Little Indie Games Worth Knowing About (Probably)

It’s what I had thought on first reflecting about my experience with the genre, after all those boring newborn towns around the world are boring to me for a reason, but on second thought, I can’t quite point what makes or demakes a game of that genre to me. I know I found the much lauded Ceasar, Zeus and what was it? Pharaoh? very bland, but I adored Children of the Nile — the town was breathing in rhythm with the Nile’s mood, kind of giving corpse to the religious beliefs of old around rivers.
I confess I haven’t played any Anno game, excepting for the DS one (which was, already! a bit like a much more directive Slipways in my memory). My Uplay boycotting resolve stands firm, for my own sanity!

I think part of the problem is that modern city builders tend to be played far more zoomed out where you’re placing whole blocks of buildings rather than a more intimate historical builder where you’re generally placing individual buildings.

I though Children of the Nile was an absolutely wonderful simulation of an ancient Egyptian city for all the reasons you mention. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much game there for me, so I drifted off pretty quickly.

Anno is very logistics-heavy, so that comparison makes sense. I understand the Uplay boycott, certainly, but I’ll admit that Anno is exactly why I can’t bring myself to boycott Ubi. I could give up Assassin’s Creed and the occasional other game of theirs that fall into “guilty pleasure” territory, but I simply won’t deny myself Anno - especially now that the series is firmly back on its feet with 1800.

I really do need to pick up Slipways, it’s a game I’d clearly enjoy. Time is tight these days and it’s hard to justify buying a new game with a backlog like mine, but this is distinctly different from most of my catalog and as I understand it plays quickly - which is really what I need now.

That’s very true, and probably why I liked it so much! Although not collapsing was not easy, it was at least as much about watching as it was about interacting; a bit like the very latest A-Train games.

My boycott is strictly Uplay: after having lost so many saves to its capricious and almost hostile randomness — Uplay actually insisted on bringing erased saves back from its cloud when I tried to back my local ones up! I gave up instead of growing grey hairs. Which is why I’m still playing the Ubi console games, but I think as far as Anno is concerned, that DS game was the first and last.


Awe yiss…

Saw DLC recently came out for Legion War and also noticed Dastactic is a fan, was wondering if anyone here had picked it up and given it a spin and what your thoughts were?

I played Legion War when it was still in Early Access and thought it was OK but nothing special. I should go back to it, but I suspect not enough has changed to make me like it any better.

There is a demo available for Legion War.

ah, yeah, good point, have to do that this weekend. like the trend of demos coming back.

In potentially a similiar vein although not out yet so who knows, saw this one on RPS might be another smaller title to keep an eye on:

Yeah, it looks cool, I wishlisted it to follow it.

Thanks for the demo suggestion, played a couple hours of Legion War, loved it and bought it. This is scratching a certain kind of gaming itch no doubt.

Yeah, I mean you never know if they’ll get it across the finish line in a winnable state, but the trailer had enough going on that interested me enough to want to keep tabs on it.

Great. I played the demo myself a while back and enjoyed it. I do intend to pick it up sometime but you know, backlog + Gamepass takes up so much time.

This is a first-person dwarf survival/builder.

But before you dismiss this as more of the same I suggest you try the demo. The demo does not have combat but there is a lot to do - it is awesome and this is a day 1 buy for me. Feels like the devs have nailed the dwarven fantasy / LOTR vibe.

Gamescom gameplay trailer:

I found out about this game by seeing a Splattercat video pop up on my youtube feed. I haven’t watched it but from the comments I get the impression he did not read the book on forging and therefore had a lot of bad results (to forge different metals you have to control the temperature of the forge).

That does look interesting. Downloading the demo now!

Thanks for the heads-up, Charlatan.

When I visited the Sycoforge Games website I was given the opportunity to be a part of the Return to Nangrim pre-alpha beta. Here’s the link in case anyone is interested: https://www.sycoforge.com/en/

I watched that video and it looks great, despite Splat’s bumblings

Yep it looks good, will give the demo a shot.

Ran across this demo that was released for Gamescom I think:

You play as the beleaguered giant and from what I gather, you run around destroying puny humans. Looks like fun. Downloading the demo right now and will give it a shot. Euro date format so it seems they plan to release on November 2.

Here is the seemingly ubiquitous Splattercat video of him playing the game:

Edit to add: Demo is bonkers and fun. There is a great deal of satisfaction in stomping your foot and killing 80 baddies! Or in smashing a house with your fist. Truth be told, it reminds me quite a bit of the WoW missions where you take control of a robot or other large vehicle and you run around feeling like a badass. The same feeling exists here!!

I bought it and played a few 10s of hours about six months ago. I would rate it as the very best, deep, complex but still easy to learn and play Advance-Wars-alike I have ever played. I bet it could shine in multiplayer with a good gang.

Factions are highly asymmetric, making for some really interesting playstyles and adjustments. Whilst it can seem and become chaotic, you can absolutely also manage a front line and reserves and grind away WWI trench style. The RPG development mechanics for units are solid and really encourage you to try and keep favoured units alive, yet not so much that you cannot sacrifice them for a good gain, such as taking a castle.

I recall two dings against it, which are specific to single player. One is that the mechanics can result in scenarios become an uber-grindfest. I played at least two where the opposing big bad heroes could one-shot any regular unit and my own heroes two if I was not very careful. Overcoming this took several 100 turns of mostly doing the same thing, high volume churn out, slaughter, rinse repeat, seeking some threshold change.

Two is specific to the story campaign. Many of the missions here strip away the regular economy mechanics and just give you a fixed set of units to use. Nice change of pace maybe, but latter scenarios were bake naked throw unbelievable odds at you, which prompted me to save-scum for survival over and over.

Flipside, there is certainly plenty of challenge, plenty of difficulty, and that is not true for all such games, so my complaints are just blemishes on potential enjoyment for a terrific game.