- Joined
- Aug 23, 2018
I'll admit that I'm biased here (I'm making a clone of a classic) but I think it depends on the game being cloned and the clone itself.
Games like DUSK and Ion Fury were met with huge praise on release. Strafe and Amid Evil had a more tepid reception but are still liked. There's an appetite for old school FPS throwbacks and the quality has been fairly good. Pixel art platformers are a dime a dozen (sometimes literally if they're on Humble Bundle) but most of them are bad to mediocre, while games like Shovel Knight, Cuphead, and Freedom Planet making waves.
Now contrast this with the attempts are reviving FMV games, which is a sea of lazy cringe from wannabe film makers (only Contradiction: Spot the Liar stands out as being remotely good). Indie takes on survival horror games are various flavors of dog shit as well. Vaccine, back in 1998, and virtually anything from the Haunted PS1 game jams. Some are fine for a game jam game, but if you want to rekindle the flame of Resident Evil or Silent Hill, a 5 minute game or some half-arsed PT clone isn't going to do it.
Not all of it. The fart huffing hipsters making walking simulators, absolutely, but I think most are fairly down to earth or are at least chill about it. I miss the days where indie games was stuff like Castle Crashers, Assault Heroes, and Geometry Wars. Not Gone Home, Dear Escher, and Volcano High.
While writing this post, something occurred to me. A lot of indie devs might have moved over to phones. I remember Chair made the excellent Shadow Complex, then they went off to make phone games forever. In indie development discords, people are often posting progress videos of games in portrait mode, so maybe that's it.
