Which indies did you discover and would love more people to know about?
I’ll start: The Pale Beyond. Not sure if it’s a hidden gem tbh, but it’s such a good story rich game. I laughed, I cried and felt the characters struggles. If you like story rich games/ choices matter, check it out.
I got this game recently since I got hooked hard on Dead Cells, and needless to say combat was the disappointing part. Coming from DC it feels so rigid and limited, needlessly punishing. But I got the game for art, so that part is great. It’s also weirdly poorly optimized. They made the whole game in one resolution and are scaling everything, like whole screen. So your choice of resolution might end up weirdly stretched. An odd decision.
I’ll have to check that out. An indie game in a very similar vein is Evochron Legends. It’s available on Steam, too. I have a couple of hours in it, but it’s been a while since I last checked it.
Parkitect - an amazing RCT spiritual successor with cute graphics, some new mechanics (covering operational buildings and logistic routes). I have 100+ hours in it with my wife. It’s such a chill experience.
Nine Parchments - its a dual stick isometric shooter with wizards and elemental spells from the creators of Trine. Great co-op, unlockable characters/spells and creative mechanics. You can combine elements and the spells affect everyone, so for example a poorly placed healing spell can restore enemies health, or a misplaced fireball can hurt fellow players. Great fun!
Wildermyth - turn-based rpg with multiple characters and bite-sized modular quests and random encounters. The storytelling is simply amazing and each campaign plays out over a certain amount of time. The heroes age, retire, their kids can become adventurers as well. They can fall in love, compete, or based on the player’s choices even become other creatures or die heroic deaths which will also change how the story plays out. The art style is really nice and unique. I had many hours of fun with this one.
Ouroboros - an RPGmaker game where the protagonist is trapped in a looping simulation and tries to escape without alerting his captors. Short and sweet, perfectly executes the power fantasy of being a hyper competent rational character who’s gone completely emotionally numb after living for thousands of years. It’s an adult game and features some sex scenes but they’re not important and I think they can even be turned off. It goes on an 80% discount every steam sale.
Phoenotopia: Awakening – an amazing metroidvania-related game. Relatively more popular than the other games I list, but is honestly one of my favorite games of all time.
Vision: Soft Reset – a metroidvania, but you can travel backwards and forwards in time and this really matters for gameplay.
Bombe – Minesweeper, but instead of solving the puzzles manually, you create rules (“if there is a cell with the number N and there are N empty cells around it, mark them all as mines”) which the game applies automatically.
SOLAS 128 – a puzzle game where you redirect signals in a huge machine, just a great experience if you like puzzle games.
Andor’s Trail is a foss roguelike with a twist that it’s story based, something quite rare in this genre.
Immortal Life is a farming game but with a Wuxia twist where you can use chinese magic to help you do your chores and there’s a twin stick combat inside the dungeon. What surprised me was seeing the game selling well on steam, but never seeing a single article about it, strangely common with chinese indies over here.
I would imagine that most articles about Chinese Indie Games are written in Mandarin, so it’s unlikely you’d see them without the ability to read Chinese.
Unciv for Android. It’s basically Civilization 5, but FOSS.
Shoutout to Iji, too. Amazing soundtrack and lots of replayability. It’s an old game by now, but it’s also free. Sidescrolling platformer, killing is optional.
Assault Android Cactus. Dunno how well known the game is, but it’s one of the best twin stick shooters/bullet hell I’ve played, with the android girls full of charm.
I was going to say Iji. Such an amazing game, it’s like the 2D version of an immersive sim. I wish there was a remake only so the dev could make the money they rightfully deserve.
Tales of Maj’Eyal: An incredible rogue-like with 30+ classes and God knows how many achievements.
Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead: Apocalyptic rogue-like. Zombies, bandits, aliens and Lovecraft shit. Want to raid a dojo? Learn Judo from a book and proceed to race around town on a pair of rollerblades practicing on the undead? Feel free.
Crosscode is one of my favourite games of all time. It’s an immensely charming action RPG heavily inspired by the 2D Zelda games. It has some absolutely insane combat and surprisingly challenging puzzles. The story is also very good and really touching at times. The devs spent 7 years making this game and I feel like it never got anywhere near the attention it deserved.
It’s just $20 on steam AND it has a free demo, so there’s no reason not to check it out!
I bounced off Crosscode hard. Which sucks because I wanted to love it. The pacing and difficulty were all over the place. And making the puzzle dungeons a race between you and other characters just made me hate them. I want to stop and think! After dying to a particularly nasty boss I was trying to beat as fast as possible so I could maybe eke out a win in the dungeon, I ended up cranking the difficulty all the way down, and was the last out of the dungeon anyway. I put the game down and haven’t looked back. That was about 25 hours in, and nothing of consequence had occurred with the plot by then, anyway. I might go back sometime and see if it gets better, but it left me pretty sour.
I love the entire 16 bit era, and JRPGs, and action RPGs, and Crono Trigger, and difficult games, but Crosscode just took all those elements and somehow made them unpalatable to me.
I think if I have one criticism of the plot is that it takes a while to get going. If I may, I’d recommend you to play thorough it at your own pace, possible also at the lowest difficulty just to experience the story. It’s well worth it just for that.
I can’t even remember any plot. I know I got past some hourglass shaped pyramid and then a few more steps. But it all felt utterly disconnected. I might have actually finished it, but I can’t even recall.
If you play with M+KB, you can aim as good as the game clearly expects you to. But you will rapidly develop RSI from the spam-clicking, nevermind how the melee attack has the weirdest input I’ve seen in a long time.
If you use a controller, most controls work fine, but in return you cannot aim that well. Which is still preferrable, but the game clearly originally built for precise aiming.
Combined with how janky all the enemy attacks and hit boxes are, it just feels frustrating. Plus the difficulty is wild, 90%+ are boringly easy, and then the odd totally normal enemy wipes you in seconds.
It really sucks that you bounced so hard. Some tips in case you ever do want to go back to it:
Enemies are puzzles too. Nearly every single enemy in the game has a specific trick to them that, once you get it down you can beat them much more easily. This includes bosses. Usually this is indicated by breaking the enemy.
Don’t worry about the races. I think I only ever won a single race in the entire game, and it has literally zero consequence other than a couple lines of dialog. It’s purely a feel good thing, and to connect you more with Emily through a friendly competition.
The story can feel a bit confusing and disconnected because there’s 2 stories happening at once: the crossworlds story and the actual story. The actual story only really starts to get serious towards the end, so until then just focus on enjoying the fake-mmo world!
If it’s not for you, it’s not for you and there’s nothing I can do about that, but I really want others to enjoy this game as much as I did because I do believe it’s something special.
Shadow Tactics and Shadow Gambit are two brilliant gems that come to mind by Mimimi Studios. I discovered them a few weeks ago and just learned they went defunct back in August because they were too niche a genre and couldn’t make enough sales. They’re Stealth Strategy games where you control a group of ninjas/pirates through a heavily guarded level to the objective, stealthily murdering everyone along the way. If you get seen you can easily jump back to a quick save and try again. You’re not overpowered and can easily be killed by enemies so save scumming is deliberately built in to the experience to experiment with your approach.
Shadow Tactics is set in feudal japan. This one has an expandalone.
Desperados III then takes the game to the wild west.
Shadow Gambit goes wild and gives us a magic ship and an undead pirate crew. It has two rather pricey expansions, one bringing in a character from the first game. It also has a hidden character to unlock after you beat the game, which is kinda cool.
You can notice how each game perfects the formula, but they’re overall extremely similar. I would very much recommend the last one if you have to pick one, as the focus on magic allowed them to go truly wild with the character abilities. Gaelle shooting corpses and partymembers around with her cannon is a particularly fun one.
Sidenote: Far as I can tell they didn’t go bankrupt or anything, they just … stopped. They’re done or so. Did the same concept three times, happy now, works for them.
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Blasphemous.
Fantastic metroidvania meets soulslike game. The art style, the lore, the atmosphere, and by God - the music!
The combat is not super great, but it’s capable enough for a metroidvania.
I haven’t played the second one, I hear it’s kinda hit and miss.
You know that the art is based on Holy Week in Andalucia?
As far as I know, a ton of stuff in the game is based on Spanish folklore etc as well.
The first one also meh at releast until several patches later. The second one is on the easier side as the penitent one is now more agile.
I got this game recently since I got hooked hard on Dead Cells, and needless to say combat was the disappointing part. Coming from DC it feels so rigid and limited, needlessly punishing. But I got the game for art, so that part is great. It’s also weirdly poorly optimized. They made the whole game in one resolution and are scaling everything, like whole screen. So your choice of resolution might end up weirdly stretched. An odd decision.
deleted by creator
I’ll have to check that out. An indie game in a very similar vein is Evochron Legends. It’s available on Steam, too. I have a couple of hours in it, but it’s been a while since I last checked it.
Parkitect - an amazing RCT spiritual successor with cute graphics, some new mechanics (covering operational buildings and logistic routes). I have 100+ hours in it with my wife. It’s such a chill experience.
Nine Parchments - its a dual stick isometric shooter with wizards and elemental spells from the creators of Trine. Great co-op, unlockable characters/spells and creative mechanics. You can combine elements and the spells affect everyone, so for example a poorly placed healing spell can restore enemies health, or a misplaced fireball can hurt fellow players. Great fun!
Wildermyth - turn-based rpg with multiple characters and bite-sized modular quests and random encounters. The storytelling is simply amazing and each campaign plays out over a certain amount of time. The heroes age, retire, their kids can become adventurers as well. They can fall in love, compete, or based on the player’s choices even become other creatures or die heroic deaths which will also change how the story plays out. The art style is really nice and unique. I had many hours of fun with this one.
I love Wildermyth. I really need to check it out again :)
I’ve had so much fun in Wildermyth. Definitely recommended.
Ouroboros - an RPGmaker game where the protagonist is trapped in a looping simulation and tries to escape without alerting his captors. Short and sweet, perfectly executes the power fantasy of being a hyper competent rational character who’s gone completely emotionally numb after living for thousands of years. It’s an adult game and features some sex scenes but they’re not important and I think they can even be turned off. It goes on an 80% discount every steam sale.
For the record, every game by that dev is incredible. One of them is still being worked on but should be finishing this year, and that one is free.
Phoenotopia: Awakening – an amazing metroidvania-related game. Relatively more popular than the other games I list, but is honestly one of my favorite games of all time.
Vision: Soft Reset – a metroidvania, but you can travel backwards and forwards in time and this really matters for gameplay.
Bombe – Minesweeper, but instead of solving the puzzles manually, you create rules (“if there is a cell with the number N and there are N empty cells around it, mark them all as mines”) which the game applies automatically.
SOLAS 128 – a puzzle game where you redirect signals in a huge machine, just a great experience if you like puzzle games.
Void Stranger
Can of Wormholes
Andor’s Trail is a foss roguelike with a twist that it’s story based, something quite rare in this genre.
Immortal Life is a farming game but with a Wuxia twist where you can use chinese magic to help you do your chores and there’s a twin stick combat inside the dungeon. What surprised me was seeing the game selling well on steam, but never seeing a single article about it, strangely common with chinese indies over here.
I would imagine that most articles about Chinese Indie Games are written in Mandarin, so it’s unlikely you’d see them without the ability to read Chinese.
The games are in english and they talk about japanese indies all the time though.
Weird. IDK
Unciv for Android. It’s basically Civilization 5, but FOSS.
Shoutout to Iji, too. Amazing soundtrack and lots of replayability. It’s an old game by now, but it’s also free. Sidescrolling platformer, killing is optional.
Assault Android Cactus. Dunno how well known the game is, but it’s one of the best twin stick shooters/bullet hell I’ve played, with the android girls full of charm.
I was going to say Iji. Such an amazing game, it’s like the 2D version of an immersive sim. I wish there was a remake only so the dev could make the money they rightfully deserve.
I recommend Nex Machina if you enjoyed that one.
Uh, which one? I mentioned 3 games
Sorry, Assault Android Cactus. The formatting in my app made it look like two separate comments when I was skimming quickly.
Mindustry
Oh this is a neat game I’ll just build this little gun turret and oh my god 14 hours have passed
yes I’ve lost hours on that game
Universim.
Superfighters (original web game) and Superfighters Deluxe (on steam)
Really good 2D platform brawler based around weapon drops.
Paradigm
Crosscode is one of my favourite games of all time. It’s an immensely charming action RPG heavily inspired by the 2D Zelda games. It has some absolutely insane combat and surprisingly challenging puzzles. The story is also very good and really touching at times. The devs spent 7 years making this game and I feel like it never got anywhere near the attention it deserved.
It’s just $20 on steam AND it has a free demo, so there’s no reason not to check it out!
I bounced off Crosscode hard. Which sucks because I wanted to love it. The pacing and difficulty were all over the place. And making the puzzle dungeons a race between you and other characters just made me hate them. I want to stop and think! After dying to a particularly nasty boss I was trying to beat as fast as possible so I could maybe eke out a win in the dungeon, I ended up cranking the difficulty all the way down, and was the last out of the dungeon anyway. I put the game down and haven’t looked back. That was about 25 hours in, and nothing of consequence had occurred with the plot by then, anyway. I might go back sometime and see if it gets better, but it left me pretty sour.
I love the entire 16 bit era, and JRPGs, and action RPGs, and Crono Trigger, and difficult games, but Crosscode just took all those elements and somehow made them unpalatable to me.
I think if I have one criticism of the plot is that it takes a while to get going. If I may, I’d recommend you to play thorough it at your own pace, possible also at the lowest difficulty just to experience the story. It’s well worth it just for that.
I can’t even remember any plot. I know I got past some hourglass shaped pyramid and then a few more steps. But it all felt utterly disconnected. I might have actually finished it, but I can’t even recall.
Not only that, the combat was also utter jank.
If you play with M+KB, you can aim as good as the game clearly expects you to. But you will rapidly develop RSI from the spam-clicking, nevermind how the melee attack has the weirdest input I’ve seen in a long time.
If you use a controller, most controls work fine, but in return you cannot aim that well. Which is still preferrable, but the game clearly originally built for precise aiming.
Combined with how janky all the enemy attacks and hit boxes are, it just feels frustrating. Plus the difficulty is wild, 90%+ are boringly easy, and then the odd totally normal enemy wipes you in seconds.
The comment you replied to reminded me how much I wanted to love Crosscode, and yet I also “bounced off” it (amazing phrase).
Your comment made me understand why I bounced off of it. I had exactly the same experience as you, with the controls.
It really sucks that you bounced so hard. Some tips in case you ever do want to go back to it:
Enemies are puzzles too. Nearly every single enemy in the game has a specific trick to them that, once you get it down you can beat them much more easily. This includes bosses. Usually this is indicated by breaking the enemy.
Don’t worry about the races. I think I only ever won a single race in the entire game, and it has literally zero consequence other than a couple lines of dialog. It’s purely a feel good thing, and to connect you more with Emily through a friendly competition.
The story can feel a bit confusing and disconnected because there’s 2 stories happening at once: the crossworlds story and the actual story. The actual story only really starts to get serious towards the end, so until then just focus on enjoying the fake-mmo world!
If it’s not for you, it’s not for you and there’s nothing I can do about that, but I really want others to enjoy this game as much as I did because I do believe it’s something special.
Shadow Tactics and Shadow Gambit are two brilliant gems that come to mind by Mimimi Studios. I discovered them a few weeks ago and just learned they went defunct back in August because they were too niche a genre and couldn’t make enough sales. They’re Stealth Strategy games where you control a group of ninjas/pirates through a heavily guarded level to the objective, stealthily murdering everyone along the way. If you get seen you can easily jump back to a quick save and try again. You’re not overpowered and can easily be killed by enemies so save scumming is deliberately built in to the experience to experiment with your approach.
It’s in fact three games:
You can notice how each game perfects the formula, but they’re overall extremely similar. I would very much recommend the last one if you have to pick one, as the focus on magic allowed them to go truly wild with the character abilities. Gaelle shooting corpses and partymembers around with her cannon is a particularly fun one.
Sidenote: Far as I can tell they didn’t go bankrupt or anything, they just … stopped. They’re done or so. Did the same concept three times, happy now, works for them.