Alright, a day late and a gimmicky title. If you're so brilliant, you think of something better.
Yesterday, I awoke at 8:45 AM like I do every work day, with the exception that since this was a national holiday, I had the day off. Unable to force myself back to sleep, I fired up my laptop and hopped on Steam to finish Bastion once more. The gears in my head had barely started to shift and so I found it amusing that my first act on Independence day was to complete one of the most well-designed and highly praised indie games. This got me thinking that, thematically, I should do a piece on indie titles for July 4th. Well, Mike's scheduled for Thursdays, so I put mine off a day.
I could ramble about how I've watched the indie game scene grow thanks to hugely successful titles like Bastion, but I'd rather gush about a few games that I think everyone should give a try, if they haven't already. In no particular order, here are my top 5 indie titles.
Bastion - The breakout hit from Supergiant Games who have another isometric beat-'em-up coming out in 2014 called Transistor. The thing that was recently brought to my attention is that, gameplay-wise, Bastion didn't do anything new or different. That's not what hooked me though. What hooked me into the game were two things. One, the "adaptive" narrator. Having that deep, intriguing voice narrate everything I was doing AS I did it was something special. Two, watching the ground form up from underneath you as you moved about in the world was different and exciting, especially considering the gorgeous art that formed this game's visuals. That being said, the other points that rounded out this superb indie title were its beautiful art work, its wondrous and memorable soundtrack (that I still listen to on occasion), and it's very solid gameplay. This is a title that I still revisit from time to time, partially due to nostalgia and partially due to its very strong construction.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent - No indie list would be complete without Amnesia. Fractional Games is no stranger to survival horror and Amnesia seems to have taken all its lessons from their Penumbra series and a whole mess of Lovecraftian fiction. Amnesia is still the only game I've seen that actually tells you to turn OFF all the lights in your room. The game is so incredibly atmospheric that the developers tell you how to get the most from the experience, by making your room as dark as possible and using headphones, and to be honest, who doesn't do this when playing survival horror? Games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill are best played under these conditions and Amnesia is no different. What makes Amnesia's scare tactics so effective is the lack of combat. The protagonist literally has no means of self-defense against the grotesque horrors that drive him mad at the mere sight of them. This "realistic" interpretation of monsters only enhances the atmosphere of the game, and that's really all it is. The story doesn't make any form of sense, and offers little to no background, but still we play Amnesia because it scares the piss out of us, like so few games can do these days.
Hotline Miami - Dennation Games' ultra-violent-retro-stealth-action-shooter is something everyone should experience. This is the only painfully unforgiving game that I've thoroughly enjoyed, despite the absurd number of times I died each level. Every single hit in this game is fatal, from bullets to bludgeons, for both yourself and the enemies. Sure, shotguns are king of the ring, but with all the noise they make, you might just find another 3 armed mobsters kicking in the door each time you fire a shot. The story is disjointed and confusing, but it doesn't muddle the gameplay at all, and is rather intriguing, all things considered. Personally, I suggest playing this game on the PC. While the mouse and keyboard controls feel awkward at first, they feel tighter and more controlled than when I used an Xbox 360 controller for the same game.
Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams - So I might never have heard of this game if I didn't religiously follow the band
Machinae Supremacy, but that doesn't mean it's subpar in the slightest. You play as a pair of sisters caught in contrasting worlds. For the sake of this article, we'll call them Nice and Punk. Nice has been thrown into the decaying, fungal Nightmare World whereas, her sister, Punk, has been thrown into the happy, green Dream World. The game freely lets (and occasionally requires) you to switch between sisters, which adjusts the level and atmosphere accordingly. Imps from Nice's Nightmare World become Owls in Punk's Dream World. Aside from the really well-crafted platforming, two things make this game special. First, the switching. Seamless changes from Nightmare to Dream and back again as you swap between sisters. Not only does the level ebb and flow as you would expect, but the background and foreground landscapes change in a very appropriate manner. Gross brown mushrooms change to lively green trees, the dead landscape perks up. Everything is rendered in 3D and feels very fluid. Second, the soundtrack. Nice's upbeat, dreamy platformer music is composed by Chris Hülsbeck and the same exact tunes flow directly into Punk's heavy metal versions of the same songs composed and recorded by Machinae Supremacy. The game also includes an option to limit yourself to one version of the soundtrack in the menu, which is really cool for those that prefer one over the other. Giana Sisters is extremely reminiscent of your early platform games like Super Mario Bros. and will be well appreciated by anyone that grew up with those games.
Mark of the Ninja - Okay, so you've heard me say it a dozen times. I don't like stealth games. I abhor it when developers/publishers tell me that I can play a game "any way I want" and I go in guns blazing, only to be punished by an insurmountable number of enemies coming out of the woodworks to put the 2-3 bullets into me that will end my life. I generally go out of my way to avoid games like Metal Gear Solid, or the more recent Dishonored, that have an extremely strong stealth focus. Well, I'm happy to inform you that this is the game that may have changed my mind and stance on the whole issue. Mark of the Ninja is all about being just that, a Ninja. Hiding in the shadows, assassinating soldiers, sneaking about in the dark, the whole shebang. There's something so gripping about the game's side-scrolling design and freedom of movement that actually brought me about to liking it. I haven't finished the game yet, but I can safely say that I plan to. It's also helped me change my outlook on titles like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which had a very strong stealth focus, since Adam Jensen the walking cybernetic badass, fucking died after taking two bullets. Sure, we rebuilt his carcass from scratch after he was thrown through a fucking wall in that intro sequence, but we built him to be roughly 20 times as fragile as your average hero. Now, I've started to embrace the stealth and non-lethal aspects of such games (though there's nothing non-lethal about being a ninja) and am actually starting to enjoy them. All thanks to this little indie gem.
Now, you may have noticed that my entire list consisted of A-list indie games. That's just my point. We live and game in an era where there is an A-LIST OF INDIE GAMES. If two guys in San Jose can realize their dream of creating a game about some kid in an artistic take on a post-WMD-apocalypse world, and it can sell near 2 million copies and be handed accolades out the ass, who knows what will come of Sony's support and nurture of indie devs in the future? I get giddy just thinking about it.
