Quirky Indie RPGs - Depression is optional

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Decided to try making a bingo card for "modern" indie games. Fill free to test it on just about anything.
Did it for Omori
indiebingi~2.png

The whiteknight for Anita is not in game (in general I doubt how many games would have it a decade after GamerGate?. It's not quite cal arts, and I'm too lazy to check /v/. Still nearly a full card.
 
Fear and Hunger basically got popular off the tranny in 2. You know, like how Coffin of Andy and Leyley got popular off of the incest.
Meh it already was popular before the sequel got popular.

A ton of fans don't even know she's tranny pilled.

Youtubers helped the game a ton. Also Russian seem to love the game weirdly enough.
 
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Also Russian seem to love the game weirdly enough.
* Walk in a samey looking hallway.
* You are hungry and missing an arm since you needed to cut if off after some gypsy stabbed you and it got infected.
* You come across V'jrjrbdise who tears your spine through your asshole because you didn't pick up a random rock an hour ago.

The game is a pretty good retelling of Slavic folktales. And modern day Russia.
 
Paper Bread launch trailer:
Will be pirating this later and play tomorrow cause i love me some paper mario and need a cleanser after Knuckle Sandwich, my only concern is the game requirements recommending 16gb memory on steam lol i hope the game isnt terribly optimized...

Bug fables was nice but it copied paper mario a little too much, this one seems to have some weird ideas at least.

By the way, does anyone seem to wonder why indie games tend to prioritize female protagonists over male ones?

The "quirky indie rpg" is mostly male protagonists usually depressed boys, millenials or weirdos, at least from what i saw on the last fanmade Mother direct. There are few female protags from games that didnt come out like oddventure.

If you mean another specific genre like metroidvania then yeah, feels like indie MVs got took over by female protags.
 
Not sure if this qualifies for "Quirky Indie RPGs" but has anyone in here played Chained Echoes? I got it gifted and after hearing that it takes cues from Xenogears and Chrono Trigger, I'm mildly interested.

Also what's everyone's opinion on pirating indie games? I'm just curious.
 
>just want to make edgy rpg
>every RPG maker game is fags with shallow game play mechanics

I just want to make it so quests endings will vary based on the active party members.
 
If you mean another specific genre like metroidvania then yeah, feels like indie MVs got took over by female protags.
Pretty much. It's a "product of the times" thing. Defaulting to a standard white guy is either considered boring or racist, so the new default in a lot of places has become mystery meat women instead.
 
has anyone in here played Chained Echoes?
I enjoyed altho it has really awkward localization (game made by 1 german guy) and isnt a quirky earthbound game, but more of a high scale war game like FF. Most people hate the ending (and i dont blame them) and the story was rather convoluted with magical nuclear bombs, dimensional gods, corrupt church, evil kings etc.

good
+It's fast paced, you do a spell and it goes, you can run from fights for free, once you're strong enough you can blitz.
+You get rewarded by exploring and farming drops with next tier gear, i dont think i ever bought more than 2 weapons on the shop except when i missed it. This means gold feels kinda useless tho.
+Looks and sounds good for a 1 guy game.
+Technically some decent customization with class emblems, crystals and skill tree, some stuff is obviously better but there is potential to mess around
+You only level up with story quests and achievements so the game has an actually ok difficulty curve, at least until you get the broken final skills.
+Lots of sidecontent with very secret optional bosses to hunt that are kinda fun to find. One boss requires you to run in circles so it thinks you're "lost" and attacks you, then once that boss dies a different secret boss spawns and you must get there without flying.

bad
-No exp means you're only doing random encounters for monster drops or skill tree points, and if you want to farm you're better to go to specific cluster spots and run from fight until you get a shiny enemy who ensures drops
-You get healed between fights, meaning there isnt much long term management and random encounters have to be annoyingly tanky until you upgrade.
-Combat is kinda unbalanced, speed and hp+ is broken, some characters are memes while others are too good to not use, half skills are mediocre so you pick stat upgrades instead.
-Mecha combat gets repetitive once you solve it (multi shot + status is broken) and final dungeon wants you to do a ton of it.
-The overload or whatever system adds an RNG layer to moves that either increase or decrease a bar you need to balance but it can feel very forced and artificial at times.
-The lizard character is nonbinay for no reason?? It's just one throwaway line.

It's a good game, i didnt finish causei lost my save at the final dungeon but i definitely enjoyed it more than sea of stars that i couldnt get past the second dungeon out of boredom.

Also what's everyone's opinion on pirating indie games? I'm just curious

Call me poor but i live in south america where taxes are comically evil and after steam updated the prices it's straight up lunacy for me to buy games. A ps5 goes from 500 dollars to +4500 reais, a 60 dollar ga,e somehow becomes 350+ reais, even a pixelart indie game like Last Faith is 100 reais digital.

Our culture is also used to pirating and i've done it for years, so i dont feel bad at all for it.
 
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I've really gotten into Sea of Stars.
I am also playing this (gifted a code), but not as far. It belongs in a middle school scholastic book fair. If it was my first RPG I'd love it. But instead it's fine. Things happen and you go 'ok.' The two main characters are too similar and should have been replaced by literally just one of them for no loss in the story. And it's weird they translated using a loom as sewing.
 
I have played Born of Bread up to finishing first dungeon and boss, it's VERY paper marioesque so if you like paper mario you'll definitely like this. I didnt find it very funny but the humor is mostly harmless stuff, funny animals, quirky villains and a lot of puns from the MC. I'll keep it short

+After knuckle sandwich, i am happy with how minigames are actually fast and easy for once, most of them are single taps or short holds so far.
+The game has 3 attack types (slash stab smash) and 7 elements, with enemies having distinct resists and weaks. This is a good evolution from PM combat, and makes element coverage important, which comes from selecting which skills you bring for the MC and unlock for your partner.
+There is no political pandering, other than the strongest hero literally named "number 1" being a tall muscular woman with armor. It's mostly child friendly.
+You have this fucking live twitch chat during fights that represents the TTYD audience so if you play good you get free MP every few attacks.

-Controls suck and cant be mapped, and it feels janky as fuuuck. I legit softlocked myself because i tried used an item at full health and couldn't back down so i had to close the game. There are more dumb softlocks like this and allegedly crashes when controling the kid villain.
-It's waaaay to easy. You start with 20 hp 15 mp and get a +7 hp acessory early, while enemies do 1 dmg or 0 if blocked. I know it's early but geez, i didnt even use a healing item on the boss or anything, he only took half my health. This makes it almost boring as there is no hype, at least bug fables gives you hard mode early.
-The live twich chat is completely disconnected from the story and its just generic meme message spam, you'll probably keep it closed.

btw, i think someone mentioned west of loathing, i only watched a video on it but it really surprised me how the game is legit a great mix of roleplaying, good gameplay and actually funny jokes (at one point you can say something like "X is my middle name" and it will legit split your name to add that word permanently). I want to check it ou some day, i heard the sequel is less funny and clever but still playable.
 
Call me poor but i live in south america where taxes are comically evil and after steam updated the prices it's straight up lunacy for me to buy games. A ps5 goes from 500 dollars to +4500 reais, a 60 dollar ga,e somehow becomes 350+ reais, even a pixelart indie game like Last Faith is 100 reais digital.
That consumer electronics tax Brazil has is complete and utter lunacy. Had a brazilian friend in highschool who told me how he smuggled a fat PS2 into the country for his kid cousin like he was trafficking coke, it cost close to a thousand bucks if you wanted to import one legitimately from the US or Europe at that time if i recall correctly.
I want to check it ou some day, i heard the sequel is less funny and clever but still playable.
The sequel improved a lot when it comes to the mechanics, better combat, more varied equipment etc. but the setting just isn't as charming as the Wild West one from WoL. It's still absolutely worth to be played, especially if you like indie JRPG. Thanks for the info on Born to Bread, i was looking into it a couple of days ago, it doesn't even look half-bad. Much like Bug Fables, it seems to "get" the TTYD style and i was always a fan of that.
 
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Kinda digging back this thread because i have finished In Stars and Time and i need to vent a bit.

>but why would you suffer through that?

Because, for as much as i disliked it, In Stars and Time is willing to be novel and original at the cost of frustration and i respect the balls to do that. It's a game that is repetitive by design in order to hammer it's themes, which makes it have a soul but it's also not a game for everyone.

This leads to my assumption that 99% reviewers did NOT finish this game because they can't convey how repetitive and frustrating this game is on practice. This is a game with ONE DUNGEON that you must re-explore dozens of times. It's a game that tells you to pixel hunt every room, then to do it again because you forgot something. It's a game that you'll be forced to hold shift half the time because it's just repeated dialogue from your friends who never shut up. It's a game that made me ragequit multiple times for a few days because it felt like so much time wasted not knowing where to go and there isnt even a concise walkthrough online.

It's hard to hate this because this isnt just lack of quality of life or poor pacing, it's THE GAME. This is technically a 6 hour long game that doesnt work if you dont play it for 20 hours. Imagine Undertale except instead of being about the enemies it's about Frisk and the fact he can never escape. Most people probably saw the trailer and expected a wholesome team saving the world with time loop powers except it gets DARK and EDGY and SAD and EMOTIONAL yadayada.

But if i cant complain about that, i'll complain about it's themes from a different angle. The fact that this is... Another indie jrpg about a loner femboy dealing with depression.

I'll try to summarize

Act 1 is the start of the game, before the loop starts. Once the loop begins you get into act two where you must slowly climb the castle, and looping back when you find out you missed a key from previous floor or opened the wrong path with consumable key and go back to village to ask info to find a book with a shield to survive the king and sidequests yadayada. I also had to grind until level 55~ so i could fight the king, and thankfully the game saves the highest level you reached ON THAT SAVE SPOT (i had to reload a save cause i didnt save on the two saves of a floor) but i managed to beat the king and reach the end. Until i find out that...

Act 3

Reaching the end doesnt end the loop. You dont know why but this is the start of Sifrin downwards spiral because he starts getting fucked up. From this point on you unlock the option to talk with the king for info, so you must talk to him, search for time magic books and do your friend hangout events and clear the whole dungeon in 1 go, which makes frin realize power of friendship is useless.

Sifrin also finds out and the king come from a country that was vanished from reality and have no memories, and trying to remember kills you. In one run you must talk to the king until you die trying to name it. In the next you try befriending him and he fucking backstabs you and kill the kid, traumatizing sifrin but he mention wish magic so...

Sifrin's trauma unlocked memories and he can read new books now to learn about wish magic and sifrin finds out all the city wished to be saved so they must be the cause of the loop... Except it's only sifrin so sifrin must solve this and he assumes he must be the one to kill the king, while before it was mirable who killed him. At this point sifrin is so fucked in the head he doesnt give a fuck and only sees the game as a "play" and calls his friends "actors". He decides to do hangouts just to power up his friends but he fucks up trying to rush them and looks like a psychopath and curses everyone so they all hate him now.

Sifrin is now a walking doomer and runs to the castle alone. He's level 99 and must solo his way to the top while the castle is freaking out. He eventually reaches the king and loses, so he has a dream where all his friends shit talk him and fights an unwinable doppelganger fight because as we know, that's mandatory for indie jrpgs about depression (at least omori ik).

Except his friends appear out nowhere and save him and hug him and somehow reflect the king attack (how???) and he freezes and we win wooo #lovewins... but what about the next part that always loops?

Fuck you it's time for the SECOND climax! Sifrin gets sad people will leave him and becomes a big cosmic monster crying about how he dont want his friends to leave him in a dramatic unwin/unlosable boss fight! Sifrin also reveals that at the start of the game he made a wish... that his friends woul never leave him! That wish from the start you probably forgot was the catalyst for the whole game! So when sifrin ands the quest or thinks people will leave him it would all loop! But now he wont loop, he will stay with them together frozen just like the king did! oh no!

Except they hug Steven- i mean sifrin and apologize about being friends so it's ok lol it's all good now. The world is saved and its a happy end.

And it's the end. A ton of shit is left unexplainted but fuck it, both you and sifrin are just glad it's over. That's the message.

As a story that shows someone breaking down until infinite time loop failures, this game is an ok attempt but i feel it's all diminished by the predictability of it being another indie rpg about depression and friendship. The repetitiveness is also inexcusable, even if intentional, because the game NEVER EVOLVES past the first hour and i never want to see that undertale ripoff castle again.

It's also extremely quirky and gay which detracts from attemps of drama, as it becomes impossible to NOT expect a gay happy ending. You even get a canon gay ship between sifrin and the himbo at the end because of course you do lol, this is just unashamed tumblr fodder. For as much yaoi/tumblr bait omori was, at least it had genuinely edgy endings.

And if anyone has any other rpg for this thread worth mentioning pls share here so i have some type of palate cleanser, i'll take whatever sounds novel. I've been thinking about checking Deathbulge, a funny rpg based on the webcomic of the same name, but inever read that so the humor might be lost hard on me...
 
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