Indie game tips

..or just 'not big budget titles' tips. There are a lot of games on Steam that are cheap, but I've come to the point where I've bought too many games that I've not played. I'm still interested in shorter, simpler and new gameplay experiences.

Give a recommendation of a game you've enjoyed or ask for one you're interested in.

My top of 'indie' (or just a cheap game with simple mechanics) game:
1. Faster Than Light
2. Plants vs Zombies
3. Magicka
4. Frozen Synapse
5. World of Goo
6. Braid

I wish they released Journey to the PC. Otherwise, I'd like to hear if anyone of you have played
Starseed Pilgrim
To the Moon
Monaco
and what you thought of it.

Edit -
Revised list:

Worth getting imo:
Faster Than Light
Plants vs Zombies
Risk of Rain (for co-op)
Spelunky
Magicka
Frozen Synapse
World of Goo
Braid
Stanley Parable
Kerbal Space Program

All good games, but haven't played that much:
Skulls of the Shogun
Stacking
Thomas was Alone
Super Meatboy
Starseed Pilgrim
Monaco
King Arthur's Gold
Guacamelee
Castle Crashers
The Bridge
Bionic Dues

Kerbal Space Program is one of the best indie games I've played, but it is not simple so it might not interest you. The learning curve is kinda crazy hard.. but it is $22 right now.

I also really enjoyed Terraria

warpus said:

I also really enjoyed Terraria

Click to expand...

Terraria is great fun when played with others. Me and some friends had a world going on to which we caused untold ecological damage, causing us all to migrate and build a home in hell, which was judged as the safest area to be.

I did get the Kerbal Space Program and have played around with it for a few hours. I've orbited minimun and returned. That's as far as I've come. It's a fun game, but it takes more effort than I'm willing to put in at the moment. I may come back to it at a later stage though.

It's kinda funny those are indie games because some are quite famous. I knew world of goo and braid were small budget games but I thought they came from big publishers til I checked them out. Plants vs zombies I think is borderline though, pop cap has been around a while, owns bejeweled and it's published by EA. But regardless, just non-AAA titles it fits the bill. I wouldn't consider them simple mechanics, just say low budget. Some "indie" games are quite advanced.

Off your list I have plants vs zombies and magicka. Plants vs zombies is highly addictive and I love how casual it is. Play for hours or just minutes. Magicka has one of the most creative spell systems I've ever seen. It's a real shame it didn't hit bigger because that game was built for multiplayer co-op and pvp but it never took off due to server issues and lack of players. My only criticism of it was no difficulty setting. Some levels are really hard solo. And the expansion is near impossible solo.

My favorite indie game has got to be Space Pirates and Zombies (SPAZ). It's an arcade style shoot em up with customization ships and rpg like leveling. It's amazing. And there's 4 difficulty levels and an arena league worth multiple playthroughs.

I also really liked Unstoppable Gorg. It's a tower defense but it's really different because you defend planets with your defenses orbiting. So it's less about quantity of defenses and all about quality and timing. You can plop down one big gun in orbit to defend your whole plant if you rotate it right. It's a very short game but worth a look.

I bought Monaco. I'll let you know what I think when I play it.

Papers, Please



Glory to Arstotzka! May it remain pure and free of Kolechian peasants!

SPAZ, Magicka, World of Goo, Terraria, and Atom Zombie Smasher are all enjoyable time-wasters.

Aurora. an indie space 4x game by Steve Walmsley.

It's basically "Dwarf Fortress in Space".

EDIT: Oh, yeah... Dwarf Fortress is another excellent Indie game. We should have a DF Forum succession game.

Kinetic Void looks interesting. Space exploration, procedurally generated universe and planets, KSP'esque spacecraft builder. The first alpha was realeased not long ago. Looks good for 18.99€, definitely on my watch list. Anyone tried it?

PS. I'm up for a DF succession.

In the last year and a half I've played Brogue more than all other games combined.

Free to download.

Easily the best looking ascii game or rogue-like that I've seen. The B could stand for beautiful. Interactions with the environment and items are intuitive and beating the game doesn't require use of a wiki (though one exists). The learning curve is relatively gentle, but the difficulty increases smoothly with each level and beating it feels like an achievement.

Defense Grid is a great tower defense game on steam. Got a lot of mileage out of it (I like the achievements), and it just so happens to be on sale this weekend - 75% off.

It looks sci fi. Is it pretty standard tower defense? Anything unique about it?

Monaco seems like it has radness potential, anyone had a chance to play it yet?

I still am trying to figure out what the gameplay is like from the screenshots...

civvver said:

It looks sci fi. Is it pretty standard tower defense? Anything unique about it?

Click to expand...

It's pretty standard. Good map variety. I played it to death last summer.

My favorite non-standard TD is the Kongregate one, Kingdom Rush.

Wolfbeckett said:

Monaco seems like it has radness potential, anyone had a chance to play it yet?

Click to expand...

I went ahead and downloaded it to give it a go. It's a neat little game but I think it's only worth the $15 if you're going to play multiplayer, single player is a little bleh. I was hoping it would be kind of like Lost Vikings in the sense of picking a team and switching between them for various tasks, but I can't find a way to change guys in single player without getting your current guy killed, so unless you die you're stuck with who you picked. I feel like this game would be sweet in co-op but I'm mostly a single player kind of guy and in single player I don't think it's worth $15.

Not in any particular order:

(1) Kerbal Space Program: A game about designing rockets and flying them to different celestial bodies. Even as an alpha it is pure awesomeness.

(2) Terraria: A sort of 2D minecraft with more emphasis on crafting gear and exploring. A fun little game with even better multiplayer.

(3) Faster Than Light: Rogue-like space game. Brutal difficulty, but very rewarding once you figure stuff out. Has a lot of unlockable ships that play quite different, combined with the randomly generated world for each play through you will come back to this quite often. Also a lot of great gameplay mechanics that create a lot of tension during the game.

(4) Proteus: It is not really a "game", more like an "experience". But I must say the game deeply moved me. The idea of dynamic music depending on your map location is really cool and the ending - maybe it was just me, but I think it was fantastic. Left me deeply moved.

(5) Amnesia: A horror/adventure game done right. Not perfect, but overall very well done.

(6) Mark of the Ninja: A great stealth game.

(7) Trine 1 & 2: Two great platformers with fantastic graphics and fluent gameplay (plus multiple possible solutions for puzzles).

(8) Dwarf Fortress: The most complex game ever made. A gigantic learning curve - but once you get into it you are rewarded with a game that creates a whole new world with thousand years of history and keeps track of everything you do. The amount of work that went into it is INSANE.

I won't buy amnesia, the trailer is way too scary!

I'm not a huge fan of trine. Only gave it a couple hours but it just seemed dull. Maybe I didn't get it or maybe I don't like platformers.

I also have mark of the ninja, haven't played it yet.

Amnesia really isn't as scary as people say it is. It is really creepy, and does get genuinely scary, but people often grossly exaggerate it.

Trine 1 and 2 are great games, one of the few indie platformers that really stands out from the ridiculously large horde of them.