Uh… I swear I wanted to contribute just 2 or 3 games, but as I wrote, I kept remembering one gem after another… oh well… :)
Outer Wilds - So hard to describe, it’s an exploration game, but what you’re exploring is a star system going supernova, in a wooden spaceship no less. And a strange way of (not) time travel is also involved, which could be the root of the whole game loop.
Axiom Verge - A platformer that is such a labor of love that it hits just the perfect mix of approachability, exploration, story development and that “huh?” factor where right until the end you’re not sure what your abilities actually mean - i.e. if you could glitch through walls in the real world, would that imply the real world is a simulation?
Stardew Valley - A somehow utterly satisfying farming simulator in the style of the first Harvest Moon games. Such a nice getaway game - it begins with your avatar quitting their office job and moving to a farm inherited from their grandfather. No taxes, no boss, no stress, just rise with the sun, plant, water, harvest and fix. Change your rhythm with the weather and the seasons, investigate charming little mysteries of a beautiful place.
Broforce - Another platformer, this one a bit more brutal. Far over the top 80s action heroes bring freedom to the world, but whether you play as Robocop, Schwarzenegger, McGyver, Snake Plissken, Ripley or another 50 heroes is almost random and each hero has completely different weapons and skills. Destructible environment and even a large Xenomorph outbreak (how the heck did they get the license or grant?).
Protolife - This one uses such a madly simple recipe for complex gameplay. Seen top-down, you’re a robotic loader than can put down dots. That’s all. But certain arrangements of dots are guns, long range guns, flame throwers, area denial, missile silos, barriers and so on. You’re attacked by insect-like creatures, but instead of building tanks, you have to attack via well-placed guns slowly pushing the swarming enemies back.
Alien Shooter 2 Reloaded - Simple top-down shooter where you’re the lone soldier seeking to contain an alien outbreak. Goes for the time-honed recipe of character stat upgrades (speed, health, accuracy) and purchasing weapons and weapon upgrades. The interesting part is the insane hordes you’re up against and that all the corpses stay. It’s not unusual for entire corridors to turn into flesh hallways of blood and carapaces.
Moons of Madness - I hope this is actually indie, the graphics are near AAA level. It’s 50% walking simulator, 50% cosmic horror, set on Mars. You’re an astronaut doing maintenance on an outpost, but rather than go for the “freaky alien attack” recipe, reality itself seems to be somehow bending. Cthulhu, is that you?
Lumencraft - Top-down game. You begin as a miner in an underground base. Something really bad happened to humanity and now you’re digging underground for metal and for “lumen.” To feed the reactor that keeps humanity alive, you have to meet harvesting goals and dig tunnels, but various enemies attack in waves, so you have to spend part of your resources on fortifications and turrets and avoid opening up too many avenues into your bases.
Carrion - 2D platformer-ish. In a secret place, scientists are holding a horrific, tentacled bioweapon locked away, but it escapes. Twist: you are the tentacled bioweapon, slithering through pipes, circumventing security systems and trying to escape from the lab.
Nuclear Blaze - 2D platformer. You’re a fireman sent to contain a fire the broke out in some kind of installation in a forest. But one building has a shaft that leads deep underground where a high-end containment facility is suffering a failure. Takes place in the “SCP” universe and your only tool is a fire hose. Extremely fun trying to extinguish fires in a way where they won’t spread again.
Mothergunship - This is a first-person shooter where you’re bording and destroying (from the inside out) an army of AI space ships. But instead of a traditional gun, you have gun parts you can stick together. How about a triple rocket launcher with two shotguns in the middle? Or a shield generating laser with a sawblade attache to it, and maybe two shotguns just to be sure? It doesn’t grow old with new weapon parts being introduced right until the very end.
Space Run - 2D base building. You’re a mercenary cargo pilot fending off space pirates. But you don’t do it by controlling a turret, instead, your spaceship is a building surface and you have to build the right kind of engines, turrets, shields and power generators (in mid-flight no less) to be able to shoot down incoming rocks and pirate ships. Extremely well balanced and fun.
Creeper World - 3D real-time strategy. But your enemy is not actually present on the map, you’re just fighting a simulation of liquid, a gooey slime that pours out of several spots. You have to keep shooting, bombarding and containing the splashing, pouring slime until you can neutralize the slime outlets. The story is cool, too. The slime is actually some extinct species “gift” to the universe which dissolves everything into data, transmitted to some eternal storage space at the center of the universe.
i’m not saying you didn’t run into quality posts on reddit, but this is the kind of post i see way more often here and it makes these spaces way more enjoyable.
nice work, definitely going to try a few of these out!
this is a great post. I do think the outer wilds description is a smidge spoilery. I know, people figure that out pretty quickly but it’s still a neat experience if going in blind
Undertale. It was the best game I’ve ever played and I can never play it again. This game lives rent free in my head, in my fanworks, in the music I listen to and make. It’s a game that combines technology and art.
I played it to completion. Then Rebirth came out and I played it to completion (barring The Lost, because come on). I only recently picked up Repentance and I’m already another 200 hours in.
Yeah it was only pre-holy mantle that I gave up on, The Lost is actually a pretty interesting character to play now. Is Tainted Lost still slightly easier than original Lost though?
Think the original Lost but nearly all defensive items are removed from the item pool. On one hand that means no useless health ups clogging the item pools. On the other hand, that means no holy mantle or dead cat.
Overall I’d say that makes him a more consistent and more fun character, but I’m not sure if I’d call him easier. Losing the ability to find things like dead cat hurts.
IIRC (been almost a year since I’ve played Isaac), he has a higher damage stat as well, which is great.
I had a harder time getting good at and staying interested in ITB. I still really enjoy a playthrough every now and then.
With FTL I guess it just feels more replayable and “on edge” to me. There is just something special about ftl runs, be it overpowered, under powered. There are so many ships, weapons, systems, and crew combinations that no run really feels the same.
The same could be said about ITB and their different mech teams but I guess it just doesn’t have the same feel. ITB feels like I’m selling my services to big corporations with saving people as an after note. FTL feels like a suicide mission for the fate of the galaxy and I think that feeling is what really makes me come back to FTL.
Interesting! Thanks for sharing, I don’t really disagree with any of your points. Maybe I just liked the style of ITB more…I do love isometric tactics games
Personally one of the aspects I enjoy a lot in FTL is managing my power levels mid-fight (Do I need my oxygen powered right now? I could probably turn it off until the fight is over…) I don’t know if any other game that has you shuffling around power like that.
Even Arkane alone at that time wouldn’t be considered indie. They had done a few contract jobs for major releases, like CoD, before developing Dishonored.
I think the Deep Rock developers are owned by Embracer now, so I’m not sure if that counts as “indie” anymore, even if they’re still a small (and previously somewhat home-grown) studio. But it’s still a damn good game - ROCK AND STONE
DRG was never an indie, it was published by Coffee Stain Publishing, which is a subsidiary of Coffee Stain, which in turn is a subsidiary of Embracer.
Ghost Ship got fully acquired by Embracer in 2021, though their publishing deal with Coffee Stain started in 2017, before Embracer had even touched either company.
Ghost Ship did not self-publish DRG, they published with Coffee Stain. The publishing deal started in 2017, with Embracer/THQ buying Coffee Stain a year later in 2018. And even later buying Ghost Ship, as well.
I recently bought stardew valley and its fun but the farming grind feels kinda forced, no? I feel like I need to pay attention to not loose myself in the game which defeats the purpose.
I used to find it kinda stressful until i realised there was no time limit to the game like the usual harvest moons so once I realised that, I never find myself rushing around or overextending my ability to farm to grind more and just focused on what I was enjoying in the game which was a bit of everything.
There is sort of a time limit though, you get your “review” at the end of the second year (at which point no new events happen). Also getting things planted in time for when the seasons change etc is kind of time-limiting.
But that’s all detail, it’s great that people can enjoy it without time pressures!
I only really played early on, not dabbled with it properly in years but I do remember things happening. It’s not like I could only get things to happen in the first two years in game
I can imagine it gets better but the grind is kind of not for me. The mining and farming grind in minecraft I understand and the grind in factorio as well. Maybe its heightened due to the saving cycle that seems to want you to keep going.
There are ways to play (besides mods) where you barely have to grow crops. Unless you’re trying for all the achievements there’s not really a wrong way or a time limit to play.
I really wanted to love rain world since it seemed right up my alley. I bounced off it not because of the difficulty, but I think because the character’s movement feels bad. You’re slow, can’t jump high, a lot of maneuvering is fiddly.
Maybe I’ll try it again at some point though, because the world they made is brilliant and has interesting emergent behaviors.
Rain World is a sidescrolling platformer in which you play a small rodent who must survive on a planet of other life forms pelted with recurring lethally powerful downpours of rain. You must learn to control your creature (who moves with dynamic physics, along with all other creatures), and learn to interact with and hunt the various other creatures (who have varied and intelligent AI and are not necessarily hostile) in order to gain food to sustain you through the next rain cycle.
Through all of this you explore a large interconnected world of different areas that show a background lore of a world that previously inhabited intelligent industrial beings (who have vanished) and uncover the mysteries within and find others of your kind.
That was as succint as I could make it to show off the unique qualities of Rain World. Its visual style is beautiful, its gameplay has a moderate learning curve due to the physics, and the AI of the creatures are successful in creating a dynamic ecosystem wherein the player feels like they’re a small incidental piece of a world that has its own goals and behaviors that the player must learn to fit in with and work within.
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FTL, Rimworld.
I have about 5000 hours just on these two
FTL sucked me in for a few years. I still have yet to get the crystal cruiser
Uh… I swear I wanted to contribute just 2 or 3 games, but as I wrote, I kept remembering one gem after another… oh well… :)
Outer Wilds - So hard to describe, it’s an exploration game, but what you’re exploring is a star system going supernova, in a wooden spaceship no less. And a strange way of (not) time travel is also involved, which could be the root of the whole game loop.
Axiom Verge - A platformer that is such a labor of love that it hits just the perfect mix of approachability, exploration, story development and that “huh?” factor where right until the end you’re not sure what your abilities actually mean - i.e. if you could glitch through walls in the real world, would that imply the real world is a simulation?
Stardew Valley - A somehow utterly satisfying farming simulator in the style of the first Harvest Moon games. Such a nice getaway game - it begins with your avatar quitting their office job and moving to a farm inherited from their grandfather. No taxes, no boss, no stress, just rise with the sun, plant, water, harvest and fix. Change your rhythm with the weather and the seasons, investigate charming little mysteries of a beautiful place.
Broforce - Another platformer, this one a bit more brutal. Far over the top 80s action heroes bring freedom to the world, but whether you play as Robocop, Schwarzenegger, McGyver, Snake Plissken, Ripley or another 50 heroes is almost random and each hero has completely different weapons and skills. Destructible environment and even a large Xenomorph outbreak (how the heck did they get the license or grant?).
Protolife - This one uses such a madly simple recipe for complex gameplay. Seen top-down, you’re a robotic loader than can put down dots. That’s all. But certain arrangements of dots are guns, long range guns, flame throwers, area denial, missile silos, barriers and so on. You’re attacked by insect-like creatures, but instead of building tanks, you have to attack via well-placed guns slowly pushing the swarming enemies back.
Alien Shooter 2 Reloaded - Simple top-down shooter where you’re the lone soldier seeking to contain an alien outbreak. Goes for the time-honed recipe of character stat upgrades (speed, health, accuracy) and purchasing weapons and weapon upgrades. The interesting part is the insane hordes you’re up against and that all the corpses stay. It’s not unusual for entire corridors to turn into flesh hallways of blood and carapaces.
Moons of Madness - I hope this is actually indie, the graphics are near AAA level. It’s 50% walking simulator, 50% cosmic horror, set on Mars. You’re an astronaut doing maintenance on an outpost, but rather than go for the “freaky alien attack” recipe, reality itself seems to be somehow bending. Cthulhu, is that you?
Lumencraft - Top-down game. You begin as a miner in an underground base. Something really bad happened to humanity and now you’re digging underground for metal and for “lumen.” To feed the reactor that keeps humanity alive, you have to meet harvesting goals and dig tunnels, but various enemies attack in waves, so you have to spend part of your resources on fortifications and turrets and avoid opening up too many avenues into your bases.
Carrion - 2D platformer-ish. In a secret place, scientists are holding a horrific, tentacled bioweapon locked away, but it escapes. Twist: you are the tentacled bioweapon, slithering through pipes, circumventing security systems and trying to escape from the lab.
Nuclear Blaze - 2D platformer. You’re a fireman sent to contain a fire the broke out in some kind of installation in a forest. But one building has a shaft that leads deep underground where a high-end containment facility is suffering a failure. Takes place in the “SCP” universe and your only tool is a fire hose. Extremely fun trying to extinguish fires in a way where they won’t spread again.
Mothergunship - This is a first-person shooter where you’re bording and destroying (from the inside out) an army of AI space ships. But instead of a traditional gun, you have gun parts you can stick together. How about a triple rocket launcher with two shotguns in the middle? Or a shield generating laser with a sawblade attache to it, and maybe two shotguns just to be sure? It doesn’t grow old with new weapon parts being introduced right until the very end.
Space Run - 2D base building. You’re a mercenary cargo pilot fending off space pirates. But you don’t do it by controlling a turret, instead, your spaceship is a building surface and you have to build the right kind of engines, turrets, shields and power generators (in mid-flight no less) to be able to shoot down incoming rocks and pirate ships. Extremely well balanced and fun.
Creeper World - 3D real-time strategy. But your enemy is not actually present on the map, you’re just fighting a simulation of liquid, a gooey slime that pours out of several spots. You have to keep shooting, bombarding and containing the splashing, pouring slime until you can neutralize the slime outlets. The story is cool, too. The slime is actually some extinct species “gift” to the universe which dissolves everything into data, transmitted to some eternal storage space at the center of the universe.
man.
i’m not saying you didn’t run into quality posts on reddit, but this is the kind of post i see way more often here and it makes these spaces way more enjoyable.
nice work, definitely going to try a few of these out!
That’s just anecdotal. Be careful as a lot of these answers are often written by bots / ads in disguised.
this is a great post. I do think the outer wilds description is a smidge spoilery. I know, people figure that out pretty quickly but it’s still a neat experience if going in blind
Undertale. It was the best game I’ve ever played and I can never play it again. This game lives rent free in my head, in my fanworks, in the music I listen to and make. It’s a game that combines technology and art.
Binding of Isaac. When it finally came out on the switch, I played it more than Breath of the Wild.
I played it to completion. Then Rebirth came out and I played it to completion (barring The Lost, because come on). I only recently picked up Repentance and I’m already another 200 hours in.
❤️, or perhaps I should say ❤️🤍🤍💙💙🖤💔
The Lost at least gets significantly easier once you unlock the holy mantle for him. The Tainted Lost though…
Yeah it was only pre-holy mantle that I gave up on, The Lost is actually a pretty interesting character to play now. Is Tainted Lost still slightly easier than original Lost though?
Think the original Lost but nearly all defensive items are removed from the item pool. On one hand that means no useless health ups clogging the item pools. On the other hand, that means no holy mantle or dead cat.
Overall I’d say that makes him a more consistent and more fun character, but I’m not sure if I’d call him easier. Losing the ability to find things like dead cat hurts.
IIRC (been almost a year since I’ve played Isaac), he has a higher damage stat as well, which is great.
The glassiest of cannons, I look forward to it!
The only way we cleared Tainted Lost at my house was playing co-op!
Baby hands.
FTL and to a lesser extent their second game Into The Breach.
RNG heavy strategy games with lots of micromanaging.
I loved both FTL and Into The Breach but I think I preferred the latter. What makes you like FTL more? (not arguing, just interested)
I had a harder time getting good at and staying interested in ITB. I still really enjoy a playthrough every now and then.
With FTL I guess it just feels more replayable and “on edge” to me. There is just something special about ftl runs, be it overpowered, under powered. There are so many ships, weapons, systems, and crew combinations that no run really feels the same.
The same could be said about ITB and their different mech teams but I guess it just doesn’t have the same feel. ITB feels like I’m selling my services to big corporations with saving people as an after note. FTL feels like a suicide mission for the fate of the galaxy and I think that feeling is what really makes me come back to FTL.
FTL is the modern Oregon trail in space. It’s just so good.
Interesting! Thanks for sharing, I don’t really disagree with any of your points. Maybe I just liked the style of ITB more…I do love isometric tactics games
Personally one of the aspects I enjoy a lot in FTL is managing my power levels mid-fight (Do I need my oxygen powered right now? I could probably turn it off until the fight is over…) I don’t know if any other game that has you shuffling around power like that.
Oh yeah I forgot about that!
I redownload ITB after this thread and have been playing it. I might bust out FTL next because I apparently forgot how to play it lol
Factorio. Help I got 4k hours and I still get cravings.
Honorable mentions.
Rimworld, Dyson sphere program, Minecraft (before it became microcrap)
Closing to 6k. There is just infinite replayabillity. Then you add mods, and friends.
I think we‘re the same person! :D
Jokes aside, I wholeheartedly agree. 500 hrs in factorio but rw and dsp are awesome. Mc used to be. I like mineclone though.
Hit me up if you wanna play something together some time.
Dishonored, when it first came out.
I’m not sure Arkane and Bathesda could be considered as indie devs at the time of release. Bathesda had released Skyrim the year before.
That’s true, I was just talking about Arkane.
Even Arkane alone at that time wouldn’t be considered indie. They had done a few contract jobs for major releases, like CoD, before developing Dishonored.
Ah, my mistake then.
Terraria. My most played game on steam!
Salt and Sanctuary and Hollow Knight.
Slay the Spire. I’ve probably put more hours into this game than any other in my life.
From there, I guess all the usual picks. Hades, Hollow Knight, Braid, Fez, Dead Cells, Celeste
Hollow knight, deep rock galactic.
I think the Deep Rock developers are owned by Embracer now, so I’m not sure if that counts as “indie” anymore, even if they’re still a small (and previously somewhat home-grown) studio. But it’s still a damn good game - ROCK AND STONE
They are, Ghost Ship Games.
DRG was never an indie, it was published by Coffee Stain Publishing, which is a subsidiary of Coffee Stain, which in turn is a subsidiary of Embracer.
Ghost Ship got fully acquired by Embracer in 2021, though their publishing deal with Coffee Stain started in 2017, before Embracer had even touched either company.
Ghost Ship did not self-publish DRG, they published with Coffee Stain. The publishing deal started in 2017, with Embracer/THQ buying Coffee Stain a year later in 2018. And even later buying Ghost Ship, as well.
Stardew Valley by a long shot.
Hollow Knight is up there too.
I recently bought stardew valley and its fun but the farming grind feels kinda forced, no? I feel like I need to pay attention to not loose myself in the game which defeats the purpose.
What is your experience there?
I used to find it kinda stressful until i realised there was no time limit to the game like the usual harvest moons so once I realised that, I never find myself rushing around or overextending my ability to farm to grind more and just focused on what I was enjoying in the game which was a bit of everything.
Can relate. It’s the same for me but I have to constantly remind myself of the fact which is why I cant relax, sadly.
There is sort of a time limit though, you get your “review” at the end of the second year (at which point no new events happen). Also getting things planted in time for when the seasons change etc is kind of time-limiting.
But that’s all detail, it’s great that people can enjoy it without time pressures!
Really? That sucks I’m sure I’m on year 3 and I’ve had events happen
Were they things that don’t usually happen in years 1 and 2? I guess they could just be stuff that was added since I last played!
I only really played early on, not dabbled with it properly in years but I do remember things happening. It’s not like I could only get things to happen in the first two years in game
You can also get a new “review” whenever you want after that.
Well that’s probably a good thing for playing casually. I think end of year 2 is the earliest though, so that’s kind of a “soft” deadline.
The grind is fun for me, but once you get through a few seasons there’s also so much time to explore and talk to the villagers
Got it. Thanks for chiming in.
I can imagine it gets better but the grind is kind of not for me. The mining and farming grind in minecraft I understand and the grind in factorio as well. Maybe its heightened due to the saving cycle that seems to want you to keep going.
There are ways to play (besides mods) where you barely have to grow crops. Unless you’re trying for all the achievements there’s not really a wrong way or a time limit to play.
I usually put off doing too much farming until I have a decent sprinkler setup.
For me the game only became fun when I started playing with the wife, we split up tasks and got a lot more done and was much funner
Neat, thanks for the info.
Don’t forget minecraft was originally just one guy. 15ish years ago. In Java.
Now over 600 people work on it.
Celeste
This would be mine too. Fun gameplay, cool story!
This is my top one too. It’s always a fun replay. Terraria and Stardew are probably tied for second.
Rain world is up there with the best games of last decade.
Terraria is amazing.
Dwarf fortress is obligatory.
I really wanted to love rain world since it seemed right up my alley. I bounced off it not because of the difficulty, but I think because the character’s movement feels bad. You’re slow, can’t jump high, a lot of maneuvering is fiddly.
Maybe I’ll try it again at some point though, because the world they made is brilliant and has interesting emergent behaviors.
Did you mean rimworld?
No
Rain World is a sidescrolling platformer in which you play a small rodent who must survive on a planet of other life forms pelted with recurring lethally powerful downpours of rain. You must learn to control your creature (who moves with dynamic physics, along with all other creatures), and learn to interact with and hunt the various other creatures (who have varied and intelligent AI and are not necessarily hostile) in order to gain food to sustain you through the next rain cycle.
Through all of this you explore a large interconnected world of different areas that show a background lore of a world that previously inhabited intelligent industrial beings (who have vanished) and uncover the mysteries within and find others of your kind.
That was as succint as I could make it to show off the unique qualities of Rain World. Its visual style is beautiful, its gameplay has a moderate learning curve due to the physics, and the AI of the creatures are successful in creating a dynamic ecosystem wherein the player feels like they’re a small incidental piece of a world that has its own goals and behaviors that the player must learn to fit in with and work within.
Awesome! Thank you, I’ll check it out.