Little Indie Games Worth Knowing About (Probably)

Key Words alert! Trials of Fire? New game by same developer? Turn-based? Wishlisted, thanks for posting!

Nice thread by the designer of Roadwarden about why the game has a time limit, and how players reacted to that.

https://twitter.com/MoralAnxiety/status/1667169467275567109

I feel like Roadwarden is a game we should have a dedicated thread about. I think a lot of Qt3ers would like it a lot. I just haven’t played enough to start that thread!

Dev says single player as well. Wishlisted

I don’t know if anyone here but me played Mutazione, but Die Gute Fabrik just announced their next story-based game, Saltsea Chronicles.

And it’s already won the “Best Cats” award??

Another highlight seems to be a custom trick-taking game that has different house rules on each island reflecting that island’s unique culture. Cool idea!

Ahh man, Mutazione is one I’ve owned for years but never got round to playing! I’ve even played nearly all of Sportsfriends (no, not JS Joust, Hokra!)

Breach Wanderers has left early access.

This is pretty good so far as a competent Slay the Spire “clone”.

The big difference in the deck management is quite noticable. Not only your starting deck but the pool from which random cards are drawn in a run can be edited for each character.
I don’t know if that system will be a benefit or drawback in the long run but starting out it’s a very nice addition to a familiar environment.

DONTNOD (best known for Vampyr and Life is Strange) have released and/or announced several new games recently:

Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is out now. It’s has a visual novel presentation, but seems to be picking up the choices & consequences focus of LiS.

Banishers is a ghost hunting ARPG? I’m guessing this is the Vampyr team’s next game:

What I’m really enamored by, though, is Jusant. A meditative mountain climbing game, art directed by the man behind the original LiS visuals. There’s a demo out for this now.

I guess I could also mention Gerda: A Flame in Winter, which came out almost a year ago. It’s a more detached-view (almost top-down) story game set in WWII with what looks like some heavy themes. I think this one was done by a studio that was acquired by DONTNOD. Seems like it’s gone mostly unnoticed.

OH! And none of these are the next game from DONTNOD Montreal, where at least one of the game directors and one of the producers of LiS are now working. They have only posted a screenshot, but it’s beautiful looking:

Thunderlotus (Sundered and Spiritfarer dev) just announced their next hand-drawn game.

It’s called 33 Immortals, and it is a 33-player co-op roguelike. In it, you play a damned soul, teaming up with other damned souls to rebel against God.

Should be interesting to see how that works!

It’ll be coming to Game Pass and Epic Game Store in 2024.

Hard pass. This looks like MMO-style pick up raids with WAY too many people. I’ll assume there’ll be no voice or chat, else this will get ugly and salty really quick.

Relying on strangers for coordinated teamwork efforts is a surefire way to disaster, particularly when they get a chance to assign blame. Not to mention the chance for the game to die once the player count drops too low. Not sure if they plan to offer bots, that might be a saving grace.

And getting 33 friends online at the same time?
…seriously, at my age, I’m happy if get someone to actually sit down and have a chat.

I’m not sure it’s my cup of tea, either. But the number is so specific, and in the context of a roguelike… I have to imagine the team has found something about that experience that they think works. No guarantees that it will, of course.

I’m sure it is not meant to be played with friends. And I’m guessing you’re right, no voice communication.

What it makes me think of is Realm of the Mad God, which was a top-down MMO without much communication, where you could organically team up with others if you wanted to, and there were events that many people at a time would participate in. It definitely got chaotic, but that was part of the fun, and a different feel from most other MMOs.

Yeah this is what I immediately thought of as well. But I also remember that I never would have paid for Realm of the Mad God – which may be fine, I’d guess they’re planning to use a free to pay model.

Maybe, although they’ve said it’ll launch on Epic and on Game Pass. For some reason that makes me think it’ll be standard purchase, but maybe I’m reading something into it that’s not there.

A note that Station to Station has a three level demo out on Steam. Seems like you could play it as a chill little enjoy the voxel trains game but it’s clearly got a very puzzley setup that becomes readily apparent by the end. I enjoyed the 30 minutes I spent with it but that’s about as far as I’ll go with puzzle games.

Basically, the game has the usual train tycoon setup of trying to connect pieces of production chains together that ultimately send their goods to a city. This is pretty streamlined here as you just need to connect producer and consumer to the same rail network of connected stations(doesn’t matter how many stops are between them or anything like that). Where the big puzzle element comes in is that you get bonuses for making a single connection that fulfills multiple demands. So a chain that goes wheat farm → mill → bakery → city should NOT start by connecting farm to mill because that resolves a demand. Instead you should connect the other 3 together as they are worthless without the wheat and then connect the wheat at the end to complete the whole chain which counts as 3 connections and gets you the bonus. That seems to be the big mechanic and is further complicated by different chain setups(the demo only has the example above and a dairy farm chain where the farm produces two units of milk and the city both demands a unit of milk and a unit of cheese produced in a cheesery from the milk) and the layout of the map and your existing network. The game plops down new buildings as you go so your existing network can end up in your way like in Mini Motorways.

Hey! They’re making The 7th Seal into a game!
image

Crap. It’s just another 4X.

I’ve been playing Tails of Iron

It is kinda cute visually (in a grim way). It’s an action game with story, narrated by the voice of Geralt (Doug Cockle). I was happy to see it’s about a 7 hour game according to HLtB, thought I could bang it out and get to listen to Geralt narrate a story. For some reason it just feels like the game is moving way to slowly and while the combat is OK in small doses, it got repetitive fast. I’m really only playing to hear Geralt, but I don’t think it’s worth it any more. I’m not dying a ton so I don’t know why it feels like progress is so slow. This has a very positive rating on Steam, so I guess it’s a me problem.

In my advanced age, seeing a game describe itself as having “punishingly brutal combat” makes it a hard pass. Good on you for giving it a shot.

I’ve been playing Clash: Artifacts of Chaos, and having a good time with it. I’m playing on Xbox (picked it up on a sale there a week or two ago, may still be going). I’d played it during one of the Demo Fest things a while back, and so added it to my wishlist.

It’s kind of a 3rd-person action brawler (that occasionally goes into 1st-person during a big-power beatdown) with an incredible art style, all euro-sci fi-comic book-y. The setting is bizarre, and the gameplay is solid. It has a neat day/night cycle thing- not that it automatically shifts from one to the other, but that you choose to make the shift at camp while exploring the weird-ass world, and that shifts you to playing a different character (one for day, one for nighttime) with different exploration potential, gear, etc. One of the most fun games I’ve played this year, and certainly one of the most unique.

That’s by ACE Team. Bizarre is their calling card.

Hey, no complaints from me. I really appreciate folks doing stuff outside the usual elves/dwarves fantasy paradigm.