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Captain Red

Indie games thread!

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SUPER MEAT BOY >> Is a 2D platformer known for its charm and crazy challenge. I didn't think it was as fun as other people. Its challenging, its fun, its fun and charming but I'd rather be playing Super Mario Bros X for the gameplay diversity. I also have the original flash version of Meat Boy that game with the Basement Collection.



BASEMENT COLLECTION >> Is a collection of half baked Flash games for $2. Its a good collection for the $2, but a lot of the games are vague and feel the same. The gem here is Meat Boy... not Super Meat Boy. Most of the games are quality but feel unfinished.



AMY >> Bringing back the suck that was the survival horror genre. Its a zombie OTS clunky meh game with a lot of glitches that I bought on PSN for $2. A little girl with mysterious powers is the only thing keeping you from turning into a zombie. The visuals are terrible and the eyes of characters are just creepy. On a plus side the controls are good.... but the camera isn't. Worth the $2, but not $3. Then it gets iffy.



CRAYON PHYSICS DELUXE >> Is it an indie game? Oh well. Good game. Soothing and at a lot of times hilariously unexpected. Then after about an hour the challenge starts to work its way up. You go from making bridges and boxes to golf clubs. A lot of it is trial and error. Some of it is luck. There is no given way to complete each challenge.

Some of the challenges get good, but not frustrating. In hindsight though this is one of those games that you play.... but don't return to and that's not a good thing for a $20 game. There's nothing compelling me to return. This game is good if you're a creative person or just like drawing with a mouse.



HOARD >> Bad bad, dull top down game where you play as a dragon and you need to burn shit and collect gold all while competing against another dragon. Maps are a single screen. I think I bought it for $2 and wish I hadn't. Its not fun.



LEGEND OF GRIMROCK >> My friends rave about this game that is reminiscent of Shadowgate. I bought this really cheap. Its an old school dungeon crawler with a 3D perspective. Kind of like you're stuck in an Elder Scrolls dungeon that is randomly generated. The easy is very easy, each area is blocked by a door and you need to get something that opens the door. Get a torch, pull a lever, find a key. Simple stuff. Everything is built in a grid, so you walk one square at a time. Oh and you can look, walk and strafe, but to turn you either need to use a key or hold left mouse button and drag the mouse to the side. This game has a slow pace that not everyone will like. At its best it feels like a modern Shadowgate... at its worst its clunky with boring combat where you click and see a poor animation. I have a tough time justifying more than $5 for this.



SPACECHEM >> Terrible game. Not really a game though. More like you make a schematic based on 4 grids that are 4x4. You grab molecules, drop them, bond them, rotate them to match what your inputs and outputs supposed to be to complete the level. This is not a fun game. A lot of staring at a black screen with red lines and blue lines. Youtube this. I bought it for the TF2 items and got the heck out. Never playing this again.



SWORD & SWORCERY >> This feels like a point and click adventure. Its got good pixelated art and a good soundtrack, but it feels like a lonnnnng stroll with nothing happening. It is a beautiful piece of pixelated art / landscape, but just dull and too soothing for me. I can imagine this would be an awesome game for some, go youtube it see if you like it.



STEALTH BASTARD >> Wooo I'm lucky I got this sucker for free before it turned into a $10 game on Steam. Its a platformer where you need to make it from one end of the map to the other without being seen. Being seen is virtually a death sentence if not an instant death depending on what sees you. There's a level editor and its a good challenging game, but after playing it once and returning to it years later, I feel like its not additively fun enough to go back to again and again.



JETPACK JOYRIDE >> Free PSN game that is good for a quick thrill. You pilot a jetpack, to go up you hold the button to go down you release it. Basically you just go right as long as you can. There is some gameplay diversity in the form of other quirky / crazy modes of transportation and because I don't have any other quick thrill game on PS3 I keep going back to it. I'd justify $5 for it.



ZOMBIE TYCOON 2 >> Yeah its a RTS with zombies fit for an animated movie. Its good and bad I suppose. This feels like a good stepping stone for a studio to make a meh game into a good game. You operate a zombie horde and complete objectives. The limited resources make the game interesting as well as brief quirky cut scenes that would fit in well with any lego game. There are diverse foes in the form of cops, mutants and an opposing zombie faction. Its worth a try, but nothing you'll come back to.

>>> I think I'm done for now. I've got a lot of indie games I own but haven't played yet. ... I'll get back to you :-)

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Vampire Bloodlines is anything but indie, it was published by Activision. It's an excellent game regardless, and most of the technical issues at release aren't relevant anymore, provided you install the bugfixing fanmade patch.

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geo said:

LEGEND OF GRIMLOCK

Grimrock ;)

I wanted to like that game more than I did (heh); I've developed quite the tooth for old schoolish first person dungeon crawlers thanks to the much superior offerings on the DS (and recently 3DS). Sadly the combat, especially spell casting, is quite clunky in Grimrock and there's bit too much emphasis on puzzles for my liking. It would have also been nice if there was a built-in interface for drawing your own maps - arguably the best thing of the DS's Etrian Odyssey series is the utilization of the touch screen to draw your own dungeon maps. It's amazing how much the removal of an automap can actually enhance immersion. Instead, if you want to get the real experience with Grimrock you'll have to draw the map on actual grid paper which is tad inconvenient.

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Is it just me, or is the "clunky" combat in Grimrock completely appropriate for the sort of game it is?

Definitely my favourite indie game of the past few years, at any rate.

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LOL oops Grimrock. I had Transformers on the mind with Grimlock :-)

And oops about the indie status of Vampire Masquerade Bloodlines. I know the studio shut down before the game was released. Time to take it down since its not indie.

Downloading more indie games to comment on. Gotta write a comment for Dungeons of Dreadmore and Gun Metal.

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I've been absorbed in Terraria on both consoles for forever now. So good I bought it twice (And I will buy it for the Vita, if theres no cross buy)

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I have a ton of indie games I have never played, bought from Humble Bundles and from GOG sales.

Of those that I did play:
Defender's Quest: a fun variant of tower defense, with some RPGish mechanics thrown in.

Deponia: old school-like point-and-click adventure; my main reproaches would be that it's far too short and kinda glitchy.

Giana Sisters: beautiful graphics, beautiful music, good gameplay mostly, some bullshit sections towards the last levels.

Bit.Trip Runner: basically just a question of hitting a key with perfect timing. Let's play something more interesting.

Spacechem: the beginning is super easy, but after a couple planets it starts veering into this.

Dungeons of Dredmor: very fun, though eventually repetitive. I'd have to buy the expansions before I try again.

Terraria: completely different genre, but same as Dredmor, except without the expansions. I had a lot of fun for a while and then it became intensively boring. Though apparently there's an update incoming?

Cave Story+: extremely cute little story. Very Japanese: the story doesn't make sense, everything is adorable, and the difficulty spikes up and down randomly but if you want the best ending you have to go through insane hoops.

Phml said:

The difficulty raises gradually, but never to the point it gets frustrating

Well I guess I'm more easily frustrated than you then.

There's a few levels that made me take a couple days before trying the game again; and mostly I hate that the boss arena are stuck at the end of a large level. I haven't finished the game because I really don't want to go through all the last castle again anytime soon. (I did reach the dragon, it killed me, I quit and now I can't start right at the dragon again, fuck it).

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Ragnor said:

I've been absorbed in Terraria on both consoles for forever now. So good I bought it twice (And I will buy it for the Vita, if theres no cross buy)

Why on Earth would you torture yourself by playing Terraria without a mouse??? D:

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i have such difficulty doing Terarria without a mouse.... just like Trine. That's another game that I should comment on, but I never got too far the 10x I played it. Although I think the last time I got pretty far on it.

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My favorite indie game is still Cave Story.

Gez said:

Cave Story+: extremely cute little story. Very Japanese: the story doesn't make sense, everything is adorable, and the difficulty spikes up and down randomly but if you want the best ending you have to go through insane hoops.

I wish I had a way of just giving my $10 to pixel and bypassing Nicalis entirely...

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Dragonsbrethren said:

My favorite indie game is still Cave Story.


I wish I had a way of just giving my $10 to pixel and bypassing Nicalis entirely...


I did that once for an indie band.... paid them $15 for their CD via paypal, then illegally downloaded the music. I even told them that was my plan. I'm sure that wouldn't hold up in court if I got busted, but that's my story.

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Well I guess I'm more easily frustrated than you then.

There's a few levels that made me take a couple days before trying the game again; and mostly I hate that the boss arena are stuck at the end of a large level. I haven't finished the game because I really don't want to go through all the last castle again anytime soon. (I did reach the dragon, it killed me, I quit and now I can't start right at the dragon again, fuck it).


No, you're right. The last boss can suck it. I'm actually stuck at the same spot you are, went through the last level, got to the boss, banged my head against it for half a hour, gave up. I picked up the game again later two weeks ago and... Same story. It's a ridiculous design choice to start with, and slapping the longest level of the game on top of that... Bah.

Also almost gave up on the very first boss, until I checked a Youtube video showing a pattern to beat it easily. Thankfully, bosses are a minor part of the game, even if their design makes them potential showstoppers. Best to pretend they don't exist. :)

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Gez said:

Cave Story+: extremely cute little story. Very Japanese: the story doesn't make sense, everything is adorable, and the difficulty spikes up and down randomly but if you want the best ending you have to go through insane hoops.


What I liked about the story is that the Doctor is an active entity and doesn't just sit on his throne. For most of the game, even when you're winning, you're losing.

In my opinion, the normal ending is the best ending. Spoiler's selfless act of spoiling is much more emotionally impactful if she isn't simply spoiled back to life afterward.

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Jodwin said:

Why on Earth would you torture yourself by playing Terraria without a mouse??? D:


It doesn't need a mouse? It controls wonderfully. The default cursor mode IS crap, but if you click the stick you get precision mode, where you move a cursor like a mouse for things like block placement and aiming. Also, the console versions are the definitive versions of the game now. New armour and weapons, pets, new enemies, new music for a lot of areas, and a new boss Hardmode fight. I ignored the recent Steam sale because it would feel like I was going backwards.

An annoying thing though is that the PS3 and 360 controllers, while largely identical, have this annoying thing where PS3 games stupidly map anything trigger related to L1 and R1, ignoring the fact that the PS3 copied the idea of triggers for L2 and R2. So I have to readjust between working on my eight worlds between two consoles.

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Dwarf Fortress is really awesome, but I know that a lot of people are turned off by the horrid UI and the minimalist graphics. Gnomoria's a fairly decent DF-alike with its own flavor and a much easier learning curve.

It, like Towns, is in alpha, however, so some things may not be completed, but both games are playable. (Also, Towns is much more quickly paced and game-like now, since it is in alpha and thus quickly evolving. How anyone can purchase it without knowing this beforehand baffles me.)

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Ragnor said:

Also, the console versions are the definitive versions of the game now. New armour and weapons, pets, new enemies, new music for a lot of areas, and a new boss Hardmode fight.

Other than the boss and music, the new console stuff isn't much more than a bunch of recolored sprites with poor balance.

Meanwhile, the PC version is getting a massive update in July.

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If you like Terraria, then you should check out Starbound. It's sort of like Terraria, but you have an entire universe to explore. It's not out yet but it should be released in 2013.

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As I recall, the console updates inspired that update, leading to the thread where a lot of those things listed were brought up by the fans.

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Weird Worlds by digital eel (these guys started out as amatuer doom level designers)

Legend of Grimrock

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So I think that in this short burst of indie games, I'll cover Metroidesque games that I've played recently. There are quite a few of them out there.



CAVESTORY+ >> Sigh, overrated. Its good, it is a 2D Nintendo-ish platformer with a gun that people often confuse for Metroid, because it has a hub world. The story is pretty meh. Kinda like someone took a generic RPG plot and gave it to a 2D platformer. Controls are good, the 'levels' / areas feel very brief and drawn out, like get to the end of the map, get something and come all the way back, then when you're done, come back to the hub.

There's a really nice weapon system that upgrades based on how many jewels you get. Its interesting. There are missiles that feel useless compared to a fully powered up peashooter. Graphics are good, music is good. Well worth $1, but I can't feel it is as good as everyone else says.



KNYTT UNDERGROUND >> Very Metroid-ish game, but without a gun. Its a 2D puzzle platformer where the blocks and everything with collision is black and the backgrounds are beautiful and vibrant. For those that like puzzles, maybe this is for you, but there is no danger or distractions like enemies. The traps are instant death, but you just respawn where you were. It feels very lackluster, dull and boring. I just wish there was something more interactive to it like a gun and enemies.



SHENSETTA - AIR RPG >> A game so indie, I don't think its had a proper release. This is very retro NES down to the music and graphics, both of which *might* be taken. The game is good, it has multiple weapons, bombs, and abilities like flying. You open doors in a Metroid way, you blow up walls and floors. There is a good variety of enemies. There's no story seemingly, no reason to push forward. There are specific buttons to switch between your bombs, your gun, and your abilities when abilities should just be upgraded. Having the quick buttons are nice, but you need a lot of buttons on your controller. You collect coins from dead enemies and find upgrade stations to buy stat points like you with an RPG.

While the music is good and fun, it really kills any sort of atmosphere that could be. Out of all 3 of today's reviews this one would be my choice, with the diversity in weapons, gameplay dynamics, and enemy diversity, but the thing that holds it back is lack of any atmosphere. This feels like a great stepping stone for someone to make a great game with.

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Dust: An Elysian Tail - this game is absolutely amazing. A fairy tale-ish brawler with beautiful hand drawn graphics and animations, Asian influences, amazingly fluid and varied combat and RPG mechanics. It's got MS slapped on as a publisher since it was originally on XBLA, but technically the whole game is made by a single person save for the sound work. If you like brawler action at all, play this. Now.

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New Humble Bundle for those that don't know. Includes:

Thomas Was Alone
Little Inferno
Awesomenauts
Dear Esther
Capsized

Beat the average price and you get:

Proteus
Hotline Miami

Anyone who likes games needs to play Hotline Miami, since that thing is pure adrenaline. Plus, dat music.

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I would have posted it if you didn't. Humble Bundles make me not want to ever buy indie games full price. :-( Not that I ever really play them long.

Hotline Miami is on my list to play. The only game I had out of the bunch was Capsized. Never played it yet.

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I'd say Awesomenauts is by far the best thing on that bundle. Even if you don't like MOBAs (and I personally don't) it's still great fun as it deviates from the standard LOL and DOTA gameplay quite a bit by the virtue of being 2D. Definitively worth a try for anyone who likes 2D action platformers and multiplayer.

Also, Thomas Was Alone is kind of wonderful. That game simply oozes character from every pore in ways unimaginable. Do yourselves a favor and give it a go.

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Nobody mentioned Space Pirates and Zombies? It's made by a team of two people and is a lot of fun. If you like space combat, you should check this out. It plays like an arcade game, but has a fair amount of depth. There are lots of ships to customize and a leveling up system so you can go with certain builds. Worth $10 for sure.

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I got over 80 games on HB, and I played only 9 of them (of which I have only finished 4).

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