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Indie Games 2015 [September] Lets talk about anything Indie
- Thread starter Toma
- Start date
Icyflamez96
Member
Not if you're on 100ppp ;|
More_Badass
Member
And onward to page 2!
Edit: a bit late there
Edit: a bit late there
More_Badass
Member
This thread is why I stick to 50 per page
ARE YOU INSANE?!
Icyflamez96
Member
a little
More_Badass
Member
Got my hands on the press build, so I'll post some impressions later.
More_Badass
Member
The new Glitchspace is so good. I feel like I can grasp the concepts so much easier than before
Icyflamez96
Member
What could have easily been only a simple puzzle platformer about hauling around quadrilaterals to their respective goals became a thoughtful story about the plight of sentient AI and their efforts to escape the digital containment of a computer mainframe. Thanks to some clever narration, life was injected into the array of playable shapes, and insisted on a reason to progress through the game that extended beyond just completing levels for the sake of it. It’s pretty remarkable how a charming narrative and emotional soundtrack can take what would otherwise be a rather basic experience and elevate into something that feels much more grand in comparison.
In Thomas Was Alone, you switch around from taking control of different colored and sized rectangles – each with their own set of unique attributes – and utilize them in collaboration to get over obstacles, and to ultimately reach the end goal of each stage. The mechanics are fairly simple and straightforward, and the presentation/aesthetic makes it come off as somewhat of a glorified flash game. I don’t say that as a bad thing, in fact, that’s what helps make the accomplishments of the narrative seem much more impressive. It’s the stark contrast between the fact that you’re moving around an assortment of expressionless rectangles in a minimalist world, and the fact that the careful and deliberate narration makes you actually care about those expressionless rectangles that ends up contributing to this game’s uniqueness.
The way Thomas Was Alone personifies the playable blocks into notable characters is quite clever. It takes the rectangles and gives them a personality that often reflects whatever unique ability that they individually possess. For example, Chris is a short and stubby orange square that can fit into small places that most of the other characters can’t. He has a bit of a short man’s complex, often is grumpy, and feels like he doesn’t need help from any of the other characters. John is a tall, yellow rectangle that jumps the highest out of all of the other initial characters. He’s somewhat egotistical because of it, and likes showing off. Chris takes a particular disliking to this character at the start, while John merely finds Chris’s cynicism amusing. As one might imagine, there is a good deal of development that goes on between the cast of characters, which is noted by the narrator. It all feels like a story of an unlikely meeting of people with unusual abilities that get together to fight for the greater good.
The simplicity of this game doesn’t go completely without fault. Thomas Was Alone offers decent variation throughout the progression in terms of obstacles and how much of what abilities you’re relying on by a level to level basis, but it wasn’t enough to keep things from feeling a bit repetitive at a few points later in the game. The characters definitely felt fun to control. The jumping animations gave off a bit of a sense of bounce, which is a little detail that I always appreciated. Difficulty wise, this game is very low on the scale, which made it good to play purely for relaxation purposes and never demands much from your mind or reflexes.
At the end of the day, any game that can make me feel even slightly emotionally attached to a bunch of rectangles is pretty solid and worth playing in my book.
PandaPedinte
Member
Good review for Thomas was Alone
I didn't bought the game but it seems to getting a more positive response than the first game, it also encompass other genres and takes more time to complete, unlike the first game.
I didn't bought the game but it seems to getting a more positive response than the first game, it also encompass other genres and takes more time to complete, unlike the first game.
Was already great before, glad to hear they improved things.
PandaPedinte
Member
Celestian Tales: Old North - A game clearly inspired by old JRPG games, but it has some small twists to the old formula. You can choose between six protagonists during the start, I don't think you'll get too much different content, most likely the prologue and some different dialogues in different parts of the game, though even it being simple serves to add a flavor because you can get to know the background of the characters. Each character has a different personality and it's not uncommon that during dialogues they start to argue because they are all nobles with different backgrounds and aspirations.
The battle system is simple to understand, you have your HP and Stamina. The stamina regains as you attack the monsters or defend yourself, and you need it to use the special skills each character has, though if you use a skill that needs too much stamina the enemy aggro will turn to that character, so there is a bit of management during the battles. When a battle ends your party is automatically healed, I can see many disliking it but it helps mitigate the annoying that was ending, a battle entering a menu, healing your party, that was so common in other games.
Still talking about the combat, as the party level up the squires unlocks news ative and passive abilities, and you can equip them in the menu.
The weapons system is also straight forward, there aren't a lot of weapon in the game (There are 3 for each character) but you can improve them with a blacksmith if you have the right materials.
While in the story page it sells the game with a gritty and dark storyline I don't agree with it at all, it at least don't go the common place of the "choosen ones that are going to fulfil the old prophecy". In the menu you can read more about the lore from the game, knowing the factions, the families, the cities and etc. It helps to get immersed in the world.
In my opinion the art for the character portraits are a bit inconsistent, the six squires seem to follow the same artstyle but some of the NPC's doesn't seem to fit at all, but this is something that I can ingone and is not going to lessen the enjoyment I'm having with the game.
Recommended if you want some light JRPG.
More_Badass
Member
Decided to enter the wonderful world of 4Xs and picked up Endless Legend, since it's on sale on Humble
Didn't like the Civ 5 demo I played last month, but man, I'm enjoying this. Only played the tutorial, but it's really cool. The art style and map is absolutely gorgeous, and I love how enemy encounters become tactical on-the-battlefield combat. Plus the micro-managing RPG aspect of equipping units and Hero skill trees
Between this and Dungeon of the Endless, Amplitude definitely has my attention now
Didn't like the Civ 5 demo I played last month, but man, I'm enjoying this. Only played the tutorial, but it's really cool. The art style and map is absolutely gorgeous, and I love how enemy encounters become tactical on-the-battlefield combat. Plus the micro-managing RPG aspect of equipping units and Hero skill trees
Between this and Dungeon of the Endless, Amplitude definitely has my attention now
I was concerned when I read about Endless Legend for the first time. Why would they want to drop that sleek UI and fascinating race/character design from Endless Space for a plain old planetbound 4X game?
Now I know better.
Amplitude's officially one of my favorite developers. I love their design aesthetic. The unified lore across all of their games is great too.
You've seen the teaser site for Endless Space 2, right? http://www.yourvision-theirfuture.com/
PandaPedinte
Member
Amplitude along with Minor Key Games must be my favorite developers. Amplitude got me hooked with Endless Space, then I dove into Endless Legend when it entered EA and Dungeon of the Endless was the surprise for me, I wasn't expecting to like it the way I liked.
I'm so hyped for this game.
More_Badass
Member
I wonder how many people have played certain games not realized they're indie games because of how graphical fidelity and such has improved in recent years
As they still have that view of "indie games = pixel art puzzle platformer"
So many people do, it's weird. Like.. this is GAF? This is a hub of dedicated, hardcore, informed gamers.
PandaPedinte
Member
More_Badass
Member
Icyflamez96
Member
I don't know, but looks like its seen me.
yes
Started playing STASIS. Great atmosphere, but held back by standard adventure puzzles. I was hoping to see some more inventive usages of gameplay mechanics other than the usual and fairly simple inventory puzzles.
Still great of course and I love the art style, but I am not sure I could easily recommend it at 25$.
Still great of course and I love the art style, but I am not sure I could easily recommend it at 25$.
Still on vacation >______<
More_Badass
Member
Cyberzone - PC, Mac, Linux
The Final Station - PC, Mac, Linux
Empires In Ruins - Late 2015 (PC, Mac, Linux)
Starbreak - Free (Browser)
I Can't Escape: Darkness - September 17th (PC, Mac, Linux)
Strafeman - ????
Guardians of Victoria - October (PC)
Welcome to Undercog - ????
Defier - ????
Previously Mentioned
Rymdresa
Solstice
http://www.indiedb.com/games/cyberzone
Super FAST shooter with time control system. Crowd of enemies, difficult and long multi-levels, connected by a single storyline. Control the time, use the environment as a weapon and KILL. ALL. F18KING. ENEMIES.
The Final Station - PC, Mac, Linux
http://thefinalstation.com/
Travel by train through the dying world, watch after your passengers, keep your train operational (refuel and setup devices) to continue your journey to the next station.
Make your way through the swarms of zombies at the infected stations. Explore mysterious and abandoned stations looking for supplies and survivors. Visit living stations for trade and the new quests.
Empires In Ruins - Late 2015 (PC, Mac, Linux)
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=441297411
Empires in Ruins is a Turn based strategy/Tower defense/Empire management hybrid, with a black humour infused plot, set in a grim, disillusioned world.
You expand, strengthen and defend on a turn based strategy map. You will have 26 regions to tame and improve to increase production and military prowess while following a twisted plot that explores the lower aspects of human beings.
Starbreak - Free (Browser)
http://www.crunchy.com/
A web-based Roguelike MMO action-platformer with MetroidVania-esque gameplay
I Can't Escape: Darkness - September 17th (PC, Mac, Linux)
http://icantescape.com/
I Can't Escape: Darkness is a quicksand trap for the senses - the more you listen and look for clues, the deeper you fall into a damp, living dungeon. Plunge into the depths and scrape together whatever tools you can find, then try to escape one of the most diabolical puzzles of all time!
Strafeman - ????
Guardians of Victoria - October (PC)
http://www.tallstorystudios.com/guardians-of-victoria/
Guardians of Victoria is a Steampunk, story-book running game with multiple twists, taking conventional running gameplay and creating something unique! Testing your reactions, planning, and timing in an action-packed multi-tasking race to the end without being caught by Jack the Ripper.
Welcome to Undercog - ????
http://undercog.com/about/
Welcome to Undercog is an RPG/Adventure game set on a distant world where a city thrives in caverns deep beneath the cracked and barren surface. The story (cut scene and NPC interaction) is told on the pages of a comic book. Through each comic panel and game play the player will attempt to unravel the mystery behind an industrial accident that spun the fair city of Undercog into chaos. The tool for this task is the Armored Personal Exoskeleton (or A.P.E. for short) is a versatile suit of armor with interchangeable components that will let the player face all of the baddies in the outlying caverns of Undercog.
Defier - ????
http://www.bouncygarlic.com/about.html
DEFIER is the story of Hester, she is a magic user in a world that fears and hates her. She starts very weak, but with a very strong will, that will help her to acquire more allies and much more internal power to change a society that she sees as very unfair
Previously Mentioned
Rymdresa
Solstice
SUCKER! Even I just bought it. If it's crap though I'm gonna kill you and everyone in that OT.
Oh shit - it's saturday?! Where the heck has the week gone
Wok
Member
The game is great. It is just way too hard for me.
Icyflamez96
Member
A lone traveler is flying through space, crashes into an asteroid that damages his warp drive, and thus gets stranded in a solar system surrounded by four planets. With that, you have your stage set for Xeodrifter. It jumps into things basically right off the bat. The game doesn’t give you any direction, so you can choose from whichever one of the four planets that you would like to explore. It’s a false sense of freedom though, as you quickly realize where you’re actually supposed to be. I just happened to stumble across the right planet on my first try, but at that point, the other planets are blocked off by sections that you clearly won’t be able to get through until you’ve gained the right ability.
Xeodrifter very tightly follows a basic metroidvania format. You’ll have to kill bosses to unlock new abilities to unlock new areas, and so on. I liked the setup of having to go back in forth between the different planets while knocking out sections of them bit by bit. There is backtracking to be done, (which is expected in a metroidvania) and it rarely feels like too much of a drag since your character moves fast and it normally doesn’t take much time to retread previous areas. The map is very easy to work with, so as long as you’re paying attention to it, there should be no problem in finding where you need to be. The only checkpoints in this game exist at your ship, and right before and after bosses. They feel pretty sparse, but I didn’t have a major issue with it. It forced me to learn the environment and enemy placements well, so by the time I did get to a boss, I felt like I had earned it. If there were any more checkpoints, I would have been able to run much more carelessly past the sections until I reached one, which would have made things a bit too easy. The game’s difficulty as is I found to be pretty manageable anyway.
The four planets are very different from each other aesthetically, but there’s very little depth to them as separate entities. Whatever amount mystique that each location has to offer is worn out by their first segment. The game is still fun enough to play, so I enjoyed progressing through the planets for that reason alone. They weren’t actually interesting to explore on their own right though. Exploration stops being exciting when you’re coming across largely the same enemy types and environments over and over again. The 8 bit music was mostly boring and unmemorable, and that combined with other things gave this game an overall weak sense of atmosphere.
Even the bosses that you fight are palette swaps of the same enemy model with the same core moveset, and the only difference in each subsequent encounter being that a new attack would be added to its rotation. For me, it actually worked better in practice than how it might sound on paper. The boss is enjoyable to fight the first time, and it ended up being fun for me to go into the next encounter fighting a harder and more varied version of the enemy that I was already familiar with. Still, I wish there were a couple of different bosses, but it’s not surprising how things turned out when knowing that the developer Renegade Kid whipped this all up in 5 months.
There are health and weapon upgrades to find throughout the planets. Many of them are basically out in the open, but you won't be able to access them until you get certain abilities. Others are hidden behind false walls. When you get weapons upgrade modules, you can put them into 5 different stats that affect your gun. The game won’t describe to you in detail what they do, but the little icons should give you a decent hint. If you’re not sure, you can tinker around with them. The weapon upgrade points aren’t of permanent use, so you can always take them off of a certain stat and put them elsewhere. That character progression is definitely felt toward the end of the game where you will start to feel much more like a threat to the enemies around you rather than just a wandering nomad trying to get by, and it feels good.
Xeodrifter certainly seems like a game that needed more time to be fleshed out. A couple of the abilities that you get toward the end felt like they didn’t get enough use, and there was some opportunity for them to be used in more creative ways that wasn’t taken advantage of enough.
The character controlled a bit slippery, and his jump height was fixed (which got me into some trouble), but it wasn’t too big of a deal. Even with all of the gripes I had, I found it to be a nice little action platformer, just nothing too special.
More_Badass
Member
Huh, I had Endless Space in my library and I didn't even know
Let me know what you think. I love most things about it outside of the main gameplay itself.
Problems with the game itself or the 4x genre?
The 4X genre I think - and that extends more broadly to Civ like games too. I own Endless Legend and I should love it; looks great, amazing music, responsive UI, good quests to break up the monotony of the genre - but still nothing. Boy have I tried.
More_Badass
Member
I'm so excited for Soma. I've been following it more closely since I'll be putting up the OT, and everything the dev say about the game sounds perfect
Already pre-ordered and I'm not reading any reviews, want to go into the story blind
Already pre-ordered and I'm not reading any reviews, want to go into the story blind
More_Badass
Member
So I have an extra Stasis steam key (Had preordered, but then the devs got in touch with an early review copy)
Anyone interested?
Anyone interested?
Icyflamez96
Member
Me plsss
More_Badass
Member
Sure, one sec
More_Badass
Member
Will add the proper format later
Tinertia - $14.99 (PC, Mac, Linux)
Renowned Explorers - $19.99 (PC, Mac, Linux)
Armello - $19.99 (PC, Mac, Linux, PS4)
Gunman Clive 2 - $2.99 (PC)
Fear Syndicate Thesis - Free (PC)
Tinertia - $14.99 (PC, Mac, Linux)
http://tinertia.com/
Tinertia is rocket-powered platforming geared toward the streaming generation and built on the premise of Quake-like fun, Sonic-like speed, and dynamic, precision controls. Addictive, surprising, and challenging, Tinertia makes gamers laugh while kicking their butt.
Renowned Explorers - $19.99 (PC, Mac, Linux)
http://www.renownedexplorers.com/
Renowned Explorers is a strategy adventure game. Assemble your team and use their beauty, brains or brawn to resolve any encounters they come across during their expeditions. Become famous by discovering the most prestigious treasures in a fictitious 19th century!
Armello - $19.99 (PC, Mac, Linux, PS4)
http://armello.com/
Armello is a grand swashbuckling adventure that combines three styles of play; The deep tactics of card games with the rich strategy of table top board games, combined with a character role-playing system.
As a hero from one of the clans of Armello, you'll quest, scheme, hire agents, explore, vanquish monsters, cast spells and face off against other players, with one ultimate end goal in mind — storming the palace and becoming King or Queen of Armello. The Kingdom of Armello is as dangerous as it is beautiful, perils, banes and bandits hide around every corner and a spreading corruption known as the rot is leaving no creature untouched.
Gunman Clive 2 - $2.99 (PC)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/394550/
Gunman Clive 2 retains the same classic gameplay formula, but dials the action up a notch further, with improved and more colorful graphics, more dynamic levels and richer, more diverse environments, bigger bosses and tons of new enemies.
Fear Syndicate Thesis - Free (PC)
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=11045
A LD33 entry from the devs of Gods Will Be Watching
Fear Syndicate Thesis is a poem about violence.
Icyflamez96
Member
Tinertia is one that I've been eyeing for a while. Looks like a lot of fun. There are some other interesting looking indies I've come across that haven't been mentioned in these threads (or at least not the past few ones) that I'll post once I gather some cool gifs and stuff together...
More_Badass
Member
Any IndieGAF impressions of Curious Expedition, Convoy, or Sheltered?
Also Renowned Explorers.
PandaPedinte
Member
Spooky's House of Jump Scares - It started slow with a cute ghost that I'm at her house and that it may have 1000 rooms, so I just went through the rooms entering the doors randomly until a cute cardboard spider appeared, it scared but I was laughing because of "hahaha so this game is going to scare me with cute things". I kept walking more cute cardboard monsters and then I reached room number 50, and that was an elevator with a paper note wrote with blood, saying something about the house becoming more strange as I go down to the next floor I start finding locked doors, they weren't there before and around room 60 I found another blood wrote note when put it down there was a faceless monster pursuing me. I ran away from him, luckily he's slow, and found what appears to be a lab with a computer, and there was the description of some monsters that are in this place, so I kept running because i don't want to find the monster again but I ended in an endless room and the monster could reach me at any moment so I did the only reasonable thing, I closed the game.
Recommended if you like horror games.
Nabs
Member
If you like puzzles at all, you need to the Hexcells series. The first Hexcells is a short introduction, Hexcells Plus is where shit gets real, and Infinite is where shit gets realer. Every puzzle can be worked out without any guessing, so don't... do it. Don't guess. I believe in you.
More_Badass
Member
Yup, picked it up finally. Do the games introduce any other puzzle mechanics later on?
Spooky's House of Jump Scares - It started slow with a cute ghost that I'm at her house and that it may have 1000 rooms, so I just went through the rooms entering the doors randomly until a cute cardboard spider appeared, it scared but I was laughing because of "hahaha so this game is going to scare me with cute things". I kept walking more cute cardboard monsters and then I reached room number 50, and that was an elevator with a paper note wrote with blood, saying something about the house becoming more strange as I go down to the next floor I start finding locked doors, they weren't there before and around room 60 I found another blood wrote note when put it down there was a faceless monster pursuing me. I ran away from him, luckily he's slow, and found what appears to be a lab with a computer, and there was the description of some monsters that are in this place, so I kept running because i don't want to find the monster again but I ended in an endless room and the monster could reach me at any moment so I did the only reasonable thing, I closed the game.
Recommended if you like horror games.
This game was too spoopy for me. It's pretty great though - definitely recommended for those that like horror (and those that are curious about how a game that looks like this could be as scary as it is)
autoduelist
Member
wow. I really can't come to this thread... already added 5 games to my wishlist, probably would add more if i had more time to investigate some of them. my backlog on multiple platforms is already cosmic, too.
Caves of Qud will definitely be bought, but I have no idea when I'll ever be able to invest time into it.
I wish I could somehow just have 100x more free time a day.
Caves of Qud will definitely be bought, but I have no idea when I'll ever be able to invest time into it.
I wish I could somehow just have 100x more free time a day.
ONE OF US!