Indie game tips

I got incredipede in the current humble bundle and it kinda sucks. I don't get it. All you do is push two buttons to move left or right and your creature rotates using muscles and limbs. I guess the objective is to grab fruit and hit a point on the stage so you complete it. I thought there would be more controls and more stuff to do like a platformer, rolling my creature along mario style or something but nope. Maybe there's more to it, I only played 30 mins before saying this is dumb and leaving. There is a mode where you make your own creatures, I'll have to try it, but not recommending at this time.

civvver said:

I tried using my xbox controller for bastion on pc and wow, I think maybe the keyboard controls were holding this game back a little. It's much more enjoyable with a gamepad, it just has a better feel. Some say it's reminiscent of a zelda game but I get more of an arcade hack n slash like gauntlet legends or something. I used to be not that impressed with the game but I think I'm coming around now.

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I agree on the xbox controller. I had tried one of the proving ground a few times with the keyboard and wasn't even close to beating it. Started playing with the controller and did it on the first try. The ending of Bastion is awesome, but after seeing all the endings I don't feel much desire to play again.

Havent seen this topic before, but reus is indeed reallygood. My best buy of the summer sale. A real game if you enjoy building up and unlocking stuff.

On my wishlist are FEZ, braid, thomas was alone and the stanley parable.

scheva007 said:

Havent seen this topic before, but reus is indeed reallygood. My best buy of the summer sale. A real game if you enjoy building up and unlocking stuff.

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Definitely a quality game. One of the creators is a self-professed civfanatics lurker who started a discussion of his game here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=495253

I just started Defense Grid Awakening and it's pretty sweet so far. I'll have to see how long it actually is and if it has any depth. Indie tower defense games are usually lacking there, but the graphics, sound and gameplay are all superb so far.

I played a bit of Defence Grid but found the narrator pretty annoying as its repetitive. I also wasn't a huge fan of the scoring as you seem to get a lot of extra points from not spending money near the end of the game which I don't really agree with.

Bumping for FTL: Faster than light. I finally check this game out and WOW. I think I rolled through 20 hours of play in a few days. I got it through gog so can't check my steam hours but anyway.

You pilot a ship but you are more like a commander, choosing where to deploy crew and what weapons and systems to power etc. You jump between stars which have random events at each. Events can be good or bad, give you power ups or conflicts you have to fight through. It's all random so luck plays a huge part, but it's kind of like a choose your own adventure novel where you select different choices to situations and get multiple results. There's lots of unlockable ships and the last boss is extremely tough. Very addictive game, well worth $10 and it goes on sale a lot.

It is great! And it will be even greater when it gets updated with a story written by Chris Avellone Not sure how much he will write, but it can't go wrong. Looking forward to the patch next year.


Another great "indie-game" - Spelunky - a platformer. Usually not into those that much. Braid was good for the puzzles and there are some others that were of good quality but that ultimately I didn't play very much. But this one, I really enjoyed. The gameplay, atmosphere, humour, depth and overall quality made it worth going back to. Get it on a sale if you see it. Worth the full price too if you aren't picky.

Anyone tried Bionic Dues? I got it on sale this week, looks like a cool roguelike where you build robots. That's all I know so far!

Risk of Rain is also a nice little game that I forgot about. I think it goes under the roguelike description too. A platformer that's great fun to coop. Pretty wonky to set up with IP and it's not entirely bugfree, but I liked it.

I haven't checked out Bionic Dues yet, but I will.

Edit: Too cheap to pass up.. I'm sure I'll get around to play it sometime..

I just saw customizable mechs that was too reminiscent of mechcommander 2 custom slotting and had to get it. I played for 10 mins, it seems like it'll take a couple hours to figure out what I'm doing, but it looks pretty sweet so far.

Edit: Ok I'm about 90 minutes in. The initial cool factor has worn off, the most noticeable thing is the music is actually quite annoying. It reminds me of bad anime music.

The mech customization isn't quite what I hoped for. At the start of a game you choose a captain for your team with unique powers and then some robots called exos. There's only 6 types and you choose 4 of them. They all have preset weapons and start with certain abilities. Like the science exo can hack computers at the start of the game, while other exos have to get a hacking upgrade. There's a ninja bot that gets extra stealth moves and so on. But unfortunately the weapons seem set in stone. No finding a giant rocket launcher to put on your science bot. I think all you can do is add upgrades to their existing weapons to increase ammo capacity and damage.

When you play you select missions on nodes a lot like the beacons in FTL. Also like FTL you have 60 days until this huge robot invasion so you're trying to level your exos up before then. Each mission is played out as turn based where you control one exo at a time, switching between them. After you move enemy robots get to move. There is line of sight, fog of war, exploding cover objects to hide behind, and weapons have max range. So you can usually sit behind some cover and wait for the enemy to pop out and blow them up before they shoot you. The enemies seem weirdly imbalanced. Some will hit you for half your health while others only for like 1% of your hp. You can also activate stealth and perform a set number of stealth moves per mission, so you can sneak up and blast enemies with strong short range weapons. In each mission there's the normal rogue like looting as you find containers with gear. You equip or sell it between missions.

Really it seems more shallow than I was expecting but still fun. There are some super hard difficulties that I think require you to use more advanced stealth and hacking tactics so maybe those are better once you get the hang of it.

Update: Someone I got another weapon type on my science bot. Not sure how I unlocked it. So I guess some different weapons are available but not that customizable.

Played a couple more hours. I think I really got the hang of it now! While my initial reaction was "awesome, custom robots!" followed 5 mins later by "wait... that's it?", I'm now starting to see the game as a whole and it's really satisfying. Yes, the combat is simple, and the loot system is reminiscent of a dungeon crawler, reminds me more of torchlight than say FTL, but I think it works. Basically you have to read the tooltips pretty closely to figure stuff out. Each mission you can depart on has a detailed description of what you're getting into. Need computer parts? Raid a science lab. And I figured out those additional weapon types came from these special missions titled Bahamut device. There's one for each of your exos and it upgrades them to an epic version which basically gets an additional gun. Pretty sweet in some cases though.

The loot all buffs your existing abilities, like weapons, certain parts will give it bonus percentages in attack power, others give it static increases in range (like +25% attack power, +2 range). Other parts give static amounts to other things (+200 shields or power), while some give static amounts of stuff you might not have like +10 hacking points (only the science bot starts with hacking points). There are 5 systems total (computers, propulsion, shields, weapons and reactor) so there's a lot of loot to equip, around 20 slots per exo. Also it uses power as a budget so you have to balance your parts or add parts to your reactor that increase your power output.

I find myself breezing through the missions cus I'm playing on casual to get the hang of it. I'm interested to see how difficult it gets, cus there is certainly a lot you can do in missions like deploy mines and then lure enemies into them, or stealth attack enemies, I just don't find myself needing to do any of that as of yet.

Overall this definitely feels like a $10 game and easily worth the 2.50 sale price. It seems pretty long for a rogue style game, 4 hours in and I'm only about 1/3rd of the way to the final robot invasion! So if you do many playthroughs on different difficulties I could see this taking some time. Plus there are a ton of achievements like beat an entire level with one exo type.

I think I'm done with Bionic Dues. Too much of a chore for me. It probably picks up, but it consumes too much time and the investment isn't worth it. The pace in FTL suits me better. Not a bad game though.

It seems extremely long for a rogue like. The loot system really slows it down, it reminds me of diablo or torchlight with the sheer amount of loot you get and have to sort through. Actually it's extremely similar to darkspore, but no one has played that game so they won't get the comparison. But they have tons of loot and darkspore you are also equipping 4 heroes with complex intertwining stats. I think that's what slows this game down too much, and if you're on a hard difficulty you might have to equip new loot after every mission. Also 50 days til the final battle takes a while to get there. Took me 8 hours to finish my first play through. I'll probably do one more on hard and then be done with the game. I'll write up a full review after trying a harder difficulty cus casual was a cakewalk and got repetitive. But I feel that hard might be worse if you really have to max your robots after every missions cus the looting is so cumbersome.

FYI, FTL: Advanced Edition was just released. I downloaded it, haven't tried it yet. I tried to look at their website to see the updates but so much traffic is has crashed.

Played for quite some time today:
AMAZING!

-> They added a lot of quality of life improvements to the UI. For example, you can now save the location of all crew members and send them back there with a single button/hotkey.

-> The New equipment is really, really cool. Some stuff seems a bit overpowered, but all in all there are now a lot of new cool options.

-> Sensors and Security systems can now be manned to increase their effective level by one, up to level four (which can only be achieved with a manned station). This gives some really cool option during the game if you have many crew members or end up in a sudden ambush (stronger doors have saved me a few times already).

-> The new race has quite interesting gameplay (slow like the Rocks, does not need air, drains air in their room with their presence).

-> The new type C ships seem to use new equipment and thus offer new playstile options. For example, the Slug C has mindcontrol and hacking, making it a powerful early game "crowd control" ship.

-> Quite a lot of new events and a lot more blue event options, including for some systems that were rarely useful.


Overall, this is a fantastic adddon - and while others would charge you 10€ for it, here you will get it FOR FREE.

civvver said:

FYI, FTL: Advanced Edition was just released. I downloaded it, haven't tried it yet. I tried to look at their website to see the updates but so much traffic is has crashed.

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Played a session on easy. It's even better than before.. a bit easier at easy, I think, which is good, and the end battle is probably a tad easier and better paced too.

I like it a lot. Added content and free.


Anyone tried BroForce? Looking pretty good. Still early access, but I might get it in a while.

Bumping for a new lil game I saw on steam, Transistor, http://store.steampowered.com/app/237930/

It's by the same stuido that made Bastion. It looks a lot like bastion. I wonder if it's the same engine? It basically looks like Bastion with a different storyline. But I liked bastion so I'll probably get it on a sale. Anyone heard anything about it?


Also want to get some more FTL advanced discussion going! Since I finally fired it up... I had already unlocked all ships except for the crystal one and the slug on in the regular version so now I'm just trying to win with the mantis cruiser gilamonster to unlock the slug guy. But dang, the mantis ship sucks. You'd think having boarding with 2 mantis that early would be amazing but you're screwed vs drones with shields and having no sensors sucks.

I'm also finding cloak to be mandatory vs the final boss for avoiding those drones and the phase 3 super laser. Anyone else able to win without a cloak? I mean the new hacking and mind control systems are cool and work amazingly well on the gilamonster to compliment your boarders but vs the boss having a drone system with defense and a cloak seem to be vastly superior. Kinda sad. The new stuff seems more like gimmicks than legit strats.

Athough if you get a vulcan chain gun it's GG game won lol. That thing is amazing. I'm trying to decide if 2 vulcan guns or 4 burst laser mark IIs would be a better ultimate setup.

Unlocked all ships or all versions of the ships?

There's some hidden ship still not unlocked for me, otherwise I've got all versions of ships unlocked now - A-C. Done on easy, but it's the appropriate level imo.

Not sure what level you're playing at, but on easy it's possible to get it done without cloak. I think the teleport almost is more necessary, unless you've got lucky with guns. I really like the hack combined with teleport - besides hacking whatever system you like, you can use it to seal off different portions of the ships. Pick out a narrow-neck and clean out the sealed off portion with mantis

Not all versions, I had just done all the quests except the slug and crystal one.

I played a lot last week and am realizing how rigid I was in my thinking, cus advanced gives you so many more options. Hacking means you can carry completely different weapon loadouts. And the battery can let you power some advanced drones like a defense 2 and a regular defense when the super weapons fire. Cloak isn't quite a must have but I still prefer it.

So now I'm trying to unlock the crystal ship and win with all the B-variants of the ships. Man, the mantis B is so high risk, high reward. The four mana teleporter is awesome but of course you only start with 2 guys and no weapons. Run into an AI ship and you're kinda screwed. That boarding drone will kill the ship eventually but you will take a lot of hits. I restarted 2 games with that ship, third game was my best score by almost 1000 pts, I lucked into a third mantis and a human crew member early, then found 2 vulcan cannons. With 3 mantis I had so much scrap, I upgraded every system to full lol. Boss was a cakewalk.

Some of the new events make the game much easier too, seems like there is more good stuff. I've gotten the rebel flagship construction event I think 3 times now, check it out on the wiki, it's 5 of everything plus high scrap and a weapon.

I think people might be right, the advanced version is a tad easy, but I'm still not ready to jump to normal mode. I like winning most games.