Little Indie Games Worth Knowing About (Probably)

Oh, that reminds me of Yedoma Globula:

Oh that looks neat!







I’ve been playing Below The Ocean - I picked it up after a glowing review on One Life Left (#459), which said it was so well structured it could be used to teach game design. It does that great thing of introducing a new concept, twists it a few times, and then drops it for the next new thing.

It’s a puzzley platformer, the main gimmick is that you’re tethered to oxygen tanks as you explore, and you can use the tether to swing around. It’s a short game, it looks like 1-2hrs will exhaust it. Cheap, but I think I picked it up when it was even cheaper, 40 or 50% off. Recommended!

Mon Amour is my favourite indie game of this year. It’s flappy bird that foregoes the frustrating gameplay in favour of smooching a lot of strangers and weirdos, featuring one-button gameplay with some hi-score depth beyond simply how far you can progress. The guy who did the art for Super Mario RPG did this too! It’s so cute. Bless this games cotton socks/stockings this Christmas.

I was surprised at how pleasant this was, as oftentimes Onion games are just too shallow, beyond their scoring mechanics surfing on the verge of insanity.
The much more straightforward scoring approach of this one, with the limited but intertwining mechanics, really makes it probably my favourite game of theirs.

I’d have to agree, though I do have a real soft spot for Black Bird once I ended up dedicating time to getting really good at it. Still haven’t gotten the Super Ultra Best New Game Plus ending though. I don’t think I ever will.

Million Onion Hotel is also a favourite of mine!

Black Bird would have probably been my favourite, if some mechanics were a bit more revealed (there is so much to keep track of!), and if the last bosses weren’t so punishing.

My wife completed Million Onion Hotel, but I didn’t enjoy it as much, despite the cows.

The Yamada game, I couldn’t get past the grind in the phone version, and felt the same in the Switch one. Also was a bit too… real lifey, compared to the sexual extravaganza of the later games XD

Alina of the Arena looks amazing. Slay the Spire x Into the Breach. EA in 2022, but there’s a playable demo

I see this is now on sale for 45% off. Worth a buy?

Yes. Really fun.

Damn you, krok, you weren’t kidding.
This is out of this world, janky but incredibly well thought out at the same time, and oh boy, isn’t this the closest anything will ever be to a 3D representation of the classic Sorcery gamebooks?
None of your already strange screenshots had prepared me for the deep strangeness of this. Wow!

To anybody pondering whether to grab it or not: do it!

Ok. Worst case, I fed the backlog more and made him even fatter and sloppy and he’ll slobber all over the carpet.

So, first of all, thank you to the mysterious benefactor who gifted me Northern Journey!

And secondly, I’m not used to receiving gifts on steam so instead of pressing Accept, I tried to click on the name of the benefactor to see if I could figure out from their name who it was at Qt3, but I have no clue. And unfortunately, now I can’t find out where the gift is, I can’t find it anywhere in Steam’s menus. So I think your gift got lost inside Steam somewhere. I’m really sorry.

Edit: Oh no, wait, I found it under unavailable inventory. Yay!

This sounds awesome, krok. I just saw the developer’s dev diary and his whole philosophy for making a game is both practical and a little romantic. I love that he factored in his health when designing while using his time outdoors to source textures to avoid being stuck at his desk for years. It’s a brilliant approach.

Big list of good indies from this year (includes this “Northern” “Journey” thing everyone can’t stop gabbin’ about!):

Dominic lost a lot of creds for not mentionning a certain game ¬_¬

I skimmed through most entries, as I’m not a fan of early access nor noisy 3D graphics, but I come out of this with a renewed interest in Astalon!

GASP! There was no Unpacking, was there?!

I hope the DOOM-heads are enjoying this year’s boom in lo-fi FPSes. Not my thing–especially not the PS1-era 3D art styles–but I respect the form.

Worse! No Beast Breaker!

I DEFINITELY HADN’T NOTIC— no, I totally noticed.

UPDATE:
Oh, haha!