Submitted 1 month 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.
From the top of my head
Check out frog fractions!
+1 for Frog Fractions. I finished in about an hour. Cannot tell you much without spoilers, but I can say it’s not one of those surprise horror games. It looks like a kid-friendly game and at least content-wise stays kid-friendly.
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.
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.
I’ll put Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead up there with FTL and Dwarf Fortress.
Check out Tunic. I would recommend going blind.
The soundtrack to Tunic is so moody.
I used a few little hints to help with the “true final boss”, but it was a fantastic reorienting of everything, and was glad by then it got away from traditional combat. I enjoyed the core combat too, although I usually don’t even like Soulslikes.
Dave the diver! /s
But seriously I’m a real sucker for platformers, and so A Hat In Time is my most favorited one. It brought back this sort of charm I haven’t felt since the n64 days and I love it!
Stray and Kena: Bridge of Spirits are pretty awesome too, would be my second and third favorites
Top of my list right now is Vintage Story! It’s like a serious version of Minecraft, with more focus on realism.
Shadow Empire. Best 4X wargame ever. 400 page rulebook included. Realistic logistics and planet generation 6000 years in the future!
I think I have that on my GOG account, I’ll have to check later. Also currently on sale there, too, super cheap
Crumble A speedrunning platforming game, where you play as a blob with a tongue. Pleasant experience to play through while learning, while absolutely balls to the walls insane when actually speedrunning
Cyberpulse Twin-stick arcade neo style virus slamming game. Great control precision, challenging and colourful. The right thumbstick pressing might take a bit of getting used to.
Pseudoregalia Such a fun old school platformer. Big bunny girl MC for some reason but SUPER FUN and satisfying movement mechanics and the world is built well enough for the mechanics. A few hour long game, unless you look everything up.
Actually going to put some indie demos here I played this weekend, that I really enjoyed: Half-Sword Physics based medieval combat game. Reminds me of Exanima but instead of 2.5D, you can play Half-sword in 3rd or 1st person, which is really fun. Can have full gore or turn the gore completely off.
Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon First person (potentially later also 3rd person) RPG, very much in the vein of Elder Scrolls or Dark Messiah of Might & Magic. Really enjoyed the demo, it takes place on the tutorial island/dungeon. Going to buy the full version when it releases, because there seems to be a save wipe for 1.0.
Bloodthief Reminds me of Neon White and Ultrakill having an even more indie baby. Seemed to be pretty simple and good speedrunning platforming fun.
Shape of Dreams 2.5D action RPG roguelike. Very pretty and gameplay feels good. Didn’t play it quite enough yet, only thing I kinda disliked was the amount of cooldowns on abilities.
9Kings Small town defense game with waves of enemies led by other kings attacking your kingdom. Really enjoyed this one. Demo isn’t too difficult, even when I am really bad with these type of games.
RKGK (RAKUGAKI) 3rd person platforming game, where you bring some colour to the world with your graffiti. Very fun movement and popping colours. The dialogue isn’t necessarily for me but the gameplay felt really fun.
Unbeatable Colourful rhythm adventure game, style is grear and soundtrack slaps.
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.
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
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.
Slime Rancher, though most of my library is indie so I could list like ten others.
I won’t list out the “big” famous ones since those get covered anyway (Stardew, Undertale etc.)
There are plenty I love that have a little less polish but charm their way through, like Calico and Yonder. I also just played through Tunic and quite enjoyed it.
A solid indie publisher is Reddeer games - about half my switch titles are by them. Finji is another.
It's probably between stardew valley, rivals of aether, or cheaper world.
There's also a number that are almost perfect like wargroove, peglin, and kingdom rush.
Rivals was such a fun/approachable platform fighter. Still is
Exanima Unique physics-based isometric dungeon crawler also featuring an arena career mode. Moddable. Really slow development cycle, though,
Severed Steel Futuristic 3D shooter with maybe the best movement system I’ve tried, with wall running, full 360 air movement, sliding and more. Weapons have only one magazine, so you’re constantly sourcing them from your enemies while blasting holes into the fully destructible levels. Very replayable.
Monster sanctuary (turn based monster collector) and Roboquest (arena shooter) were a couple from recent years that stood out to me
For older games nethack and dwarf fortress are great if you can look past the graphics
Monster Sanctuary was so good. I tried it when I had Game Pass, and I loved it so much I bought it outright for Xbox, and then again on Steam. Also got the hardcover monster journal.
Aethermancer, made by the same folks, is looking really good from their demo. Clearly lots of inspiration from Monster Sanctuary but very much its own sort of game
Probably gotta be https://fractalsoftworks.com/
[youtu.be/acqpulP1hLo](the video that hooked me)
Hey, you might want to know that the item in brackets comes first and the link comes second. I see the raw link and the item in brackets, instead of what you probably intended: to have the item in brackets be a clickable link.
[Starsector](https://fractalsoftworks.com/) will produce what you want.
Thank you. It’s been a day!
This is on my wishlist since a long time. I really want to play it.
It’s great. That video I posted has a working CD Key in it if you want to try it out!
For me it’s Rimworld
I guess either Shovel Knight or Hades
Brotato
Most of what I play is indie and choosing a favorite is too hard, so instead I’ll go with biggest playtime. Antimatter Dimensions, also on Steam, has quickly shot to having the highest playtime of my Steam library. It is an idle/incremental game.
Not counting that, I’d probably have to go with Stardew Valley.
free in the browser without IAPs
Like what else?
Lots more I cannot remember off the top of my head
super meat boy
One of my all time favorites right now is Brok The Investigator.
It’s a game by French company COWCAT Games that is describes as a point and click beat’em-up game. Has lots to do because there are multiple endings. It has a free visual novel made to essentially showcase a vn engine that can be used to make BTI fan games or your own creations and has an upcoming DLC (apparently only gonna be $9.99) that focuses more on the combat side of the game.
It’s currently available on PS4/5 (vita planned but scrapped), xbox (don’t know if they mean one and series x/s or just series), switch, steam, itch(dot)io, and even epic if you hate yourself.
Hey, I have that game! I need to get to it
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.
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.
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
Live for Speed
I’ve been playing it on and off for over 20 years now with some definite highs and lows but I have nothing but respect for the devs and community. It’s not on any store fronts and they just do their own thing.
Edge004@lemm.ee 1 month ago
A Hat in Time UFO 50 Outer Wilds Hylics Hylics 2 Pizza Tower Celeste
It’s hard to pick one lol
bmancer@lemm.ee 1 month ago
UFO 50 is fantastic.
Got a favourite yet? A friend and I have been paying a lot of lord’s of disconia and party house most recently.
For anyone not familiar, UFO 50 is an anthology of 50 games in the style of nes/SNES era. It’s made by Derek Yu, who made Spelunky before it.
Edge004@lemm.ee 1 month ago
For me, it’s between Mooncat, Party House, and Porgy