Thread title speaks for itself!
I dont think GAF pays enough attention to the independent scene. Since making the Super Meat Boy thread i was surprised at how many gaffers didnt knew where the secret characters came from. And i can see how its hard to stay up to date with the whole scene, so the idea for this is to make a coherent list of the best of the unknown out there (unknown meaning = Braid, N+ etc dont count).
Keep in mind that a lot of the links listed beneath the games direct you to the developer's site. Be sure to check out other works of him/her. This list is just a personal recommendation of some of my favorites.
VVVVVV
Developer: Terry Cavanagh
If this was pressed into a ROM back in the heyday of the NES it would be considered a seminal platformer, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Mega Man 2 and Super Mario Bros. Like the best of the 8-bit era, the game takes a single mechanic, builds upon it, and polishes it to perfection. VVVVVV is superbly designed and immensely fun, and has surprising length for an indie title. This is Terry's opus, a labor of love that put him in debt developing it. I know this is going to sound like bombastic hyperbole, but this is old-school design at the height of its craft; I sincerely hope you don't pass it up.
Free Demo
Buy it on Steam
Time Fcuk
Developers: Edmund McMillen, Alex
The latest from Edmund McMillen and Alex, Time Fcuk is another platformer noir like the incidentally titled Edmund and a whole rash of other surrealistic 2d bastard children that Miyamoto left to drown in the pacific. The game is, surprisingly, not about time or fucking, but about shifting between two planes to solve puzzles. This mechanic comes loaded with a highly subdued character design, subdued for McMillen's standards, the craziest you get here is a simply drawn circular head that takes cyanide and explodes, or a second circle demarcating a siamese twin.
Free to play at Newgrounds
Spelunky
Developer: Derek Yu
The game has you delving in some ancient cave, trying to get loot. The loot can be spent on things in shops encountered along the way, and "saving" a bimbo gives you a health point. The thing about that chick, besides being almost mysogynistically infantile, is that by dropping her off in the level exit you're just setting up for her to get in trouble on the next level. Then there's that fucking ghost who just shows up to kill you if you dawdle around too long. The game uses stochastic level generation very effectively to both create interesting exploration puzzles, but also to create a sense of surprise as the world you're in continues to show gruff personality and scurilous scurry. The interface is simple, yet maintains the kind of clumsy expertise of conventional Rogue-likes in its combinatory shuffle, like playing Twister with your fingers. The seemingly random deaths, often entirely your fault, pan out like a cruel practical joke, especially when it's due to you fumbling the interface, or experimenting with a new entity. The implementation of effective perma-death doesn't help, and yet you feel okay with diving in again, new.
Download for free
Knytt Stories
Developer: Nicklas 'Nifflas' Nygren
Knytt Stories is, as you can probably guess, a pseudo-sequel to the original Knytt. While the gameplay and atmosphere of the game are very similar to their predecessor, there are numerous refinements that put this a step above the original. Rather than starting out with all your abilities at once, youre forced to acquire them as the game progresses. There are several entirely new abilities, too, including an umbrella, which will slow descent, and a double jump.
However, the biggest change is the addition of expansions. The game comes prepackaged with a tutorial and one level, The Machine. Its a very good level, but to get the full experience you need to download Nifflas expansion packs. As of now, there are five official levels you can download. Four of these come in the A Strange Dream pack (Sky Flower, This Level is Unfinished, An Underwater Adventure, and A Strange Dream), as well as one additional level you can download separately (Gustavs Daughter).
Download for free (Original Knytt is also there)
Gish
Developer: Chronic Logic
At first glance, Gish might appear to be a classic arcade-style game, something like Sonic or Mario Brothers. First glances can be deceiving: yes, this is a sidescrolling platformer, but the actual gameplay is very different, because it's based on a physics engine. Gish, the tar ball who is the title character, needs to get momentum to get up and over objects, controls how high he jumps by compressing and extending himself, can move objects by gaining momentum and running into them, walks on walls and ceilings by making himself "sticky", and so on.
Free Demo
Buy it on Steam
I Wanna Be The Guy
Developer: Kayin
Take some 8-bit graphics, a generic placeholder of a plot, a few well sprinkled cameos, a dash of masochism and what do you get? I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game. Players are taken to the year 200x, thrust into the shoes of The Kid and given the immense task of becoming The Guy. This candid plot, however, serves as little more than a means by which Mike Kayin O'Reilly has designed a near impossible platform adventure game.
Download for free
Flywrench
Developer: Messhof
Technical platformer in which you guide the most simple of game characters - a tiny, flapping line - through a number of extremely punishing color-coded obstacle courses. It's one of the most visually sparse games you'll ever play, yet it's endlessly captivating (and, we'll be honest, more than a little frustrating)
Download for free
Jumper Three
Developer: Matt Thorson
The Jumper series has been around since '04, quietly building a cult following -- there even are a couple fan games based on it. When you get your hands on one of the titles you'll see why; they all control like a dream and provide a decent amount of challenge. The third installment uses multiple-playable characters in an elegant way. Most games base their level design around a single playstyle and tack on additional characters. This game incorporates all five rather seamlessly into the experience -- Megaman & Bass and Super Mario Bros. 2 (American version) come to mind. To make the game more accessible than its predecessors the single-room levels are now easier to clear. What gives the game difficulty is the speed-run and optional coin collection, which should keep an ardent player busy for quite a while. If you're a platformer fan and missed this series for whatever reason, by all means dive in.
Download for free (also Jumper 1 and 2)
RunMan: Race Around the World
Developer: Tom Sennett and Matt Thorson
A game that gives you the same sense of speed as the Blue Blur, but also gives you engaging and fluid controls against a slew of superbly designed levels. A game that tests you, in the old-school way you grew up with and grew fond of. A game that's actually fun (and then some). The game you're envisioning right now most likely doesn't have blues, jazz, and other out of copyright tunes as a soundtrack, but yep, it's got that too.
Download for free (but give them a donation dammit!)
Aether
Developer: Edmund Mcmillan
You move around in the conventional ways, but also with a tongue that somehow is adhesive to clouds. Playing with gravitation and centrifugal forces, you sling yourself around the galaxy to a variety of planets, solving puzzles there. Underneath this explore-and-experiment formula is a subtle brew of violin, fairytale-plush visuals, and sparse writing that evokes a gentle loneliness. It turns out that even the most punk of us have a sensitive side.
Play for free at Newgrounds
Mighty Jill Off
Developer: Anna "Dessgeega" Anthropy
In honor of Leap Day 2008, Anna Anthropy, editor of The Gamer's Quarter and hobbyist game developer, released Mighty Jill Off, a free, old-school, and delightfully subversive little PC game. Jill Off distills its gameplay down to a very simple and enjoyable level; press left and right to walk, press Z to jump, press Z mid-jump to stop your upward-momentum early, and mash Z repeatedly to hover. Jill Off also distills its theme and plot down to a very simple and enjoyable level; the titular chubby little dyke gimp (which I say in the nicest way possible) is climbing to the top of a tower simply because she's a submissive, and her greatest joy in life is when her dominatrix queen MAKES her climb to the top of the tower.
Download for free
Arvoesine
Developer: Alastair John Jack
Arvoesine is a tough NES-style platformer in which you play a Roman soldier, throwing spears and swiping your sword at the enemy.
The protagonist can throw spears in an arc at oncoming enemies, and make them eat his blade if they get too close. For baddies which fire projectiles, his trusty shield comes into play.
Download the Demo, then buy it
Ainevoltas 2
Developer: Alastair John Jack
The game has the basic infrastructure of a great platformer RPG. You guide your way through an elaborate maze of passageways in a castle, you hack and slash monsters and level up, in turn devoting skill points to certain stats such as health, strength and your healing and jumping abilities.
Download for free
Hero Core
Developer: Daniel Remar
Hero Core strips down the form of a closed-circuit, 2D macro-level design to its bare pixels, two colors, 8-bit sound or something like it. This is the hard core of a gem fashioned over eons of geophysical activity, or in this case the creator's nights of labor and detail. It's so basic it's sick. Tiny bits of text create context. It unfolds like an onion blocked up in white pixel groups.
Download for free
Within a Deep Forest
Developer: Nicklas 'Nifflas' Nygren
WaDF puts you in the role of a bouncing ball tasked with a monumentous task, and, while it's hard, it's very good. Beautiful world, excellent ambient music, pleasant puzzles, which feel so good when you solve them and so much more. Mainly, it is the gameplay that takes all these qualities and shoots them in the stars at hyperspeed, because a platformer (and that is what WaDP is) never felt so good to play.
Download for free
La Mulana
Developer: GR3 Project
Another game from a small Japanese studio, just like Cave Story, except this is more of a homage to the old Maze of Galious. The graphics are very nice, reminiscent of 2d Platformers of old; the sound is superb, with two versions in game, a nice Jukebox available from White Knell to play music outside the game, and several MP3 Remixes around that sound amazing. Gameplay is easy to grasp, controls are simple and quick, but the game itself is long and hard.
The game is amazingly open ended, so just like Super Metroid, it doesn't care what order you get items in, what order you kill bosses in, or anything; if you can get there, it'll let you fight. The puzzles are ingenious and sometimes boggling, but kindly, GR3 has placed every single solution somewhere in the game on a monument. Of course, that monument might just be three areas away...
Download for free
Tower of Heaven
Developer: Askiisoft
Tower of Heaven looks and sounds as if it could be a Gameboy title: flat gray (or actually) green-scale graphics and the kind of Midi music track you'd expect from such a title. What it actually is, however, is a little Gamemaker platformer notable for one thing: a highly polished, and frustratingly difficult set of level challenges.
In other words, there's nothing particular innovative about the setting or the mechanics, but the level design is both excellent and extremely tight.
Download for free
Noitu Love 2
Developer: Joakim Sandberg
The year is 2288. The city is protected by an organization called "The Peacekeepers League" and everything is swell except for that it's under attack! By a robot army lead by professor Darnacus Damnation!! Or is it... ?
100 years after the events of Noitu Love 1 the new star of the Peacekeepers is Xoda Rap, and what she has to endure is a sudden resurrection of the Darn armies, but adding to that the city is locally turning to places of the past! What could be causing this?
Using a mouse reticule as a quick-dash-to-enemies and mouse gestures for special moves, Xoda will take on anything that stands in her way in the name of peace! The game shares little in pacing and action to Noitu Love 1. It is more of a continuation on that universe, so expect much more mindless action!
Buy it (also Noitu Love 1 for free!)
Super Crate Box
Developer: Vlambeer
Points aren't based on how many kills you make - it's how many crates you collect. However, each crate changes the weapon you're currently wielding, and there are a huge variety of slicers and dicers to play with. Hence, you'll be changing your tactics on the fly, and all the while many, many more baddies will be storming into your general vicinity.
Download for free
Coma
Developer: Thomas Brush
Coma is a platformer with beautiful (sometimes creepy) art work, sweeping melodies, and an intense underlying narrative. You play as "Pete", a boy trapped inside the world of his own subconscious. The instructions are familiar with other platformers, move to the right, solve the occasional puzzle. Nothing too difficult there.
Play for free at Newgrounds
Eversion
Developer: Zaratustra Productions
Eversion is a platform game created for TIGSource's Commonplace Book Competition. It is based on this short passage from H.P. Lovecraft's Commonplace Book:
Sounds - possibly musical - heard in the night from other worlds or realms of being.
Download for free
Buy it on Steam
And Yet It Moves
Developer: Broken Rules
And Yet It Moves is a puzzle-platformer, set in a unique world, made of ripped paper. Within the paper-collage you can jump, run and last but certainly not least: rotate the world. Learn how to apply the physical consequences of rotation to master the many tricky situations you may encounter.
Buy it on Steam
A Game with a Kitty 2: Darkside Adventures
Developer: Bernie
A Game with a Kitty 2: Darkside Adventures is a platformer inspired by Super Mario Brothers 2 for the NES.
Download for free
Hydorah
Developer: Locomalito
Hydorah is an original side-scrolling shooter with authentic 80's arcade-style gameplay. The high-res text is about the only hint that you aren't playing an arcade ROM. Locomalito did a superb job capturing the look and feel of the arcade, right down to the boot-up ROM check and cheesy dialogue.
Ships are customizable and can be outfitted with parts that you earn in play. If you explore areas that are hard to reach, you may find hidden bonuses.
Download for free
Warning Forever
Developer: Hikware
If you enjoy space shooters, you will probably agree with me their most fun element is fighting gigantic, badass, fire-spreading bosses. Well, in Warning Forever, that's what you will be doing from beginning to the end.
Download for free
Chalk
Developer: Joakim Sandberg
Chalk is all about drawing your way to all the glory! Draw lines across shapes to destroy them, turn back bullets at enemies and thwart huge boss enemies by bouncing stuff back in their faces!
It's an arcade-game sized outing with the simple approach of a chalkboard. Because, you know, chalkboards are simpler than pen and paper...? Download it for some different arcade fun!
Download for free
Perfect Cherry Blossom
Developer: Team Shanghai Alice
Perfect Cherry Blossom (Japanese: "Touhou Youyoumu") is the seventh game in the Touhou series of manic shoot 'em ups, and is probably the best known. Like its predecessor, the game has two firing modes and gives the player a limited supply of Spell Card "bombs." However, PCB introduces "Cherry Points," which are earned by shooting enemies and lost by using bombs or dying. The more Cherry Points you have, the more points you gain from point items, and at a certain level you receive a shield. PCB also displays your hitbox when you are in focused-fire mode, another innovation on the previous game.
Buy it (lots of other shmups as well)
Clean Asia!
Developer: Cactus
Clean Asia! is a hardcore shmup that consists wholly of boss battles, carried in what appears to be vector graphics. There are three levels (called Thailand, New Korea, and China, hence the title), with different boss behaviors for each. What's unique and original about the game, however, is that your objective isn't so much shooting enemies as smashing enemies into debris, and then collecting that debris magnetically.
Download for free
Everyday Shooter
Developer: Jon Mak
Everyday Shooter is the ultimate genre orgy. We see a lot of stuff that subverts or explores the mechanical design space of a specific genre, particularly in the realm of shmups, but this here is the king crab of shoot-em-ups, the Kermit the Frog of shmuppery.
Gameplay is simple: arrows move, WASD directs your fire. You're a dot, and each level has its own musical arrangement, its own background composition, its own enemy movements, and its own score-combo mechanic. Mak calls it an album, and that's appropriate; it might be more appropriate to call it a gallery, since each level is really its own game, its own take on the genre.
Buy it on Steam
rRootage
Developer: ABA Games
rRootage is an abstract fixed shooter. The game features four modes, each one based on different shooter types (normal, Psyvariar, Ikaruga, and Giga Wing, respectively).
Download for free
Starscape
Developer: Moonpod
Starscape is a 2D space combat shoot 'em up. The plot provides a framework for the action: The player is the sole remaining fighter pilot on the space station Aegis after its warp drive is influenced by aliens, ripping it into another dimension. The objective is, naturally, to survive and to return
Buy it (and other games by Moonpod)
ChoRenSha 68K
Developer: Famibe No Yosshin
ChoRenSha 68K is an awesome shoot-em-up game with an old-school feel to it. There is never a dull moment, as even one hit from an enemy ship will kill you (unless you're using a shield).
Download for free
