Indie Game Suggestion Thread - Word of mouth

[Judge Dredd]

Suggest indie games that look interesting. They don't have to be recommendations, though they can be.

Try to include something to tell people what it's all about. Be it a link, a video, or even just your opinion.

Why?
People here and else where lament the death of AAA gaming, but finding indies and obscure games is difficult, especially when the sources of games news are not interested in keeping people informed. So instead of just complaining about it, tell people what games you think are cool, interesting, or are just things that people might want to know about.

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Pseudoregalia
A movement based platformer with a N64 aesthetic. There is a payed version on Steam, and a free version on Itch. Overwhelmingly positive reviews.

https://rittzler.itch.io/pseudoregalia

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2365810/Pseudoregalia/

BattleBit Remastered
A BattleField clone with Roblox inspired graphics. Made by 3 devs over 7 years. It went viral, reaching the top 10 most played games on Steam list.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/671860/BattleBit_Remastered/

Agent 64: Spies Never Die
A FPS inspired by Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. Game isn't out, but there is a demo availible.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1574480/Agent_64_Spies_Never_Die/

Pacific Drive
Don't know if this counts as an indie game, but it's listed as such on Steam. A game that combines Jelopy and STALKER. You have to maintain an old car as you drive through an anomaly filled exclusion zone.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1458140/Pacific_Drive/

Lunacid
A first person dungeon crawl game inspired by Kings Field and Shadow Tower. Still in early access. Overwhelmingly positive reviews.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1745510/Lunacid/

 

[Shamefur Dispray]

Dead Estate: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1484720/Dead_Estate/
Fun little Arcade Roguelike with a big titty witch.

Yoku's Island Express: https://store.steampowered.com/app/334940/Yokus_Island_Express/
Pinball platformer with a little bug man on a Tropical Island

Tormented Souls: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1367590/Tormented_Souls/
Early Resident Evil style survival horror.

Alisa:https://store.steampowered.com/app/1335530/Alisa/
Another Early Resident Evil style game with graphics meant to mimic early ps1 titles.

I've got more but I think that's a decent start

 

[Sand Mega]

Decided to do something different and post games that aren't out yet but look promising

1900 Cult-https://store.steampowered.com/app/2069890/1900CULT/
Hotline Miami mod that promises to have unique gameplay, it's own mod support and apparently has been approved by the HM devs and publisher to be released on steam

Elation for the wonder box-https://store.steampowered.com/app/2154780/Elation_For_The_Wonder_Box_6000/
Don't know much about the gameplay of this one but seems interesting because of the claymation artstyle

Compound Fracture-https://store.steampowered.com/app/1460210/Compound_Fracture/
Boomer shooter about dinosaurs, from the screenshots, seems to take a more horror focused approach

Gossamer Matrix-https://store.steampowered.com/app/2002840/Gossamer_Matrix/
Cruelty squad inspired game with unique looking artstyle and gameplay, will probably be good because the creator is a prominent Cruelty Squad player, so at least he must know how to make a game like it and will likely be a love letter to the original instead of a cheap imitation

Spoiler: Early gameplay videos

 

[Shart Attack]

Book of Travels has an interesting, fairly ambitious concept. They call it a Tiny Multiplayer Online RPG. Each server only allows a small handful of people at a time, I think 4 or 5. There's no narrative yet, so mostly you just explore the world and trade, occasionally doing a quest or two. You're mostly alone, but once in a while you'll meet with one of the other players, and you can help each other with tasks out in the world. The setting and the art are fairly original and interesting.



Too bad it's in early access purgatory. There's currently not much content, and the dev notes make me think the developers have bitten off more than they can chew.

 

[Peanut Butter in Peril]

My only recommendation is Noita. It's a roguelite about grabbing wands, collecting spells, and nabbing perks as you fight your way to the bottom of the mountain. There's also loads of secrets to uncover for potentially powerful spells and wands.

The game is pretty difficult and with the RNG elements it can be outright cruel. None the less I'd still recommend it because good runs can be fantasticly fun and dying hilariously entertaining.

 

[Scarthew]

I second Noita for sure.

Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling
Kickstarter funded paper Mario spiritual successor, good length but not too long, good pacing, fun writing, great soundtrack and some nice twists on the battle formula. If you like PM64 or TYD you'll enjoy this one.

Cruelty Squad
Don't let the visuals turn you off from this one its very fun to play and incredibly cohesive in tone/themes. Plenty of replay value and post game as well.

Rain World
Cinematic platformer in a chaotic ecosystem of other creatures with their own goals (generally getting food/surviving). Mechanically deep with tons of movement tech to learn and drenched in atmosphere. The game is very difficult and has a learning curve as you get used to your character's physics based movement.

I feel like these 3 are the most obscure high quality games I've played recently.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Some VR indie suggestions. I don't own a VR headset, but these are some of the games I'm interested in outside of the usual Half-Life: Alyx, Boneworks, etc.

Compound
A short VR boomer shooter with chunky graphics and a bunch of replay options.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/615120/COMPOUND/

Vertigo Remastered and Vertigo 2
Combines Portal's humour with Half-Life's gameplay as you fight your way through a massive underground science facility full of crazy experiments.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1318090/Vertigo_Remastered/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/843390/Vertigo_2/

Ultra Wings 1 and 2
A relaxing flying game. You complete challenges like races, flying through rings, and shooting balloons to unlock new aircraft and islands around the archipelago.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/639130/Ultrawings/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1485140/Ultrawings_2/

Derail Valley
A train sim that has complexity without requiring a degree in autism (though a little autism helps). Starting with a small train and simple jobs, you earn money to unlock licenses for bigger, more demanding jobs.

Derail Valley on Steam

Derail Valley is a highly immersive train driving simulator, letting you drive trains with your own hands! Deliver a variety of cargo between industries in a vast open world. Earn money, buy new locomotives and try to stay on the tracks!

store.steampowered.com

Into The Radius
VR Stalker. Complete missions in an anomaly filled exclusion zone. Scavenge equipment and artifacts so you can take on more dangerous missions. This game has gone through several major updates over the years. Such as changing the map from a single large map to several maps, and major mechanical overhauls.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1012790/Into_the_Radius_VR/

The Living Remain
A zombie FPS made by just two people. A 6 hour story campaign with weapon upgrade mechanics.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/594220/The_Living_Remain/

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Compound Fracture-https://store.steampowered.com/app/1460210/Compound_Fracture/
Boomer shooter about dinosaurs, from the screenshots, seems to take a more horror focused approach

I had never heard of this, despite being in discords that love this kind of low-poly art style.

 

[Calandrino]

I am entertained by these meme descriptors like "run-based", "survival", and "skill-based". Imagine, if you will, a challenging action game where you play from the beginning each time and rely on your skill at the game to avoid dying. Like land mammals returning to the sea as cetaceans, indies will eventually evolve into 20-minute-long circa-1989 arcade games, and a golden age will begin anew.

 

[Whatevermancer]

Brigador

 

[Foghotten]

Got ninja'd on Brigador and Cruelty Squad: both are incredible.

Streets of Rogue

SoR is a top-down immersive sim where you play several classes (including custom ones) in what's essentially the futuristic, mega autistic mix between Kowloon City and Whitter, Alaska. You do tasks for the local rebel insurgency and attempt to climb your way up to overthrow your mayor.

BallisticNG

BNG is a great love-letter to the Wipeout franchise, specifically Wipeout 3. In of itself, that's high praise. If you're an AG racer nerd like me, you'll revel in the fact that you can customize your game into having either the handling model of 3 or later games natively, but also straight up mod every aspect of the game, including new ships, tracks, soundtracks, and even sound effects. It's so moddable you can straight up turn the game into Wipeout 2097.

Frankly, it's the closest you'll get to play another Wipeout game nowadays, since Studio Liverpool got shot down like a dog after being sent to the PSVita mines to make space for a fucking mobile game.

Voices of the Void

You're a space nerd sent to bumfuck Swizerland to gather signals for SETI or something.

Voices of the Void originally was a tribute to Signal Simulator. Despite being a demo, it's starting to become much bigger in scope (or bigger period) than its inspiration. It has a bit of curve to learn at first, but once you've adapted to the control scheme and your outpost, it's pretty comfy when it's not pants-shittingly terrifying.

 

[Auron]

Intravenous
Like Splinter Cell crossed with Hotline Miami. I had loads of fun of with it. Story is a bit meh but the stealth is fun.

They Are Billions
RTS base defense game. But don't play the story mode - only play survival (the original mode of the game).

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Slain: Back from Hell is a cool, kinda cheesy action platformer with a metal music type of theme to it. Simple and good, just the right difficulty and length. Controls are a bit rigid but you'll adapt.

 

[Grub]

Hollow Knight was pretty fun. It's like super metroid except instead of being a big tittied blonde chick in alien space armour, you're a little bug dude with a nail he uses as a sword and instead of a moderately sized alien world you have a gigantic desolated underground bug kingdom and instead of being fairly easy it can get controller throwingly difficult.

Also there's cute little grub dudes trapped in jars to collect and rescue.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

Tiny Thor
A really fun 2D platformer where you must bounce your hammer to solve puzzles.

Peglin
Combines roguelike and pachinko machines! Really fun!

Infection Free Zone
Zombie PvE RTS; retake the zone from endless waves of zombies.

Aces Wild
Really crazy 2D brawler.

 

[Stasi]

Is it worth mentioning stuff like Axiom Verge and Into the Breach? They're probably too well know. Some that I can think of that aren't as popular -

Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King - a pretty straightforward Legend of Zelda clone, not amazing but not offensively bad either. I'd say worth checking out if you like the genre.

Kamiko - another Zelda esque game but very simplistic, nowhere near as long or complex as Blossom Tales. You could probably blast through it in an hour or so. Decent enough game but pretty forgettable.

Xeodrifter - a simple metroid clone. Another short one and frustratingly for such a short game gets a little repetitive, especially the boss where the same one is re-used over and over. I still had fun playing it though, the gameplay is pretty fluid.

WarGroove - probably the most well known compared to the above, basically its advance wars but fantasy. Mixed feelings on this one, the gameplay is pretty good but every now and then soy and cringe seeps through in the cutscenes. Also found the main character art pretty funny - the cover art shows her as a young pretty princess but the in game graphics make her look like she has an alcohol problem, 3 kids from 3 baby daddies and is ready to settle down.

 

[ZMOT]

I am entertained by these meme descriptors like "run-based", "survival", and "skill-based". Imagine, if you will, a challenging action game where you play from the beginning each time and rely on your skill at the game to avoid dying. Like land mammals returning to the sea as cetaceans, indies will eventually evolve into 20-minute-long circa-1989 arcade games, and a golden age will begin anew.

you're not wrong, but these days you also got games without any combat, "narrative" with more casual skill checks (or none at all), and on the other end to breach into the autism spectrum and to attract speedrun troons lot of super meat boy clones where it's all about "skill based" or "run based" (complete with timer) as you mentioned. the latter I tend to skip because I want a comfy game to enjoy, not some MUH HARDCORE EXPERIENCE because the dev couldn't be arsed to pace and balance properly (which also affects a lot of "rogue-X" games).

survival is it's own category these days, basically minecraft where you start with nothing and have to build up your base and gather shit (sometimes without combat even).


there are also 2 threads, might be a good idea to merge them.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

MUH HARDCORE EXPERIENCE

I generally hate those, like Celeste and Super Meat Boy, but 1001 Spikes drew me in for some reason.

 

[M3xus]

I got ninja'd on Brigador, can vouch for it. It's my favorite stress ball.

Starsctor, a 2D fleet combat and management game. While it's still in development, it's ridiculously stable and there's a lot to play. You're a fleet captain stuck in a sector of space that's been getting shittier for the past 200 years, and your objective is to make fat stacks of cash and survive. You can manage your ships loadouts with a variety of weapons and hull mods to either cover a weakness or capitalize on a strength, and the AI is quite good without it resorting to cheats. The fun part is that you can designate any ship in your fleet (except fighters, they're too small) as your flagship, letting you control it directly during fights, and combat ships can range from tramp freighters to massive capitals to super-advanced experimental and expensive gunships that can punch far above their weight. The store to buy the game looks like something from 2007 trying to steal your credit card, but I can vouch it's safe and legit.

The Riftbreaker: did you watch the Avatar flicks and were disappointed they weren't about humans conquering a hostile world with advanced technology? So was I. This game is all about that. Pilot a two-story tall combination construction-bot and walking armory as you establish a forward base for Earth's colonization efforts. Think Factorio with a hefty dose of twin-stick shooting action. My main gripe is that there's a fair number of timers that don't need to be there, resulting in some thumb-twiddling in what's otherwise a solid action-strategy hybrid.

 

[ZMOT]

I generally hate those, like Celeste and Super Meat Boy, but 1001 Spikes drew me in for some reason.

there's a rule to every exception as they say. played neon white during next fest on a whim and enjoyed it more than I expected.

the biggest irony is that the sacrificing card mechanic is literally burn cards from titanfall 1, which "esport" players retards had a hissy fit about on the level of the average smashfag. guess even speedrun troons are better "gamers" than MLG kiddies

 

[Mister Mint]

I recommended this in some other thread recently, but I really enjoyed it
Who's Lila

A point & click adventure game but half the screen is your character's face. He's too much of an autist to show emotion so you have to manipulate his face to do it for him. Strange, occasionally unsettling, interesting game.

Not For Broadcast

This game took the small, forgotten, exists-entirely-on-SegaCD video editing genre and actually made it fun and interesting.
As if that isn't a big enough feat, it took a game with a heavily political storyline and actually didn't become embarrassingly one-sided where everything right-leaning is evil for fucking once.