Little Indie Games Worth Knowing About (Probably)

That’s what reddit was saying too, but I don’t remember any combos or air juggling with guns in Shank. (Maybe I’m forgetting it.) The attacks also had an odd timing that reminds me of fighting games rather than your typical Castle Crashers thing.

Anyway, could be nothing. We’ll see. And it sounds like the Kickstarter isn’t doing well.

Shank and Shank 2 are basically style over substance. Really boring games. I hated Shank because it had no Z-movement, something I feel would have really livened it up. Renegade solved that in 1986 and most modern brawlers seem to ditch it.

How hard is it to just re-make Streets of Rage with modern tech? :P

Just picked Children of a Dead Earth and it is definitely my kind of nerdy space game. It calls itself “The Most Scientifically Accurate Space Warfare Simulator Ever Made” and so far I am having a hard time refuting that claim. Only played for a little under 2 hours so far, but my first impression is positive. The production values (especially the menus) are very low-budget and it definitely skews much more towards simulator than game so it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. However, if you have ever wondered what space warfare could actually be like in the future the developer for this certainly seems to have put some real thought into it.

Imagine Kerbal Space Program, but without the whole getting into orbit from the ground thing and add rail guns, missiles and lasers. It is also “turn based” in that you plan your maneuvers ahead of time and then progress time in chunks of your choosing from 1 minute up to multiple days. There is a campaign, sandbox mode and a ship designer. Both the sandbox mode and ship designer are locked behind at least partially completing the campaign so I cannot comment on those.

Here is a link to the official dev blog for those that want some more insight into how deep this nerdy rabbit hole goes:

[quote=“Pod, post:409, topic:73462”]
most modern brawlers seem to ditch it
[/quote]Yet another unfortunate victim of “this is what people remember retro games being like, not how they actually worked.”

I’m always up for something that shakes up the TBS formula and Farabel looks like it might fit the bill.

The twist being that you start on the final mission of the game, and move backwards in time, leveling down your hero as you progress.

If price is right and feedback good I may give this a shot later,

Ok, that looks interesting. Won’t buy right away (too many games this month, but it’s wishlisted).

I am very curious about whether the leveling down is anything more than a marketing gimmick. It is an excellent hook, and the game looks great even without it -movement seems so snappy-, though, so what follows is just curious intellectual inquiry:

Mechanically, leveling down one stat is similar to leveling up the rest of them, so stat-wise it’s really no different than a traditional leveling up system (except that the context might make it feel different) to level up and level down, you are just changing a stat difference with your foes. There are some implications in how caps are calculated (leveling down forces a hard cap on stats) but that’s about it.

What could be interesting is if it also forces you to forget unique discrete skills (maybe this is in the game maybe not, I’ve only read about stats leveling down so far). In TBS games, skills are somewhat more important at defining game styles than stats, and the implications of losing skills are that instead of specializing blind (you choose a path of skills, gaining power and forcing yourself into one play style that exploits the synergies in the skills you choose, but without knowing -except if you use a wiki/faq- what will be open in the future and surely without the chance of experimenting), losing skills would allow you access to all possible play styles at the game’s start, and to choose which want you want to limit yourself to/specialize in once you have had the chance of trying it. That is conceptually really interesting and certainly advantageous from a design standpoint.

Has anyone played ‘Bastard Bonds’? It’s sale for 50% until 31st October.

Bastard Bonds is a mature, fast-paced tactical RPG with high-end pixel art and in-depth character customization, including built-in sprite mod support. Featuring more than 200 in-game locations, more than 1000 character sprites, an all-original soundtrack, and 40+ hours of gameplay.

It’s on my wishlist, I’m not sure how it got there. But it sure does look and sound cool…

I suppore this game can be considered indie.
I do not know how I even struggled upon it, but it was rather fun and my friend’s children are totally enjoying it.
A rather nice game which is children-friendly. Reminds me a little bit of Zanzarah.
The only thing I missed was voice-acting.

Were they on strike? :)

Has anyone played “Kim”? I saw it on the front page of GOG. The graphical look is drawing me in, but I have no idea what you actually do in the game as the trailer is terrible. And trying to find videos of a game called “Kim” on the internet appears to be impossible if you’re not looking for Kim Kardashian.

Highfleet: slow-paced Luftrausers from the guy who made Hammerfight.

This video is from January. I just heard about it.

Is this out yet? Sounds like no? Hammerfight was a bizarre but unique and satisfying game. Glad he’s still at it.

That’s a beautiful game. The gameplay looks like Gimbal crossed with Salmon-Pink Max.

This was released today, out of nowhere.

Seems to be a port of a board game… Anybody knows anything?

Did somebody say board game?

The board game is a lot of fun, if you like chaotic games set on a cardboard 3 dimensional train!

For 10 bucks I figured I’d give it a shot. Played the tutorial and then one of the campaign scenarios, which I promptly lost. It seems pretty polished, and it supports multi-platform async play. I also like the fact that a game can play quickly.

Right now it appears to be a keeper, but it’s too soon for a final verdict.

Anyone tried this early access game? The reviews make it sound pretty fun. Oh, and don’t confuse 50 years with a game called 50 Years.

Warbands:Bushido - Miniatures and cards and dice, oh my.

It’s only $7 on Steam, but I’m holding off for now since there’s no single player game as yet.

I had been keeping an eye on this turn-based boardgame heist thingy called Antihero ever since stumbling into the trailer about 6 months ago. I just got an email that the public beta is available on itch.io for $10, and will be coming to Steam in the near future.

I can’t comment on it yet since I haven’t done anything but install it, but according to the developers so far it includes the tutorial, single-player skirmish, local multiplayer, and async multiplayer, with a single-player campaign still to come.

I’ll post more after firing it up if I feel it warrants it.

Huh. Thanks for reminding me of this. I remember it being announced years ago, and I was intrigued. Had totally forgotten about it though and am kinda surprised that it hasn’t come out a while ago now that you brought it up.

Yes, please post some impressions!