Indie Fancies - The Bear and Badger

ShabbyMcCrabby

Considering how many new indie games get announced or released every month and the effort it takes to start a thread for a new game only for it to die not long after I figured we should have a catchall thread for any current or upcoming indie games that catch your fancy. If it becomes popular then create a separate thread for it later.

Currently I'm interested in seeing what comes of:

Paradise Lost. A 2d stealth game where you play as an alien plant. Some really nice animation in this one.

Reset, a coop puzzler with some pretty graphics:

And I'm going to do a shameless plug for my friend's game Dungeon Dashers which is currently in Early Access on Steam. He's the sole main dev on it and has contracted in the art and music.
If you like dungeon crawlers and board game style games then check it out:

What indie games are you playing or looking forward to?

Brooks

Mirrormoon we actually have a thread for but I've yet to play it and wanna.

ShabbyMcCrabby

What's it about? Got any trailers or anything?

Curtis

It's kinda like Ghosts & Goblins, Spelunky and Dark Souls' filthy little offspring.

Incredibly difficult, but not unfairly so, and very moreish. Try it.

[Deleted User]

Thought To The Moon was excellent.

equinox_code

I thought To The Moon was amazingly dull. When does anything interesting happen? I gave it a couple of hours of my time but got frustrated at the painfully slow text i was forced to endure with little sign of interactivity on the horizon.

[Deleted User]

It's certainly more a story than an actual game, but I like unusual shit like that. I thought it was very well written.

dynamiteReady

There's another indie thread knocking about, no?

Brooks

Probably.

General point: It's getting fucking difficult to follow non-AAA development comfortably. There's so much going on and it's all about as PR-efficient as anything else. Frankly the only thing that makes me jump now is, surprise surprise, critical masses of attention. Like, I went through Gone Home because enough people bollocked on about it. It's pretty decent but what am I missing out on for lacking similar buzz? In the absence of that, I basically have to make snap, highly uncharitable decisions on the same shit I do for AAA stuff - presentation, track record of studio, brief show-and-tells about mechanics, minute differences in projected tone and mechanics - and spend time accordingly. The future showed up and I wasn't ready.

dynamiteReady

My main point was to add to that thread, instead of creating a new one.

Anyway. Might already be common knowledge, but this...

Is arguably the most technically accomplished freeware game I've ever downloaded (Digipen). Shame it's as buggy as fuck.

I will speng', if this thing doesn't get cleaned up and re-released as something HAM (Oculus, possibly, but not essentially).

dynamiteReady

Meh... Fuck it. I like it.

Makes a change from talking about the Steambox/Xbone/PS4.

Fentonizer

Brooks wrote:

Probably. General point: It's getting fucking difficult to follow non-AAA development comfortably. There's so much going on and it's all about as PR-efficient as anything else. Frankly the only thing that makes me jump now is, surprise surprise, critical masses of attention. Like, I went through Gone Home because enough people bollocked on about it. It's pretty decent but what am I missing out on for lacking similar buzz? In the absence of that, I basically have to make snap, highly uncharitable decisions on the same shit I do for AAA stuff - presentation, track record of studio, brief show-and-tells about mechanics, minute differences in projected tone and mechanics - and spend time accordingly. The future showed up and I wasn't ready.

I agree. Things like Starseed Pilgrim and Spacechem and other stuff like that just doesn't have the chance to get out there, it's only word of mouth that permeates through. I'd never have even heard of Teleglitch if I hadn't heard about it here.

Kickstarter gets more saturated by the day, Greenlight didn't really pan out as I'd hoped, just ended up being Kickstarter Lite.

Having said that: http://Notonsteam.com

JMW

@dR Echochrome innit?

dynamiteReady

JMW wrote:

@dR Echochrome innit?

Very much so, but I'm quite fond of this take.

It feels more accomplished (despite the fucking bugs... The game simply cannot run on an 'brass' system), and less pretentious.

Plus it's well worth the money, if you can find it (fray).

ShabbyMcCrabby

I did a rudimentary search and came up empty for another thread. So here we are.
Some cool looking games there.

I think the current indie scene largely lives and dies on places like this and on proper showings at as many games expos as possible to try and get as much coverage as possible.

dynamiteReady

ShabbyMcCrabby wrote:

I did a rudimentary search and came up empty for another thread.

Fair do's. My bad.
But if I find that mofo', you badgers are gonna' catch it! :}

dynamiteReady

Anyone else playing Papers Please?

Brooks

Another one I keep meaning to.

dynamiteReady

http://dukope.com/

It's surprisingly engrossing. Genuinely had to tear my self away.
After reading the review, I thought I'd have hated it.

It is, in fact, a very good game.

Kop it while it's still fray.

nick_md

This is a delightful little indie game and has a whopping 50% off on steam right now:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/244810/

[Deleted User]

Brooks wrote:

Another one I keep meaning to.

Forget the other ones and do this one. Papers Please is sublime.

ShabbyMcCrabby

Has anyone played Cart Life? I've been meaning to check it out.
That Papers guy is pretty talented. The bastard.

Brooks

Cart Life was ace, though I'm always going to prefer action games to this menu based stuff.

AJ

Today's title of interest for me is Tale of Tales' Luxuria Superbia. It's synaesthetic, so I guess it'll depend on how you feel about that as to if it's your thing. The gameplay seems relatively straightforward so far, but it has elicited a slight emotional response.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-06-tale-of-tales-releases-its-sensual-musical-curio-luxuria-superbia

dynamiteReady

Erm... I'm not sure if that's for me... :}

AJ

It does follow the usual Tale of Tales idea of being more concerned with emoting stuff than being an interesting game.

weadre

I think it might be for me

davyK

Brooks wrote:

Probably.

General point: It's getting fucking difficult to follow non-AAA development comfortably. There's so much going on and it's all about as PR-efficient as anything else. Frankly the only thing that makes me jump now is, surprise surprise, critical masses of attention. Like, I went through Gone Home because enough people bollocked on about it. It's pretty decent but what am I missing out on for lacking similar buzz? In the absence of that, I basically have to make snap, highly uncharitable decisions on the same shit I do for AAA stuff - presentation, track record of studio, brief show-and-tells about mechanics, minute differences in projected tone and mechanics - and spend time accordingly. The future showed up and I wasn't ready.

Indeed.....it's becoming not unlike the music industry with ever more samey and frothier mainstream titles getting all the PR crap (positive and negative) with midnight launches etc. whilst we could be (are) missing absolute gems....

We will be searching for sugarmen for a long time to come.

AJ

weadre wrote:

I think it might be for me

It's on offer at the moment.

I was looking at their other stuff on the Android store and you have to wonder if this quote was used due to lack of understanding or a sense of humour:

“a pretentious, ineffective waste of the interactive medium" -Destructoid

AJ

In other news, I've had this list of recommendations from a recent IF competition sitting in the browser on my phone for a while because I've been meaning to post it here:

http://emshort.wordpress.com/2013/10/22/if-comp-2013-roundup/

dynamiteReady

davyK wrote:

Probably. General point: It's getting fucking difficult to follow non-AAA development comfortably. There's so much going on and it's all about as PR-efficient as anything else. Frankly the only thing that makes me jump now is, surprise surprise, critical masses of attention. Like, I went through Gone Home because enough people bollocked on about it. It's pretty decent but what am I missing out on for lacking similar buzz? In the absence of that, I basically have to make snap, highly uncharitable decisions on the same shit I do for AAA stuff - presentation, track record of studio, brief show-and-tells about mechanics, minute differences in projected tone and mechanics - and spend time accordingly. The future showed up and I wasn't ready.

Indeed.....it's becoming not unlike the music industry with ever more samey and frothier mainstream titles getting all the PR crap (positive and negative) with midnight launches etc. whilst we could be (are) missing absolute gems.... We will be searching for sugarmen for a long time to come.

It's pretty easy to find indie games though. What I will argue, is that it's very hard to find great indie games, because there aren't many great indie games.

Ok, so the mobile market has changed things drastically... The ubiquity, the lower barrier to entry, and the (relatively) low technical standard has forced a new generation of game designers to think creatively. And the prices inspired by a digital inventory also encourages a better reception for just about ANY kind of game.

Thing is, unlike music and much like film, the more money you pump into the creation of a game, the better it will potentially be...

That's not at all true with music. But then with music, there's an unfathomable subjective standard... I mean, think of "pop" music... Apart from the occasional (colloquial) anomaly, you can take "pop" as a genre in and of itself...

How many of us admit to listening to pop, but how many of us watch/play blockbusters?...

Can it then be argued that both games and film are in someway objectively reviewed?

Howdy, Stranger!

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