Little Indie Games Worth Knowing About (Probably)

It was Steam’s doing! Their client is reporting totally wrong links for games here, since the start of the sale.

This is a cute little puzzle game.

And this is in early access now. Anyone played it on the Xbox?

Hartacon screens

http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/575850/ss_09a468cd07eb6deddd3c264241c2630a1a6b23f4.600x338.jpg

http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/575850/ss_d963d0933d6a96d5f5e0a7d471156cdcef53c91a.600x338.jpg

Dead Exit looks to be an interesting card game where you have to amass resources and survivors during the ZA and escape your base before your opponent does. There’s also a solitaire mode that’s more PVE (no AI necessary).

Normally I’d be on this like stink on a gorilla, but the system requirements seem awfully high for a turn based card game (I5, Geforce 720) and more than my ancient rig can handle. That said, if the developers come up with some assurances that I can run it, I’ll grab it for the weekend.

[Edit] Never mind. I just noticed there’s a demo on itch.io. I’ll give that a shot and see how it goes.

Your graphics card is about 4 times faster than a Geforce GT 720.

Yeah, the demo played just fine. I’ll be grabbing this later today.

A couple of stuff from the Steam discovery queue.

This is a F2P CCG just released. It looks horrible, and I post it here for the wrong reason (should probably belong to the Anime thread over there).

On the other hand:

Never had heard of that “roguelike” (*yawn) match 3 game.

So, um…

“My Organic Garden is an avant-garde organ-clicking game.”

Your game’s revolting. My game’s super cute and not at all disturbing:

I don’t think I’ve ever played a game you guys mention, but it is one of my favorite threads.

Well unless you all mentioned Hyper Light Drifter – that game is great.

Forget Me Not proves to be a solid little clicker with regular slice of life story beats and quests to fulfill. It’s much less dark than it initially presented as being, although you are literally harvesting organs off trees, so. Y’know. There’s still that. If that sort of thing works for you I think it’s worth picking up on sale.

Apologies, the sale is over, but keep this one in mind for next time

Just finished this tonight and it was quite something. However, I’ll let Cool Ghosts tell you why as Quinns is far more eloquent than myself, and I’ve had a couple of beers.

Developed by Voidpoint, a studio comprised of EDuke32 vets and Duke Nukem 3D mappers, Ion Maiden was formally announced on a recent Duke4 livestream, and will be releasing in 2017.

First, a bit of background. The Build Engine powered Ion Maiden is a FPS prequel to the poorly received Bombshell, an isometric shooter from Interceptor Entertainment, a studio which declared bankruptcy last year and has since rebranded themselves as Slipgate Studios.

The game’s developer, Voidpoint, is a completely independent venture. It began development in early 2015 as a stand-alone project and was quietly announced on a poster back in July 2015 as an extra for the digital deluxe version for Bombshell. Since then, however, the scope has expanded considerably and the game is a full commercial product. The developers’ chose the name Ion Maiden to distance themselves from the negativity associated with Bombshell. The game is running on EDuke32, built in 2004 by Richard Gobeille and continuously developed over the following decade with a view to preserving the original developers’ intent of Duke Nukem 3D and to make it playable and enhanced on modern hardware.

While Ion Maiden itself is retro rather than an outright 1:1 reproduction of 90’s techniques, the team has created a brand new 8-bit palette, which all assets will use. Rather than “making the past look better than it was,” Ion Maiden is taking the best out of both the past and present in order to make a better game, avoiding the limitations imposed on Build engine in order to run better on lower spec systems (think Shovel Knight). The score’s being made by someone from the European C64/Amiga demo scene who has been making mod tracker music for about 20 years (the original Build engine has been modified to support this).

Voidpoint’s 256 color palette (Cage is easily one of the most talented pixel artists around):

There’s some seriously talented mappers involved (including DavoX of DNF 2013 DLC fame), with the levels being made with the hallmarks of classic shooters in mind, including interconnecting areas, interactivity, and secrets. All of the weapons have either an alt fire or an alternate ammo type which you switch by pressing alt fire. The team’s currently working on a demo (which won’t feature the alt fire stuff) in the style of Half-Life: Uplink and what Monolith did with the Fear and Condemned demos. The content will be more or less unique from the full version. The team recently showed a video behind closed doors at E3 so I hope we’ll see more soon, but in the meantime here’s some more screens!

Note: the face in the HUD is temp art just cut from a random promo image for Interceptor’s Bombshell game. The final game is likely to have the face in the HUD, but it’ll be more like Doom.

You seem enthusiastic but you totally lost me there:

It’s just an expanded color palette, which includes green, blue and brown tones and a full black gradient which offers far more variety than the original Build engine titles.

Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior, for example, have four hues with 32 shades, while the rest of the hues only got 16 shades. Blood, on the other hand, had one hue with 32 shades. Ion Maiden’s palette is more visually adventurous even if it’s less consistent than the older titles. I thought the screenshots would demonstrate the richer range while being true to the limitations expected of the classic Build era titles.

I see your point though, as it’s probably a bit nerdy of me to be excited over!

Might be a spelling joke?

Also don’t be afraid to create a new thread for cool mod projects like this. Or make a general DN3D mod thread. I hate to see interesting stuff buried in threads like this that keep moving on to new things.

Haha, thanks for the explanation: i was totally outnerded!

A space for mods and maps for classic titles would be a good idea! This is a commercial product, but I’ll totally make a thread when the demo’s released (shouldn’t be too far away) once the game’s formally revealed. There’s still a number of details that haven’t been announced yet (publisher, price, number of episodes, etc…), so I figured I would just let people know about the game here until the team starts the PR blitz.

@Left_Empty it’s like when folks get annoyed that someone says a retro platformer is 8 bit-inspired when it’s using a 16 bit style. I didn’t want to present Voidpoint as pretender posers because they’re the real deal!

That’s when you know you’re in too deep!

[quote=“MrTibbs, post:802, topic:73462, full:true”]I see your point though, as it’s probably a bit nerdy of me to be excited over!
[/quote]

Well, now that you’ve explained it, that is kinda cool. At first, I wondered if you posted the wrong image or something.

-Tom

Haha, I should’ve just posted Cage’s sprite weapon tutorial instead, as it does a great job demonstrating his considerable pixel art skills. I really need to learn to write a draft post, wait a moment, and then give my posts a proper edit before I hit reply. It would save everyone so much grief!