Submitted 11 months ago by Elevator7009@lemmy.zip to games@lemmy.world
Given the swathes of posts about bad behavior from big companies, I figure we could counterbalance that with some positivity about stuff the smaller guys made that often costs us less too.
Dungeons of Dredmor! Just a really solid, straightforward roguelike with a ton of stuff and a cheeky sense of humour.
Balatro. It’s a great Maths game.
Sayonara Wild Hearts is a magical experience that can’t be described honestly. On difficult stages, it engages all your senses and you’re just 100% inside, enthralled by the visuals, music and rhythm. This is probably the most focused and most precise game ever, everything it has, works. It’s not just my favorite indie game, it’s one of my favorite games ever.
Also, Night in the Woods and Keep Driving. Both resonated with me emotionally in a lot of ways, touching the things I care about. Keep Driving also has a really fun gameplay loop and an incredible music selection (which works as a boost for that emotional factor).
Sayonara Wild Hearts is such a good weekend game. Really cheap, really short, really good and with a soundtrack that you’re going to listen to long after finishing the game.
Highly recommend!
Fun fact: I discovered the soundtrack first, listened to it, checked out the game on YouTube and decided it’s not worth it. Only after something like two years of listening to the soundtrack did I get the game.
The Binding of Isaac is already a famous title that has influenced so much of the roguelike/twin-stick-shooter genre. This game has permanently altered my taste in video games.
The game I’ve enjoyed as much as TBoI is Tiny Rogues. It’s much smaller, but still fantastic with rich build variety while never losing the need for skill and good reactions.
Stolen Realm is a turn-based tactical RPG that takes place in procedurally generated dungeons that play like little roguelike runs with overarching character progression. It’s multiplayer, but you can also just control up to six characters on your own too. It does eventually feel pretty repetitive and there are point that seem impossible to win, but it’s a unique game where you continually build that roguelike power fantasy and just progressively become power to the point of it becoming game breaking.
Going Under is an adorable roguelite where you fight through various levels themed around a blend of corporate stereotypes and fantasy creatures like a crypto company run by skeletons or a delivery company run by goblins. The combat is a vaguely souls-like with an emphasis on weight and timing, but your weapons are office items found in each room with that break down very quickly.
Webbed is a cute puzzle/platformer where you play as a little spider on a quest to save your spider boyfriend. The main gimmick is that you can shoot webs to create platforms, pull things, attach things to each other and more. It’s a short and sweet game that’s still decently challenging. It’s the only non-roguelike indie I recommend and it’s that good that I love it despite it being in a genre I rarely play and almost never finish.
I’ll have to go with Selaco, it’s not even finished (in fact it’s approximately half done) but it feels more complete than any mainline Halo game after H:Reach. Looks better too.
Here are a few, hopefully they aren’t mentioned yet:
Some of these might be AA, it’s hard to tell the difference sometimes. I have plenty more where that came from. :)
I feel like blufire never got the recognition it deserved.
Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was. It’s not the best game of its genre, but it’s better than most.
Clonk Endevour is not my favorite game, but I played it a lot with friends when I was younger. You can play with 2 or even more people, with just a monitor and a keyboard! Also it’s so old it should run on any potato.
I remember playing an RPG back in the day called “Dink Smallwood” on my old Macintosh laptop, it was one of the few games that were Mac compatible. Really funny and self aware dialogue, pretty great! I found out there’s an app version of it for mobile
Available for PC too: www.gog.com/en/game/dink_smallwood_hd
Vampire Survivors
It might be because I was actually early aboard the hype train for this one; but this onejust scratched that “one more go” itch until 2am.
Enter the Gungeon
Randomly came across this via a YouTube short, and the art-style just meshed with me. Absolutely love the messy bullet-hell quick-play genre in general… Hades being another great example of this.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. If that doesn’t count. Will…HoloCure or Noita.
Clair Obscur really isn’t an indie game.
Holocure is amazing! I don’t even watch Vtubers I just looked at the highest rated games on steam and found it. Within the first 3 weeks I put in 100 hours
Pyre is my all time favorite, it’s the only game i’ve ever platinumed and still kept playing to see a few more permutations. But by terms of sheer hours put in? Rimworld.
I can’t say it’s my favorite, but after checking out all of these games, I’m just gonna post one I think all you guys would love.
NOITA
I love it and hate it at the same time. Every time after I get far down, I don’t want to play again for a long time.
The further you get, the heavier the loss.
Pushing the definition but I started when it was still in beta… Minecraft has gotten hundreds and hundreds of hours put into it.
Terarria and Starbound are both really good and scratch that same itch as Minecraft. Core Keeper is another one that has some of that feel and I ended up really enjoying.
Surprised I haven’t seen it mentioned but Cave Story was made by one guy doing everything… and everything in it is immaculate. It’s still free for the original version as well.
Stardew Valley is awesome and restarted a genre.
Crypt of the Necrodancer is awesome, and well worth checking out… also goes on sale really cheap.
Pacific Drive is a fun one to check out. If you’re from the PNW, it will hit even more.
Really enjoyed Stray. Worth grabbing on a sale.
OwlBoy was a delightful game with a lot of character.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night was a really nice return to form if you like IgaVanias.
If you like roguelites then you owe it to yourself to check out Enter the Gungeon (isometric) as well as RoboQuest (fps).
If you want a game that’s beautiful, with emergent story and is hard af… definitely check out Rain World.
Is Black Mesa still considered indie? It’s how I would recommend anyone play Half-Life 1 these days.
Rusty’s Retirement… isn’t so much a game… sorta… but yeah… check that out.
+1 for Pacific Drive. Nothing else like it out there. And you get to form a relationship with a station wagon, which is peak passenger vehicle design.
And the soundtrack is outstanding!
Nothing else like it out there.
I keep meaning to check this one out but haven’t yet. store.steampowered.com/app/1290170/Titan_Chaser/
I enjoyed Rusty’s Retirement, glad to see someone else has played it. (I do count idlers as games.) Cute little desktop idle/incremental game.
NaissancE
That game is something else. Music by Pauline Oliveros is half of the game’s magic.
Judging by the playtime, Rimworld. It is such an important part of my life at this point, it’s not even funny. I’ve played thousands of hours, and don’t regret it
I’ll put Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead up there with FTL and Dwarf Fortress.
One game I love that hasn’t been mentioned yet is Subnautica. The only survival crafting game I ever finished. The story telling and athmosphere are unmatched.
One of the few games I’ve played through too!
Slice & Dice is the best dice-building roguelite ever and has a free demo that is only content-limited and allows you to already play an infinite amount of runs. I literally played the demo as much as a paid game for a month until I bit down—so hard that, once, when I had my phone in hand and intended to take a shower, I ended up crouching on the bathroom floor furthering a run for an hour before finally pausing to return to the real world.
Clone Drone in the Danger Zone offers awesome online co-op. Noita’s world is just endless (people are still discovering new spell permutations years later). I will never turn down someone’s offer or request to watch a run of FTL: Faster Than Light.
The AAA world is not impressive to me at all, and if anything gets deprioritized in my book; graphics or a third-person view do not a fantastic game make.
I haven’t seen it mentioned and feel like it should count, since it really just had a solo programmer working with a graphic designer and musician, but RollerCoaster Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 took a big chunk of my gaming time.
I really like Isle Wars and Scorched Earth
Dwarf Fortress. Not even just my favorite indie game, but favorite game ever.
I’m such a sucker for world simulation! It made me hate games where events happen because they’re programmed to do so.
FTL: Faster Than Light
such a great non traditional roguelike with sooo much replayability.
It’s the game that made me like these kinds of games. 1,300 hours :)
The Multiverse mod expands the game dramatically, and is, if anything, better than the base game; I highly recommend it.
It does add a lot of very good playable content, but the quality and tone of the writing is a departure from the main game. Some find it a deal breaker.
Valheim. Bought it late January and already got almost 400 hours on it. Play it vanilla first then modded. I played it with friends, beat final boss on Day 997, we took our times, building and all along the way. Then I started over solo with x3 resources, no raid, and move metals through portal. I just wanted to see if I could solo all game and today I just finished basically everything. So right now, I’m just collecting resources for gears and buildings. Going to make few houses across the map.
Rogue Legacy
Inside Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Eternal Strands Disco Elysium
All very different and unique. All fantastic!
For me, FTL: Faster than Light still hasn’t been topped. *Hades II might get there, though. Disco Elysium, Ikaruga, and Papers, Please are also high on the list.
FTL!!! And yeah, PP is awesome and so unique!
Crosscode for sure! They have a new game in the works as well, it looks like it will be just as good. Great time to get into it
I really hope the sequel does more with dungeons than just ricochet/geometry puzzles. CrossCode’s incessant use of those in dungeon after dungeon was what made me stop playing.
Not a sequel, just their next game! Combat and UI look similar so far. They’re doing dev streams on their discord
I thought crosscode had the best puzzles haha. The way they built it out with the elemental system, the enemies that required puzzle mechanics you had learned, the tight timing where you had to send a ball flying and then race it to various objectives, the myriad of subtle environmental puzzles in the overworld. Could go on and on, but yeah the VRP is the game’s central mechanic so if you simply don’t enjoy lining up your shots then I imagine the game would be pretty rough lol
N++
Undoubtedly the best, most complete 2D platformer I’ve ever played. Super tight controls and incredible level design, coupled with an episode-long timer mechanic that you can influence makes this one absolutely unmatched. Sure, games like Celeste are flashier, but nothing is a better game than N++. I think I put something like 120 hours into this to get the platinum on PS4. I would happily start over and play the whole thing from scratch again.
Too bad the developer duo basically disappeared… I had an idea for a 2-player sequel but they never responded.
slazer2au@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I am having a lot of fun with Timberborn and Big Ambitions.
Timberborn is a colony builder where you are in control of beavers. You have to survive between times of good water, bad water, and no water.
Big Ambitious is a business sum in new York make by the same person who made Startup Company.