These days, Indies are really popping off IMO. Gems like Animal Well are coming out all the time. What are your favorites?
Pyre - I know Hades is amazing but I honestly believe Pyre is Supergiants best game and its not even close. It’s a game explicitly about revolution and solidarity, it surprises me it doesn’t get mentioned on Hexbear more.
Return of the Obra Dinn - “Well that guy got stabbed, that guy got shot, THAT GUY HAD HIS ARM RIPPED OFF BY A GIANT SQUID AND WAS IMPALED BY A SPLINTERED ROWING PADDLE AND GOT SHOT IN THE HEAD WITH A CANNONBALL nobody has ever been MORE dead.”
Balatro - You already know.
I’m also playing Pillars of Eternity again so that too.
I wanted to play pyre the other day but they never ported it to the switch :'(
I can’t be arsed to figure out which of these are “actually” indie or just seemingly lower budget, so:
- SIGNALIS - unmatched aesthetic & vibes, after finishing it the first time I kept thinking about it so went back for a second round on survivor/classic difficulty
- Pizza Tower - it’s just so peak
- Nidhogg - I think this came out more than five years ago but I finally played it this year. Even though it’s extremely basic and doesn’t have a real campaign it’s just so incredibly polished in its deceptively simple combat system that I kept coming back for more.
- Return of the Obra Dinn - spent a wonderful Sunday afternoon solving this one sitting at my kitchen table with my steam deck and giant ledger notebook
- Into the Breach - extremely fun, every single turn feels absolutely clutch; however you have to play basically perfectly in order to win so it is quite stressful
- Night in the Woods - explicitly leftist game, one of the few
- The Messenger - this one is really fun and has great music. My partner still remembers and talks about watching me play it.
- Katana Zero - it’s got that one hit kill/quick retry mechanic, excellent game. It’s the game that Hotline Miami wishes it was imo.
- Hyper Light Drifter - there are some massive unwarranted difficulty spikes but if you get around those this is a wonderful, beautiful game
Love SIGNALIS, the anticommunist slant is cringe for sure, but the story and game itself are fantastic. I cried at the “true” ending, and it still pops into my head from time to time.
Pizza Tower is definitely on the top of my list.
Thanks for the recs!
excited for the katana zero dlc to come out in 2043.
Hot take: The Messenger is a good version of Ninja Garden.
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chants of senaar is decent entertainment for an afternoon
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balatro, number go up
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pizza tower, warioware clone but wilder
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yomi hustle, TAS fighting game. Its a fun thought experiment that quickly devolved into which character had the unpatched unblockable loop
I’m a pedantic nerd and just wanna correct you a lil. Pizza Tower is a clone of Wario Land, specifically Wario Land 4. Warioware is a different series based on very quick mini games.
Yomi hustle is really good! Or it used to be, like you said. There aren’t a lot of really good turn based multiplayer games and I wish there were. It’s the only kind of multiplayer I can stomach.
+1 for Chants of Senaar. For anyone reading who hasn’t heard of it, it’s an isometric puzzle game based on linguistics. You control a person trying to climb this megastructure where each level has a different culture and language and so you have to figure out the various writing systems and syntaxes to find your way
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Disco Elysium
The Messenger/Sea of Stars and Hades
Disco Elysium, Pathos Nethack, Cultist Simulator, Slime Rancher but I think that’s been more than 5 yrs on that one.
The others like Disco Elysium and Signals have been said so I’ll add Tunic! I love the artstyle and the puzzles in this game are insane, definitely not everyone’s cup of tea but one of my favourites.
spoiler
decoding the Trunic language was one of the most accomplished moments I’ve had in gaming, along with solving the golden path. And then learning there’s an entirely different hidden language in the music of the game is a whole other level of insanity
Tunic is a really special game, instant classic
Pizza Tower babyyyyy
On my list for sure!
Of course the big ones like Hades, Disco Elysium, Slay the Spire, Balatro. A few lesser known ones that I really like and wish got more attention:
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Griftlands: two-track deck building roguelite by Klei (Don’t Starve, Oxygen not Included, Mark of the Ninja) with rich worldbuilding and good stories. Honestly criminal how little attention it got.
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Streets of Rogue: Immersive sim roguelike with lots of cool characters and situations you can stumble into. Eagerly awaiting the sequel!
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Shadows Over Loathing: stick figure rpg with a unique setting and humor that’s actual entertaining. Overshadowed by the success of its predecessor West of Loathing, and perhaps not as good, but still very enjoyable.
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Sunless Skies!
-HESUNTHESUNTHESUNTHESUNTHES-
How has no one mentioned Outer Wilds yet? That’s usually right on up there in these kinds of threads, because it’s great. An absolute masterpiece of a game.
Pathologic 2 is also a masterpiece, but a (purposefully) miserable game to play. It’s so beautiful and the world is so rich, but it definitely demands perseverance to make it through, because it will do everything it can to make you hate it.
A Short Hike isn’t quite as narratively satisfying as the other two, but it’s short and fun and extremely adorable. Just a pleasant little world to spend an afternoon in.
+1 on Outer Wilds! It’s incredible
Outer Wilds is brilliant, and my favorite game of all time.
I actually own Pathologic 2, I have just been too daunted by it to play it, haha.
SIGNALIS and SYNTHETIK/SYNTHETIK 2
Theres just something about isometric retrofuturist german games that have titles stylized with all caps y’know?
Love SIGNALIS, the anticommunist slant is cringe for sure, but the story and game itself are fantastic. I cried at the “true” ending, and it still pops into my head from time to time.
Will have to check out SYNTHETIK, thanks for the recs!
I went into SIGNALIS totally blind and expected it to turn out to be queerbaiting. That scene after the false ending literally made my jaw drop. Agreed on the anticommunist slant, but atleast its not totally obnoxious and mostly says “people shouldn’t be brutalized by the systems they inhabit” so I elected to reinterpret it as anticapitalist lol.
One little bit about SYNTHETIK: either game is a blast and SYNTHETIK 2 is finally in a state where it is as fleshed out, if not more so than its predecessor. S1 is remarkably lightweight and runs beautifully however S2 has some issues with Proton and I have to periodically restart the program to prevent it from crashing my whole-ass system (Linux Mint). SYNTHETIK 1 has a freeware version called SYNTHETIK: Arena which will let you check out the mechanics to see if you like them, Arena also supports CO-OP play much like the base game! (I really like SYNTHETIK c: )
Yep, since the Anticommunism isn’t portrayed as an inevitability with Communism and more as a possibility, I can logically justify enjoying the game better, haha.
Will keep that in mind for SYNTHETIK, thanks!
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I really enjoyed Sable, cool exploration game with a lovely artstyle and my favorite soundtrack in years.
Also really enjoy Balatro, Void Stranger, Norco, Last Call BBS, and Cloudpunk. (Really looking forward to Nivalis!)
Sable was a lovely little story
20th century food court from last call bbs was really good
CrossCode, Unsighted, Ultrakill, YOMI Hustle, Animall Well
