Little Indie Games Worth Knowing About (Probably)

Regarding Antihero, it should also be noted that it’s a "key-limited ‘open alpha’ release (153 keys remain as of this writing), will cost more at release (“incidentally: fewer dollars than you’ll spend when the game launches”), and will include a Steam key on release (“as a First Access purchaser, you’ll get the full version (as well as a Steam key) when it launches in 2017”).

I bit, as I’ve been following the game’s development since Day 1 and love the look!

EDIT: You’ll receive download links to both Windows and OS versions.

I just finished Antihero’s tutorial (which is excellent, given it’s an alpha build) and I give the game a hearty thumbs up. It doesn’t resemble an alpha build at all, which isn’t a surprise, given the comments in the dev’s blog. It supports online asynch MP with email turn notifications.

Each player controls a Thieves Guild from which your always present Thief emerges at the start of each of your turns to perform Scouting (remove the map’s FoW to reveal districts (each of which contains one Business)), Burgling (steal Gold, Jewelry, or Paintings from Businesses; Gold from non-Businesses), and Attacking (kill enemy minions, assassination targets, or neutral minions) actions. Your Thief starts with 3 APs.

There are two resources: Gold, which is used to recruit minions, and Lanterns, which are used to upgrade your Thieves Guild. Gold is used to recruit:

  • Urchins to infiltrate Businesses to increase your Gold or Lantern income, or provide a different ongoing benefit, such as a Gold discount towards recruiting Thugs
  • Thugs to either guard a street location (thereby blocking enemy movement) for 2 turns or be added to a Gang to increase its HP by one
  • Gangs to kill enemy and neutral minions, or evict enemy Urchins from Businesses, both of which provide gold and a Gang upgrade (+1 to Gang damage, +1 to Gang Gold, or +1 to number of Urchins evicted)
  • Assassins to one-time kill one enemy or neutral minion
  • (more minions that I have yet to unlock via Thieves Guild upgrades)

The first player to acquire X Bribes (purchasable in Thieves Guild for Lanterns), Blackmails (from infiltrating Church Businesses), and Skulls (from killing assassination targets) wins the game!

Seems we grabbed and finished the tutorial at the same time!
This is very pleasant, I am looking forward to see how this interacts in multiplayer, but I get Gremlins Inc levels of good vibes from the single player experience already.

What’s your Antihero online handle? Mine’s Mysterio.

I just created Left Empty. I am going to sleep, but will gladly join any online effort when awake (I am unsure how to lobbies work yet).

Here’s the official Qt3 thread so as not to bog down this thread:

I have a free Steam key for Beta Dwarf’s new game:

Note: it does not include the Premium Upgrade

If you’ve played Clash Royale, then you’re already familiar with the gameplay. Per the e-mail I received from Beta Dwarf:

[details=Summary]> Hi Friend!

We bring… Friendly news for you today!

  1. Below is a Steam key for your friend!
  2. Use it to play Minion Masters with your friend!
  3. Claim rewards by playing with your friend in the event!

We also just released a BIG update!

New Event Frisky Friend Fiesta!
New Master Apep
New Feature Friend Battles
New Feature Friend Daily Challenge
New Feature Bonus Rare Spins
New Building Wall
New Minion Walking Blind Date
Plus many game improvements, bug fixes & balance changes.

Introducing Guaranteed Rare Rewards

Whenever you have used four Power Tokens your next reward will be Rare or better!

Introducing Friend Battles

You’ve all been craving friend battles! It’s now possible to challenge your Steam friends to a duel from inside Minion Masters.[/details]

If you’re an established member of the Qt3 community and would like to play some friendly games against me during the Frisky Friend Fiesta event (to complete the new daily event quest for the next 3 weeks!), shoot me a PM containing a link to your Steam profile (assuming we’re not already friends).

Were you hoping that someone in China would create a game that’s a combination of The Stanley Parable and the 2D Devil May Cry knockoff, Rain Blood Chronicles: Mirage?

Well, you’re in luck.

Not to be confused with ICY, which is some sort of post-apocalypse indie survival game I’ve never heard of.

It’s really strange how the mechanics look almost exactly the same as Rain Blood Chronicles: Mirage. I can’t tell if it’s the same developer or maybe they all really love this type of beat 'em up design over in China.

OK, I’ll just have to check this out. :-)

This is free and supposedly only takes 15 min to play, but is worth the time as long as you don’t spoil it for yourself.

I picked up Strategy & Tactics:Dark Ages because my backlog isn’t big enough and I still had money burning a hole in my Steam wallet.

At first glance it doesn’t appear to offer much, so don’t go by the Steam page. Watch a video in English, if you can find one (developers are Russian, I think).

Anyway, it’s sort of a cross between Risk and a non-fantasy Conquest of Elysium. Combat is hands-off, but the decisions you make as to which generals and troops to hire (all with different abilities and skills gained when leveling, natch), the formations you set them in, random events, terrain and weather all affect the outcome. There’s also a meta game where Fame earned playing a scenario can be spent to add new generals to the roster, or provide class-wide upgrades

Early access, and all that’s available at the moment is the tutorial and 5 stand-alone scenarios that ramp up in difficulty very quickly. The lore is pretty rich, and while there are references to alliances and forts in the province descriptions, I haven’t yet found a way to build either, but I don’t know if that’s because I haven;t played enough or they aren’t implemented yet. The developers aren’t particularly communicative, but that could be a language issue. I have no idea if things like multi-player or a campaign are coming for the same reason.

$10 non-sale on Steam. Someone posted a link to a $2 Groupees bundle that included it, but I don’t know if it’s still available.

http://poncho-game.com/

So these indie dev’s did a postmortem, very depressing read. I regret not picking the game up during the last sale, the game looks fun.

The punchline is at the end. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

If they thought discoverability was bad with a pixel platformer, just wait…

Well now I get (but still am unhappy) that the control configuration option in this action platformer was low priority. Not the most helpful post-mortem though, since it seems nothing went right, and they won’t write about what went wrong.

Parry the world.

I’m such a dumb sucker for these pixel action games. I’m adding this one to my wishlist.

The weirdest thing about this Poncho disaster: the publishers post their official response in the comments section of a Destructoid article (WTF?) that requires a free login just to view the comments (WTF?).

Kotaku UK has a summary.

Thought I should show some love to Auro, a game barely anyone played apparently, despite being excellent. People compare it to hoplite, often preceded by ‘not as good as’, but I think it is in fact full of far more interesting interactions whilst sidestepping many of hoplite’s flaws (boring early game, having to check the lines of fire of all the enemies before making a move).

Anyways, costs like two bucks, I dropped 80 hours in it no regrets, and would love for enough people to buy it so the dev can afford to put a patch out. It is also on mobile, but the mobile version i have heard is at an earlier stage of balance, so probably not as enjoyable aside from its… mobility.

Isn’t this the same guy who made EMPIRE: The Deck Building Strategy Game? That didn’t get the patches it needed either (I’m talking about the PC version). I’ll pass.

Yep, it’s Keith Burgun.

I understand that (1) patching an old game takes time away from developing something new and that (2) releasing a new game is likely to be more profitable than updating an old one, but still. Auro doesn’t have a full screen mode, despite the developer promising on the Steam forums that this was at the top of his list of things to fix back in April. In fact, there have, as far as I can tell, been no updates at all since then.

I picked Auro a while back on iOS, and while it was a little funny game, it was also very unbalanced (some of the monsters being… push-overs, ho ho ho - Auro players joke!).
I was a bit surprised when I learned it was made, after a name-change, by the people (single guy?) behind 100 Rogues, one of my first iOS purchases and a game that was so buggy, with updates only bringing more and more IAPs, I was wondering how it could have generated any positive opinion - sure was cute pixel art, though. Ah, I think I answered the question I just asked.
Now I am learning the iOS version of Auro won’t be updated to the state of the desktop version, and yet another game - which I had no idea they were behind, again, because it was released under yet another differently named studio - was left in the woods, after much promises? Hmm…
Sorry, but personally, I know where I stand in regards to these folks.