues, with a little aside that you might miss some new (if strictly not plot-important) stuff, and that is a little evil, evil trick that the game pulls. but here’s the thing, right? siffrin starts to lose their mind as the days looped for the 91st time or whatever and you lose your mind along with them as you play the same shit for the 91st time or whatever and that’s fucking immersive gameplay, isn’t it? they have achieved the elusive. siffrin is very much their own character with their own story, and yet you are at one with them. on the flipside, i bounced off the game because my play sessions became “the 3 hours of the day where i feel on edge and kinda miserable”.
should you play it? hell yes. you’ll probably finish it no problem. again, i’m not a Gamer, i’m made of really soft stuff. some topics could be heavy, but the writing is good enough that it’s still entertaining, and you don’t have to worry too much about the writing taking a wrong step or something. the art is cute, the characters are charming, i have a crush on madam odile. i hope siffrin finds peace.
–