I'd like to discuss indie games.

I've never been a huge gamer, until i discovered "indie" games in the past couple years. I've been having a blast with them.

Off the top of my head I liked Braid, Limbo, Journey, Thomas Was Alone, Guacamelee, Hotline Miami...

Right now I'm playing 868-Hack on iOS and Papers, Please on PC. I'm looking forward to Don't Starve when it comes out for free on PS+ (PS4) next week. I want to check out the Stanley Parable and Gone Home as well.

My fiancee is also involved with the indie game dev community. She runs a blog called http://www.indiegamegirl.com which is a free marketing resource for indie game devs. She just quit her job as a Marketing Director and is now doing marketing contracting (mostly in the indie game space) and working on a game with her brother. She speaks at game dev conferences every so often so i get to tag along and meet interesting people.

Some friends of ours in Norway just launched their game, Teslagrad which you should check out on Steam.

What are you playing? What's good? Discuss.

1/6/2014 10:50:49 PM

The Stanley Parable and Gone Home are both great, definitely check them out. All the others you listed are great games.

Others I would recommend(not sure if all are completely indie, its kind of a grey area these days):

Antichamber...puzzle game that really messes with your head
Dear Esther...you basically walk around and listen to the story but it's beautiful and really well done
Fez
Super Meat Boy
Home
Thirty Flights of Loving...crazy fast paced story, not much of a game but great
VVVVVV
Tiny and Big: Grandpa's Leftovers, small studio I think. Does that count as indie?
Shelter...amazing game
MirrorMoon EP is really unique and fun
Little Inferno is from the same group that did World of Goo, both fun games

Bought Reus last week but haven't played it yet, looks good.

[Edited on January 6, 2014 at 11:16 PM. Reason : one too many V's]

1/6/2014 11:16:08 PM

Favorite indie game is Mount and Blade (and M&B Warband which adds multiplayer)

Graphics aren't that good, there's no real story, and everything is extremely rough and seems pretty unfinished.

But it has BY FAR the best mounted medieval combat in the history of gaming. SOOOO FUN. Also has very good mod support.

1/7/2014 1:56:27 AM

Check out Cave Story. It's challenging, fun, and has a neat story and a good soundtrack. It's also free on PC.

1/7/2014 5:09:39 AM

Try Eversion lol

1/7/2014 8:09:18 AM

Rogue Legacy is fun

[Edited on January 7, 2014 at 8:18 AM. Reason : .]

1/7/2014 8:17:38 AM

picked up an FPS game from the steam sale called Hard Reset.

It's your basic throwback to old school run and shooters (i.e. quake, doom) complete with health packs and ammo packs. Ammo is pretty plentiful so there will be no lack of bullet & plasma barrages, explosions, and other such types of weapon destruction. It also has an interactable environment with tanks and generators that you can shoot to cause damage to enemies.

You start with an assault rifle and a plasma rifle, but through a basic upgrade system it allows you to add attachments to those guns (i.e. RPG, grenade launcher, rail gun & shock cannon, etc..) essentially giving you an arsenal of up to 10 weapons.

The graphics are absolutely gorgeous, and the setting is in a futuristic steampunk style world loaded with killer alien robots. Can't say much for the story but then again, its all about mindless fun with big guns.

1/7/2014 10:39:31 AM

^Haven't played that one but Shadow Warrior is by the same company and is extremely fun, some of the best first person sword fighting since the Jedi Knight series.

It's a remake of the 90s Duke Nukem copy/paste job of the same name.

1/7/2014 10:44:18 AM

Kentucky Route Zero is fantastic

1/7/2014 10:51:11 AM

Humble Indie Bumble has Papo y Yo and To the Moon; both of which I've wanted to play.

https://www.humblebundle.com

1/7/2014 2:22:34 PM

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is 50% off on steam this week.

Also 'The Swapper' is on sale for $5.10. Great deal.

[Edited on January 7, 2014 at 2:32 PM. Reason : Fantastic]

1/7/2014 2:32:03 PM

Quote :

"I've never been a huge gamer, until i discovered "indie" games in the past couple years."

i'm curious, what's your aversion to "regular" games vs "indie" games?

you're really missing out if you only stick to indie games

1/7/2014 2:38:47 PM

^^ I hear Brothers is great. Its free on PS3 with PS+ this month so i'll definitely check it out.

^oh i dunno. Let's not turn this into a "what does indie mean?" thread. There are definitely some great AAAs, i enjoyed Last of Us a lot recently, and I play BF4 on PC, albiet poorly. Personally, i like the simplicity of a lot of "indie" games. Some tend to have a lot more substance than a typical shoot em up'er, as they can be more niche instead of trying to cator to the masses. But of course there are exceptions everywhere.

Recently I played Papers, Please for a bit. This got a lot of great reviews, even GOTY from Arstechnica. Well... I like it alright. I was afraid comparing documents and stamping passports over and over would get a little tedious and it did. The story lines were interesting but the family story was pretty basic and felt a little Oregon Trail'ish. The stories of the people trying to get into the country were also interesting, but i found i didn't care a whole lot about them since their development consisted of only a few sentences. There are 20 different endings and I've seen three now. I'll keep playing to see what else i can see, but honestly the tedium is getting to me and i'm not super excited about getting back to it.

I also played and finished Gone Home last night. I knew going into it that i was more of a 2-3hr interactive movie than a game, but i still feel pretty ripped off. I paid full price, $20 for it. I was done in 2.5 hours unlocking all the safes/lockers/files, finding the secret rooms, and completing the story. The story was cute and the voice acting was great, but ultimately i feel a little let down by the simplicity of it and the lack of side story development. I felt the game should have been an hour longer and given me a little more. $10 would be a fair price for this at the most. My fiancee is going to play through it next and i'm curious to see what she thinks.

Next up on my list is the Stanley Parable on PC. The fiancee wants to play this with me so I have to wait for her. My PS4 should arrive on Wednesday and I'll get into Don't Starve on that.

1/12/2014 8:30:47 PM

Brothers is great.

I'm hoping the interest in indie games will pull AAA back to where it belongs.

1/12/2014 10:06:37 PM

2014 Independent Games Festival Finalists

I like checking out IGF every once in a while to see what I'm missing. I think indie games are fun because they often come with a quirky or gimmicky mechanic that represents something novel in gameplay. Plus, so many of the big ones have such small development teams (occasionally once person doing all the design, coding, and writing).

1/13/2014 10:53:56 AM

Played through Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons today. I enjoyed it...really like the mechanic of controlling different characters with each joystick. It was a bit ambitious with the story and the puzzles were beyond obvious but it was still a fun play-through. Would recommend.

1/20/2014 12:49:48 AM

^Nice, its free on PS+ tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it.

There was a big sale recently on PS+ so i got Stealth: A Clone in the Dark and Rain. I've only played the former so far and I'm liking it a lot. Good ol puzzle platformer.

I've been playing Don't Starve a bit as well. I'm slightly put off by the 19th century theme and goofy music. I thought it was going to be more realistic and serious. I need more time with it though

1/20/2014 11:21:27 AM

Just wondering: What made you think it'd be more serious? Both the aesthetic and back story seem pretty silly to me

1/20/2014 11:41:21 AM

I guess i didn't read up on it much before i played it, but for some reason in my head it was a fairly serious game set in Africa. lol.

1/21/2014 11:48:34 AM

lolz. The trailer has like monster things chasing you around

1/21/2014 12:50:23 PM

Played through To the Moon yesterday. I enjoyed it. It's short, about 3/4 hours with a really good story. Mostly a point in click game...no real challenge.

1/27/2014 12:50:00 PM

Anybody picked up or played Octodad yet. It looks interesting and is on sale for $12 right now on steam but I'm not sure.

1/30/2014 11:45:58 PM

^supposed to be great. I'm holding out for the ps4 version.

I started playing Brothers the other day. Honestly the PS2 graphics and dead tired midevil style had me so turned off I quit after like 10 min. The dual player control mechanic is cool through. Is this worth pushing through?

2/2/2014 10:10:58 PM

Last year, my wife cofounded a small game publishing company called Snow Cannon Games (http://www.snowcannongames.com). They're focused on "indie" games and are particularly active in the growing Norwegian scene. She speaks at Konsoll (http://www.konsoll.org) in Bergen every year.

Today is their first game release, Shadow Puppeteer, on Wii U. Check it out!
http://www.shadowpuppeteer.com

1/28/2016 6:34:44 PM

Congrats. That's really cool!

1/28/2016 7:09:43 PM

Thanks! It's interesting to see what goes on behind the scenes. If nothing else, i've learned how much blood, sweat and tears is behind these games and launches. My wife hasn't slept in a week.

To be honest, the game is getting mediocre/average reviews and its heart breaking, especially for the devs who have put so much into it.

1/29/2016 8:52:37 AM

Risk of rain yo

1/29/2016 10:14:26 AM

I bought Undertale last week, and played through it to get the Neutral, Pacifist, and Genocide endings. I’m sure anyone who follows indie games has heard about it, but I wanted to add my voice to the chorus. Highly recommended.

1/29/2016 12:18:23 PM

^Is it worthwhile for someone who doesn't want to play through all the various endings? Maybe that's the whole point, but I don't typically replay games to get all the endings. Plus I've watched a lot of what happens...

1/29/2016 1:50:07 PM

That's a tough call because I don't know what all you've watched. I went into the game fresh, only having a few vague details about various endings. A lot of the fun is figuring out how to resolve battles peacefully and uncovering details of each characters' backstory. If you've watched all that on YouTube then I don't know if it's worth it.

Playing through the game multiple times is absolutely essential to get the full experience, especially the Neutral and True Pacifist endings. The Pacifist ending is considered the "true" ending to the game and has a lot of scenes you'd probably miss on your first playthrough. You can play through both in less than 12 hours.

The Genocide route is a bit tedious and has a really, really hard final boss. I'd suggest watching it on YouTube.

1/29/2016 2:47:55 PM

Quote :

"I don't typically replay games to get all the endings"

Replaying 95% of the same content to see 3 minutes of new content is shit design.

1/29/2016 2:55:40 PM

To be clear, this isn't a simple case of "play through game, make different choices, get different ending". The "True Pacifist" route, which is only possible on the second playthrough, makes references (some subtle, others not) to choices you made in your first, it has a whole new area that isn't accessible the first time, and there are scenes throughout the story that are different/new. The Genocide route has a few more revelations and its ending is pretty damn dark. The game is worth doing at least twice IMO.

1/29/2016 5:31:02 PM

I like it if there is different content on the way. I think the best one I saw was "999" on Nintendo DS. Any cut scenes you had seen before could be sped through, but new content was slowed down so you wouldn't miss it.

1/30/2016 3:21:50 PM

Darkest Dungeon should be in everyone's library.

2/2/2016 9:16:53 AM

Extra Credits takes a critical look at gaming, gaming design, and gaming issues. One of their semi-regular features is Games You May Not Have Tried where they talk about interesting game mechanics in lesser known, frequently indie games.

2/25/2016 1:33:15 PM

Tell-Tale Games Bundle!

https://www.humblebundle.com/telltale-bundle

4/12/2016 3:19:04 PM

INSIDE (spiritual successor to Limbo) is a masterpiece. Also, the weirdest/creepiest game I have ever played.

7/24/2016 9:41:46 PM

Hey guys,

My wife's company, Snow Cannon Games, is launching a new game soon called The Frostrune. It's a point and click puzzler/adventure with a Nordic theme. A group of university history professors are behind it is supposedly very accurate in terms of history, language, artwork, etc. That sounds kind of nerdy/boring but its been getting great reviews and my wife can't put it down. "beta testing".

It's currently on Steam Greenlight. Please check it out and vote for it if you like what you see.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=726891284&searchtext=frostrune



[Edited on August 8, 2016 at 8:01 PM. Reason : .]

8/8/2016 8:00:26 PM

Byrn Stuff, i didn't catch your last post on Extra Credits, but as an interesting side note, James Portnow is one of the executive producers working for my wife's company, Snow Cannon Games. I've hung out with him a few times now. Super smart and talented guy, but he's a character alright.

[Edited on August 8, 2016 at 8:14 PM. Reason : .]

8/8/2016 8:14:01 PM

^He seems super cool. I've considered seeing if it'd he give a talk with my students, but I honestly don't think they'd be interested

Lately, I've been playing Alto's Adventure; it's a cool little procedurally-generated snowboard game for mobile. It's got a relaxing soundtrack, day/night cycle, weather system, and unlockable snowboarders with differing attributes. There's even a zen-mode that strips away everything but the snowboarding. Check it out.

8/9/2016 11:57:59 AM

Emmy (Snow Cannon Games) is launching "Klang" tomorrow on Steam. Check it out!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/412660/

It's tough, but super addictive. The developer made the whole game all by himself. I'm not a big EDM fan, but apparently Blind, who does the soundtrack, is a big deal and will surely get you pumped. It's getting great reviews so far so we're really hopeful.

9/21/2016 9:59:16 PM

Just released a game onto Steam http://store.steampowered.com/app/497800

It's not a huge thing, but still has been a dream to get on there for a few years.

10/25/2016 9:52:18 PM