Fantastic titles made by people in their bedrooms.
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Uh… I swear I wanted to contribute just 2 or 3 games, but as I wrote, I kept remembering one gem after another… oh well… :)
Outer Wilds - So hard to describe, it’s an exploration game, but what you’re exploring is a star system going supernova, in a wooden spaceship no less. And a strange way of (not) time travel is also involved, which could be the root of the whole game loop.
Axiom Verge - A platformer that is such a labor of love that it hits just the perfect mix of approachability, exploration, story development and that “huh?” factor where right until the end you’re not sure what your abilities actually mean - i.e. if you could glitch through walls in the real world, would that imply the real world is a simulation?
Stardew Valley - A somehow utterly satisfying farming simulator in the style of the first Harvest Moon games. Such a nice getaway game - it begins with your avatar quitting their office job and moving to a farm inherited from their grandfather. No taxes, no boss, no stress, just rise with the sun, plant, water, harvest and fix. Change your rhythm with the weather and the seasons, investigate charming little mysteries of a beautiful place.
Broforce - Another platformer, this one a bit more brutal. Far over the top 80s action heroes bring freedom to the world, but whether you play as Robocop, Schwarzenegger, McGyver, Snake Plissken, Ripley or another 50 heroes is almost random and each hero has completely different weapons and skills. Destructible environment and even a large Xenomorph outbreak (how the heck did they get the license or grant?).
Protolife - This one uses such a madly simple recipe for complex gameplay. Seen top-down, you’re a robotic loader than can put down dots. That’s all. But certain arrangements of dots are guns, long range guns, flame throwers, area denial, missile silos, barriers and so on. You’re attacked by insect-like creatures, but instead of building tanks, you have to attack via well-placed guns slowly pushing the swarming enemies back.
Alien Shooter 2 Reloaded - Simple top-down shooter where you’re the lone soldier seeking to contain an alien outbreak. Goes for the time-honed recipe of character stat upgrades (speed, health, accuracy) and purchasing weapons and weapon upgrades. The interesting part is the insane hordes you’re up against and that all the corpses stay. It’s not unusual for entire corridors to turn into flesh hallways of blood and carapaces.
Moons of Madness - I hope this is actually indie, the graphics are near AAA level. It’s 50% walking simulator, 50% cosmic horror, set on Mars. You’re an astronaut doing maintenance on an outpost, but rather than go for the “freaky alien attack” recipe, reality itself seems to be somehow bending. Cthulhu, is that you?
Lumencraft - Top-down game. You begin as a miner in an underground base. Something really bad happened to humanity and now you’re digging underground for metal and for “lumen.” To feed the reactor that keeps humanity alive, you have to meet harvesting goals and dig tunnels, but various enemies attack in waves, so you have to spend part of your resources on fortifications and turrets and avoid opening up too many avenues into your bases.
Carrion - 2D platformer-ish. In a secret place, scientists are holding a horrific, tentacled bioweapon locked away, but it escapes. Twist: you are the tentacled bioweapon, slithering through pipes, circumventing security systems and trying to escape from the lab.
Nuclear Blaze - 2D platformer. You’re a fireman sent to contain a fire the broke out in some kind of installation in a forest. But one building has a shaft that leads deep underground where a high-end containment facility is suffering a failure. Takes place in the “SCP” universe and your only tool is a fire hose. Extremely fun trying to extinguish fires in a way where they won’t spread again.
Mothergunship - This is a first-person shooter where you’re bording and destroying (from the inside out) an army of AI space ships. But instead of a traditional gun, you have gun parts you can stick together. How about a triple rocket launcher with two shotguns in the middle? Or a shield generating laser with a sawblade attache to it, and maybe two shotguns just to be sure? It doesn’t grow old with new weapon parts being introduced right until the very end.
Space Run - 2D base building. You’re a mercenary cargo pilot fending off space pirates. But you don’t do it by controlling a turret, instead, your spaceship is a building surface and you have to build the right kind of engines, turrets, shields and power generators (in mid-flight no less) to be able to shoot down incoming rocks and pirate ships. Extremely well balanced and fun.
Creeper World - 3D real-time strategy. But your enemy is not actually present on the map, you’re just fighting a simulation of liquid, a gooey slime that pours out of several spots. You have to keep shooting, bombarding and containing the splashing, pouring slime until you can neutralize the slime outlets. The story is cool, too. The slime is actually some extinct species “gift” to the universe which dissolves everything into data, transmitted to some eternal storage space at the center of the universe.
man.
i’m not saying you didn’t run into quality posts on reddit, but this is the kind of post i see way more often here and it makes these spaces way more enjoyable.
nice work, definitely going to try a few of these out!
That’s just anecdotal. Be careful as a lot of these answers are often written by bots / ads in disguised.
Cave story the og … man what a game
I feel like people must be tired of me recommending the same few games (you know, if anyone cared enough to read all my comments), but I’m the type of guy who is pretty much only interested in finding the more hidden gems, and I generally ignore the stuff that keeps showing up on the front page of Steam.
- The Upturned - A cartoony horror-comedy game with a great sense of humor.
- Withering Rooms - The story is interesting and the atmosphere is great.
- Your Spider - This one is possibly my favorite indie horror game.
- Exanima - Read about the features. This one is more impressive than the screenshots make it look (at least for me).
- Lunacid - I love the visual style and atmosphere of this. I also enjoyed Lost in Vivo by the same developer.
- Praey for the Gods - This one is for anyone who’s looking for more games like Shadow of the Collossus.
- 8Doors: Arum’s Afterlife - This is a decent metroidvania with a charming story. If you enjoyed Hollow Knight, then you may also enjoy this.
+1 for Exanima
I was looking for someone recommending The Upturned, it’s great. Also made by the same guy who made Lethal Company
Return of the Obra Dinn. City Game Studio. Until the Last Plane and Full Metal Sergeant (by the same dev).
Haven’t seen these mentioned, Citizen Sleeper and In Other Waters by Jump Over the Age are incredible games, beautiful artistically and really great world building
Spiritfarer. Probably one of the most touching games I’ve ever played. What Remains of Edith Finch. Stardew Valley. Firewatch.
FTL, Rimworld.
I have about 5000 hours just on these two
FTL sucked me in for a few years. I still have yet to get the crystal cruiser
Outer Wilds and Hollow Knight share the spotlight for greatest games of all time. Both are as close to perfect as it gets.
Bastion gets an honorable mention. Not sure if SuperGiant Games is considered indie anymore, especially now that Hades hit big, but I love their early work.
Bastion was definitely indie when it was made so it counts
Don’t forget about Transistor and Pyre.
Has Super Giant ever made a flop? Just all outstanding games all around.
Are Journey and Outer Wilds considered indie games?
Outer Wilds certainly was. It was started as a college project and the devs stayed together to finish it after they graduated.
Journey I’m not so sure. I don’t think it’s indie? If it is indie, then I’d put The Pathless up for consideration. That game finished what Journey and Abzu started, and it has some of the best feeling overworld movement of any open world exploration game I’ve ever played. Flawless.
Oh good shout, I remember being intrigued by The Pathless when it came out but never got around to trying it!
Abzu fell kinda flat for me after Journey, but The Pathless more than makes up for it. It seems to be set in the same world as both prior games and has several references to each, so playing the first two does make it more rewarding to play.
I definitely recommend it since you liked Journey. The movement and combat feels great. It’s refreshingly short and focused for an open world exploration game, so it respects your time, and it also has some excellent storytelling with plenty of nice emotional highs and lows. It’s a worthy successor.
Yeah I was let down by Abzu. It was beautiful but didn’t have substance. You speak very highly of The Pathless, I’m excited to try it out. Thanks for the rec!
Several hundred hours of Oxygen not included…
POST VOID and Brotato
Because nobody else has mentioned it yet: Dust: An Elysian Tail.
Made almost entirely by one person, and that honestly makes it all the more impressive.
Dust is great, but it’s deeply flawed.
The art is phenomenal, but the writing is cringeworthy. I loved it as a teenager but I have a hard time taking it seriously now. I wish I never replayed it so I could have kept my nostalgia.
The combat mechanics are fun and feel amazing when played as intended, but they’re massively unbalanced. IIRC with two exceptions (enemies that require a parry to enter a vulnerable state) every single fight can be won flawlessly by spamming Dust Storm even on the highest difficulty.
It’s a remarkable game, all the more so since it was only one dev. I 100%'ed it, and it sits in a place of honor in my collection, but it’s not one I’ll ever return to.
From memory I do remember things getting ludicrously easy if you levelled Fidget right up. And I don’t recall the writing at all. Likely just nonsense to move the plot along while opening up new areas.
But as a one man effort, it’s incredible. Especially the art style, which normally falls into the pixel art or just plain ugly when it comes to the 1-2 man indie games.
Agreed. The art looks straight out of an anime, and Dust’s combat animations are really smooth and satisfying. I think the cutscenes looked really good, too, but it’s been long enough that I don’t remember.
I had a quick look on YouTube and they’re not bad at all. It’s hardly Baldur’s Gate 3, but it doesn’t look out of place next to most of the AA Ubisoft 2D games that had dozens of people working on them.
Since I don’t see anyone mentions it.
Tunic. The shortcuts are so cleverly hidden that allows you to easily break the sequence in your next playthrough. The manual translation felt just like back when I tried to understand japanese game manuals that come with game boy cartridges.
Chain of Echoes. A one man RPG game with a unique combat system that has great quality of life.
I was kinda frustrated by Tunic. Not gonna lie. It’s clearly a masterpiece but you have to play old school and write every single little thing down. Go back and forth for days.
Chains of Echoes is tied with Chrono Trigger for best JRPG of all time and my mind won’t be changed. Now if only anything else could soothe that itch. I love that you absolutely never 'Just click Attack’s over and over to save MaNa.
Tied with Chrono Trigger? That’s some insanely high praise. Why do you say that, exactly? I’ve never played Chained Echoes, so just curious. Chrono Trigger is my favorite game of all time.
Just everything, honestly.
The battle system for starters is constantly asking you to think smart. You’ve a gauge that you have to keep centered to be “in the flow” such that you can’t blindly use the best attack every time. You always start every battle with full health and mana - so you never have to ration between fights. Which adds up that every fight can be difficult. There is no cannon fodder.
You level up as the story progresses so you can’t simply grind to a higher level. There is a level system but it’s more a skill mastery one It respects your time in that you will never need to grind for anything.
The puzzles are difficult enough to be challenging but not so much that you will ever need a strategy guide.
The story is relatable without being convoluted. Each character has realistic goals, and interests. There is no clear “I’m evil because fuck you I’m evil”. There is no clear good guy either, and you will see what I mean if you finish the story.
The world makes sense and has no suspension or disbelief moments. Speaking of it’s a world in which both Dragons and Giant frickin robots are both natural, and they make sense.
I absolutely loathe when a JRPG Battle System demands that I either save everything so that I have MaNa for the boss fight, or makes it so that you should just click ‘Attack’ every time with no reason. I also loathe random battles. This has none - you choose which monsters to fight, and they don’t come right back.
I literally could not put it down for any length of time until I had hit 100% of everything. A tall order for a game that took me almost 100 hours when I’m a full time adult with kids.
Inside, Subnautica
oooh, yes!! i forgot Inside. i loved that game.
juicy atmosphere and environmental storytelling, my favourite >:)
I’m replaying subnautica after a few years since my first playthrough. I thought that it was more of a one-time experience than a replayable game but enough time has passed that my memory is more of a general feeling than remembering specifically where everything is, so it’s been surprisingly engaging. Without even trying, I’m pretty sure the way I’m going through everything is different from my last playthrough, too.
i finished the game without hatching eggs so that’s something I’d do on my next play, i also missed the large strider crab creatures on my first play. going into the second game, I’m taking advantage of all the new tech before progressing the story because i managed to get halfway through the first one without crafting a proper base
Yeah, the one achievement I’m missing is hatching a certain egg so I’ve been collecting eggs this time around. Just got the alien containment, so I guess it’s time to start at that.
I’ve just built my second base. I only had one in my first playthrough, but I built more for sub zero and realized there’s nothing really stopping me from building a ton of them other than how much time I want to spend gathering the resources for it.
I’m considering trying to go to the end without a Cyclops sub since I’ve already got the max depth for the seamoth, though I need to find those deep mushrooms again for the defense shock that would be essential for that. Though now that I think of it, the Cyclops was probably why I didn’t build a second base and the lack of Cyclops was probably why I ended up building more bases in sub zero.
Just finished my first permadeath vegan play through (never caught a single fish, though I admit I ran over a few hundred).
hello, were you also inspired by poor dunce’s vegan Skyrim playthrough?
No, haven’t seen it, but will check it out.
Oh wow, are there any non-fish foods other than the nutrient blocks and those trees on the surface? Can you fabricate the blocks at any point? I can’t remember if the first one has the indoor grow plots for surface plants like sub zero does.
I guess the main question I’m getting at is if you can do this without having to travel to the surface to stuff your face with trees or being very strategic with the nutrient blocks you find?
So, the first 30 minutes go like this. Find the stuff to make and craft the knife, scanner, fins, air tanks, and building tool.
You can eat kelp and make bleach>water w salt and coral to stay alive, though it’s a LOT of kelp.
Then head straight to southern island to scan the multipurpose room, indoor and outdoor grow beds, and grab lantern fruit and marble mellons.
You can then build a base and grow all the food you will ever need. I stock up on a ton of bleach and make water as needed, though the food also restores some hydration.
I usually have this done before the Aurora explodes.
Once you have the cyclops you can plant in there as well. Three lantern fruit trees per base is all the food you will need in the game, and marble melons have a lot of water.
The only thing you miss out on really is the emergency air bladder, as that requires a fish. To make up for it I carry a second air tank when diving deep or exploring wrecks. I also build outdoor grow beds w brain corals in strategic places as emergency air supplies.
Honestly, I started it as a lark, and found it so enjoyable because I never get distracted chasing down and catching fish.
Prince of Persia (1989). Designed and implemented by 1 person. Hours and hours of fun and frustration.
Mostly Frustration.
I could never make it to the second level despite hours of playing.
