Little Indie Games Worth Knowing About (Probably)

Moo3.

I completely forgot about Outward because of that awful split-screen gameplay video above. Apparently it comes out in 2 days.

I’m still totally down for this, and I might be able to talk my gal into playing it with me (splitscreen ftw!). Yeah, it looks a little janky, and I’m skeptical of the survival aspects, but I want to reward the devs, and the price is right ($40 on release).

finally the two indie threads are merged. hurrah!!!

I’m sceptical because what person of sound mind writes the date like this:

RELEASE DATE: 26th of March, 2019

Someone who doesn’t speak English as his first language and is being (perhaps unknowingly) overly formal? I don’t know where they’re from, but every video I’ve watched with the devs, they have a strong European accent (Dutch, maybe?).

Good thing they didn’t write it as 26-3-2019.

Murasaki is an explosion/shooter/puzzle game, worth the $2, very tough, also has a new sequel.

Space Viking Raiders looks like a buy at $5 or bundled. Some EDF + ARPG vibes.

Nation War: Chronicles is Chinese RTS meets Crusader Kings, with iffy translation.

For some reason I’m on the Pathway mailing list. So I came to post my latest spam as it has a video:

which is handy, as I don’t have a clue what this game is about, even though I’ve been on it’s mailing lists for a while now. So maybe now I can watch that video and find out.

Also: if you search the forums for “Pathway” you won’t find your post, as it doesn’t contain the word “Pathway”, as the word Pathway is put there by the viewer’s browser when it creates that little Steam box thing, rather than in your post, so I’m putting Pathway here a few times to help other people search for it using Discoure’s awful search feature.

Everyone out side of the US? :)

@Tom: What happened to the other indie thread? Did you grow tired of the subtle distinction between worth playing and worth knowing about?

Well this game (Outward) is now out on Xbox. Has anybody played it, any Impressions after the first 6 hours? I’m always up for role playing games, especially indie games which tend to take more risks than the boring BioWare s*** that nobody really likes but lies to themselves about. So I’m curious to know how this one fares.

Haha, I didn’t mean that though!! I meant how formally it was written :)

Played the tutorial on PS4 and died a bunch of times.
It’s a bit fiddly control wise but my first impressions are better than Elex.
Also not sure about the “souls-like” comparisons.
Feel like the combat is easier than Dark Souls but the survival stuff is what will make it difficult.
Setting and jank reminds me of Dragon’s Dogma a bit.

Oh go on…

I just purchased it via the Xbox Android app, so it’s downloading to my console now (i love this feature!), but I stayed at my gal’s house last night, so won’t be home for a few hours to try it out. I’ll post impressions in the next day or two.

That said, I’ll be sad to leave Graveyard Keeper behind. It’s on Game Pass, so I started playing it yesterday on s lark, and had just gotten to the point where it gets interesting (I unlocked the church). What a fun little time-waster.

Well, I just played through the tutorial- an entirely separate thing from the actual game, which is a nice change. You just run through a little environment, and it gives you a simple understanding of the game’s important systems. Better than than shoehorning it into the main story. Based on that, it’s less janky than I thought it would be. Each weapon type seems to have separate animations which are fairly fluid, and controls are responsive. Based on this, the survival stuff isn’t too onerous, but that could be just for the tutorial.

Played through the “Tribal Blood Writ” quest in about 2hrs. Yeah - I like it. It’s not as difficult as some are letting on. I’ve only fought 3 different types of enemies so far though so I guess it depends how fleshed out a world can be made with a 10 man team.
Graphics on basic PS4 are not great but that has never stopped me liking something immersive in other ways.

Ok, I played the first few hours, then started over and played through the beginning again- more on that in a minute.

I agree with you @LutherBlissett that it really isn’t as difficult as people have been saying, even if I did ‘die’ a few times- the ‘death scenario’ concept is really neat. When you die, the game looks at where/how it happened, and loads a new scenario. The first time it happened, I was killed by a chocobo. I woke up in a cave, rescued by some sort of god/demon/something? When I went outside it was pitch plack, middle of the night- and that is something it has in common with Dragon’s Dogma- holy shit is it dark at night, and your lantern doesn’t do much. I figured out where I was, started back toward my goal, and promptly got jumped by a couple bandits. I managed to take one out, but the other… I was rescued by a huntress from my city, and woke up back there, concussed, and failing. I decided to restart- a note on that- this game is basically Hardcore mode. No save-scumming. Your character only gets one slot, and it’s regularly autosaving. But like I said, you don’t ever really seem to die, so you shouldn’t let that scare you off.

In my initial play, I bought a few things, explored the town, and left. In that exploration, I ended up finding a bunch of the stuff that I bought. So when I restarted, I managed to outfit myself pretty well for my venturing forth, very very efficiently. I recommend looking down underneath the lighthouse.

The graphics are indeed pretty shabby. But it does run pretty smooth, so I’d rather have a game that plays well and looks a bit naff than one that looks amazing and is a pain to play, especially one that can be this unforgiving.

You picked the right time to stop. It gets really grindy afterwards. Improved on PC, but the xbox version is months behind in updates.

Luther … as I understand “jank” I think awkward controls, a strange interface, and maybe some weird character movements.

Dragon’s Dogma with a controller on the PC version is smooth as silk. I would have never said it was “janky” … it’s actually what I would consider the opposite of janky. And I play Bethesda games almost every day (they are always janky).

Maybe I am wrong…

OK maybe i’m misusing the term then. I guess I was thinking of games like the Piranha Bytes ones that have interesting mechanics but lack a lot of “Quality Of Life” stuff and have an unpolished presentation?
DD was very “jank” on my potato. Is definitely better for me on the PS4.
@Don_Quixote
It definitely pays to look around - even before leaving the starting beach area.
Also there doesn’t appear to be a “Stealing” mechanic from what I can tell. I’ve been looting and selling anything I can grab.