Little Indie Games Worth Knowing About (Probably)

Sable recently got a fishing update!

Wait what? They put fishing in the game? Dang, I think it left Game Pass.

Yeah, I’ve seen the steam reviews where people say “We beat this game in one run.” That wasn’t my experience. It took a fair number of runs and some leveling up our boat to clear the first world. Several hours of playtime. The price seems pretty good for the fun thus far.

But I am kinda’ bad at games so perhaps not the best measure. Your mileage may vary.

I’ll just repost my steam review.

Janky, clunky, buggy, poorly optimized, horrible translation, but still addictive lol. If you have some tolerance for jank, there is some fun to be had, get it on sale.

Oh wow that speaks to me on a primal level.

Dungeon100 is kind of crazy… The better build you make, the tougher it is to defeat yourself once you beat the boss, and you become the boss.

I saw some mentions of TearDown upthread, but it was early access back in 2020, and it’s been a while. Has anyone tried this recently and have any impressions to share?

Plan the perfect heist using creative problem solving, brute force, and everything around you. Teardown features a fully destructible and truly interactive environment where player freedom and emergent gameplay are the driving mechanics.

Tear down walls with explosives or vehicles to create shortcuts no one thought was possible. Stack objects, build structures, or use floating objects to your advantage. Take your time to create an efficient path through the level, plan the heist and get ready to execute it.

Run, jump, drive, slingshot. Do whatever you need to collect targets, avoid robots or steal whatever your clients ask for. But make sure not to get caught!

Oh clever.

But then, you could cripple yourself to make it easier to… oh the mind games!

It was a surprisingly ‘heavy’ game, performance wise, for an indie game. I have to try again with the new gpu.

Problem is, if you do that, you can’t get past the regular mob stages, which can be quite hard. You sort of have to try and build the best character you can to even get to your “you” boss. It gets really hard to get past about level 45 or so lol, fun stuff.

Final Upgrade has left early access. 2D Factorio-like in space.

Immortal Darkness is being removed from sale soon. Zelda-esque dungeon crawler with strong reviews. I picked it up cheap but haven’t played it.

IXION has released today - a full release, not Early Access (I had to doublecheck that because it seems so unusual these days). It’s often described as “Frostpunk in space” and that appears to be a good capsule summary.

Greenman gaming had a larger discount when I logged in there if you’re tempted. Something like 25% off as opposed to the standard 10% launch week discount offered by Steam.

Thumbs way down for Ixion.
The game is punishing both in difficulty and for actual enjoyment. It likes to strangle you with 4+ different time sensitive systems/resource drains. Like you soon will wish you could strangle your population because they are unbelievable morons.
The exploration events are meh at best. Not super interesting thematically, choices only have minor impacts and the game’s constant pressure makes you rush through them.

I am a bit concerned about Ixion that it might be a bit puzzley. IE: Some event happens and you have better prepared for it ahead of time, and the failure of the event means things spiral out of control. Then you do a new game and prepare for the first event and this time you get by it. Then the next event happens you needed to prepare for it in a different way so now it is on to game 3, etc… I would NOT like a game like that.

Interesting takes on IXION. I am not that far in so perhaps I haven’t been hit with the situations you describe.

I am not saying I ran into that. I do not own the game. I am concerned that it may be that kind of game.
People keep saying its frost punk in space, and IIRC there was a fair amount of, you needed to be prepared for event X, otherwise you were toast.

Oh I see. Thanks for clarifying. I will play more today and let you know what I find!

Crawl Tactics released yesterday. It’s not in EA, this is the full game. This guy’s previous game was similar and very good. He seems to have expanded on it in this sequel. Das Tactic tried it and really liked it a lot. His let’s play is below.

Das Tactic vid:

Thanks for this, I have now botten and am looking forward to never playing it along with most things I buy. But I supported the dev!!!