5 Indie Games I Need More People to Play
In the current landscape of gaming, we are consistently inundated with games — and good ones at that. We each have a backlog that needs tending like a garden filled with delicate tomatoes, except these tomatoes don’t stop popping up and you’re not sure when they starting costing you $70 a pop. Well, I’m here to potentially make your backlog even more unmanageable.
An unfortunate side effect of the booming industry is that countless games risk slipping through the cracks of the public conscious — especially indie titles that small teams (or even a single person!) pour their hearts, souls, and tears into. I have compiled a list of five uniquely outstanding games that resonate with me, and if any of them tickle your fancy, I implore you to check them out too.
5: Fishlike
Fishlike can easily be summarized as a WarioWare-like that revolves around fish. Many gamers demand a fishing minigame be inserted into everything they play — but what if the fishing minigame is the game? This breakneck mayhem of microgames challenges your reflexes, your problem solving capabilities, and your spatial awareness — it may as well come with free IQ results when the credits roll. Although its DNA resembles WarioWare a little too closely at times (the Nintendo lawyers may or may not be watching), it’s a fun take on a genre that seems to get little love in the modern era. It’s a stressful but engaging romp that the easily-enraged may have a hard time with, but I can’t get enough of its offbeat charm.
4: VIVIDLOPE
If you take a Dreamcast era Sega game and throw it into a blender with the gravity mechanics of Super Mario Galaxy, you’ll get VIVIDLOPE, a cute puzzle platformer that’s bursting at the seams with cute Frutigier Aero aesthetics. From the wonderful Y2K-inspired soundtrack to the crystal clear Windows XP backgrounds, VIVIDLOPE transports you to a cyber world that could only appear in the dreams of an avid Vaperwave fan in 2016. The core gameplay revolves around the player sprinting across a grid-based environment filled with hazards and items that feel transported straight out of an arcade cabinet. The game rewards you for building and maintaining momentum, so this one is perfect for the speedrunners out there as well as anyone looking for a casual game with an OST that’ll knock your Drum and Bass socks off.
3: Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom
What if you dropped the driver of Crazy Taxi into a psychedelic-frenzied version of Mario 64? Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom aims to answer that question. Equal parts absurd and nostalgic, this game has some of the most engaging platforming mechanics I’ve seen in a long time. Yellow Taxi is centered around a wind-up taxi that — realistically — cannot jump in typical 3D platformer fashion. Instead, it introduces some clever movement mechanics such as the dash, which allows the player to hurl themself toward angled terrain and soar across a level or launch upward. This chaotic approach to verticality instantly stands out in the world of retro platformers, and the level design perfectly suits the playground that developer Panik Arcade has laid out for the player. All of this mixed with the fever dream art direction makes for my favorite 3D platformer that I’ve experienced in quite some time. If you were addicted to mastering the intricate movement in Super Mario Odyssey, your thumbs are in for a treat in Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom.
2: Lunacid
Lunacid provides an atmosphere that is unmatched by any other game currently on the market. Everything from the sound design, environments, character models, and world layout feels perfectly stitched together. Hosting a breathing, gothic world that sucks you in and demands that you explore every nook and cranny, Lunacid treats you to a multitude of surprises with each new region you discover. Having initially discovered the game thanks to a musician and Youtuber I’m particularly fond of that goes by the name of ThorHighHeels (who also composed a few songs for the soundtrack), I didn’t exactly know what I was getting into other than the fact that most discussions online refer to this game as a spiritual successor to King’s Field — a FromSoftware series that long predates the Souls games and is known best for its esoteric design and gothic dungeon aesthetic. The amount of creativity on display here is truly staggering; the soundtrack challenges expectations for the genre and the unique enemies are cleverly designed (the enemy featured here is quite literally a floating nervous system). Though its genetics certainly resemble Dark Souls, I’d say this is about as original as a game can get.
1: Tiny Rogues
At times it can be difficult for a game to grab my undivided attention for long periods of time (attention-deficit pals, please stand up), but something about Tiny Rogues demands that I indulge in very lengthy play sessions. Perhaps it’s the high stakes combat or the meticulously designed class-build system. As a gamer that is not the most avid player of Roguelikes, Tiny Rogues has figured out how to perfectly blend RPG and Roguelike elements into a game that feels like perfect harmony. Using a visual style reminiscent of old-school text RPGs (or even the original Rogue — imagine that!) the seemingly simplistic art finds a way to deliver a ton of charm, and that’s through the creative design of items and weapons throughout each semi-unique run that you’ll do. Compared to other roguelikes, the game starts out relatively easy until you reach an inevitable point in every run where things devolve into proper bullet-hell panic. If you’re at all fond of Roguelikes, then Tiny Rogues is your new addiction.
—8/28/2024
