Indie games nowadays feel so much more valuable than AAA-titles for me. You can still see the heart and soul the devs can put into those. There's just so many one can recommend and whenever videos like these pop up, the comment section turns into a treasure trove of amazing titles.
I regularly go into indie game videos with a pen and paper so I can keep track of games that look appealing. I'm currently working through Dirge it's been very enjoyable.
My list of reccomendations since you mentioned people doing this: Iconoclasts. Not a deep story but a good one. Interesting elements with nothing overstaying its welcome. Puzzle platformer. Ending kinda blows though. 9.5/10 for an indie, 8.5/10 for a puzzle game in general huntdown. Cyberpunk, 80s aesthetic, 2d shooter with cover system. Solid in all of those aspects. 8.5/10 for an indie, 7.5/10 for a regular game. Valfaris. The last game but on the warhammer40k equivalent of crack. No cover system, only bloodshed and a far-future grimdark setting and feel. 9/10 for an indie, 8.3/10 for a regular game Steamworld dig 1 and 2: Both are fantasticly unique metroidvanias where instead of exploring a world, you dig it out. play them in order (and add in heist, which is a 2d shooter rpg, if you have the time between 1 and 2). Short, sweet, 2 has banger music, both are addictive. og is a 8.5/10 for indie, 8 for reg, 2 is a 9.0 for indie, 8.5 for a reg Domekeeper. Also a mining based game, but a roguelike, more focus on procederal generation and resource management. Monsters come out at night so it's also kind of a 2d shooter. 8.5 for an indie, a good 7.7 for a regular game Record of Lodoss: Deedlit in wonder labyrinth. Everything good about a classic castlevania. The only problem is that it's too short. 9.5/10 for indie, 8.5 for a regular game.
I wanna buy Cross Code but I didn't love Chained Echoes (I mean I didn't hate it, it was okay). Combat and exploration were fine, but the story beats were so contrived and J-RPGEY and turned me off quite a bit Should I buy or nah
@@jac6548 I'd say the two are far to different to base the decision for one on the other. It's a wholly different kind of story and totally different gameplay.
Pure and simple Outer Wilds changed me life. I don't approach the world the same way anymore. The curiosity that game tugged at and the wonder of discovery it gave me transferred over into this world 1 to 1. Exploring physics, asking the biggest questions our universe has to offer, and working towards their beyond imagination solutions has been one of the great joys of my life and it's Outer Wilds that brought me to realizing just how amazing it all is.
It's one of the few things that's tempted me to actually get a tattoo. It's made me feel so much wonder and appreciation for the world and people around me. Furthermore, it's helped me over that last hurdle of my existentialism, and for that I can't thank it enough.
@@HolyApplebutter same here, since finishing the dlc I’ve been thinking about getting an outer wilds tattoo which is more tempting the more time passes because of how long it still stays in my mind
@@twixchexmix I played Outer Wilds within half a year of it's launch. I don't think I've gone more than a day or two, definately never a week, without thinking about it, and how it shaped my view of life in the almost 4 years since. Tattoos aren't for me, but I would not have any problem carrying a marker of this game permanently on my body, since it already has one on my mind.
@@HolyApplebutter I did get a tattoo of outer wilds (all the planets, sun and the big spoiler* on my arm) and everytime I look at it, I'm just happy, simple as that
I think this also shows the three ways you can succeed as an indie game developer: 1. Polish and improve a beloved but flawed formula (Chained Echoes) 2. Do something unique that may not be for everyone can be appreciated for what it is (Outer Wilds) 3. Just be damn good and make the best and polished exampled of an existing formula (Hades)
@@whenthehowisandmebutthedot8493 I think the way it shows players how to get cool build synergies in your runs is much better done than in the holy grail roguelikes of the genre such as Binding of Issac. The combat is much much more fun than Binding of Issac and Enter The Gungeon. Also the Characters are fundamentally integrated into the Roguelike systems, which is something I haven't seen any roguelite do before it. Also the presentation, music, and setting goes a long way into making it enjoyable for many.
Inscryption gives the same vibes as Outer Wilds, but in a different way. The more I talk about it the worse it will get. One of the most unique games I've played in a while.
@@mrburger I think the game is enjoyed most by people already familiar with the genre. If I couldn't clear each run at a good pace, it would have been extremely dull. It's balanced heavily in the player's favor (despite the unfair one-off events, to progress the story), and each failed run tends to make the gameplay easier. As a straight-up card game, it's not very good - and it's not really meant to be. It sounds like you're near the stage where it turns more from a card game into an adventure. But if you feel it's a slog, may just not be worth forcing yourself.
I agree that Inscryption is a great game, but I think it's a disservice to compare it to Outer Wilds. You can play Inscryption again, even if the experience is different. That's no different from every other game. You can't play Outer Wilds again. You literally can't, period.
@@mrburgerThe gameplay is supposed to be enjoyable on its own merits for the length of time you engage with it. It's nothing groundbreaking, but it also doesn't overstay its welcome. If you played it for a few hours, you were probably pretty close to a significant shakeup in the gameplay. I don't know why it's being compared to Outer Wilds though. Inscryption is an enjoyable ride, but doesn't really have much to say at the end if the day. Outer Wilds OTOH, is one if the games that I think can truly be called profound.
Outer Wilds will always hold a place in my heart as my favorite game of all time. At a time when I was mainly playing fast paced multiplayer shooters, Outer Wilds made me slow down and really think about the game I was playing.
The strength of indie games for me is that they're able to tackle such a unique range of ideas, mechanics, and art styles that big budget publishers are often too afraid to touch these days, so I don't think I can rank a Number 1 because they're so different in what they try to do. Disco Elysium has both some of the funniest and most emotionally impactful character building I've ever seen in a game. Hollow Knight reminded me of how fun it can be to get lost if you're in a world that's worth exploring. Katana Zero combines a gritty neo-noir atmosphere with sleek fast-paced one-hit-kill gameplay. Wildermyth is incredibly creative in how every player's experience can be different with their characters and their relationships organically developing over time as a group. SOMA was a horror game that had less jump scares and more existential crises. And Wandersong gave a spin on the classic tale of the hero's journey about a silly bard and cynical witch that made me both laugh and cry.
Hey Wildermyth mentioned, that reminds me to play some more Wildermyth, it is by far the game I stuck the most hours in. The cross campaign character building, the character interactions and even the generated campaigns can be fun. My favourite campaign by far is Eluna and The Moth.
@@alexdoorn234 I haven't played the final DLC yet but Eluna and the Moth was my favorite by far as well. Every campaign has its fun gimmicks but Eluna tightened up a lot on its core plot. Just a solid blend of cosmic horror, tragic fae folktales, and the personal story of siblings that are caught in the middle of all of it.
@@YorkJonhson I am currently playing the campaign from the newest DLC, it is a bit dense. A lot of reading so far and no map that you travel by. It is good to meet someone that also likes Eluna and the Moth, it is just so charming and the moth wings are very useful in those escape missions.
I’ve always really loved the granddaddy of all indie games, Cave Story. It’s definitely the sort of game you can tell was made by one person with no one else on the team to tell them “hey maybe don’t do that” which I mean in mostly a good way. In terms of “influence” I think it has to stand above all other indie titles just by default, and the fact that it’s a really excellent game definitely helps.
Strongly recommend Chicory: A Colorful Tale. The most basic way I can describe it is it's a 2D Zelda crossed with a coloring book, but it's also so much more than that. It has a great story that I think can resonate with anyone who's ever tried to do something creative, and the way it uses game mechanics as part of that storytelling is some of the best I've seen in a game. And of course the soundtrack by Lena Raine of Celeste fame is outstanding.
Thank GOD someone is talking about something other than the giant meme games that everyone thinks they're special for knowing about while everyone else talks about the exact same shit
@@colbyboucher6391 There is no reason to shit on others because they are all liking the same popular indie games. They are popular because they are good. You aren't any more or less special than they are because you have a game you like that is talked about less. It's unnecessarily catty and immature.
@@robertdouth8979 Not claiming I'm special, sick of other people acting like extremely well-known games are ""hidden gems"" and sick of people not looking harder while a lot of great stuff goes basically unknown
Signalis was the most recent hook that got me, made by two people that game blew me away its insane how a game can be resident evil, dead space, silent hill and metal gear all at the same time while simultaniously being none of those things and something completely new and fresh
I bought Chained Echoes and played for hours yesterday, it was a blast. Not only is the narrative quite compelling, but I was surprised to enjoy the combat as someone who wasn't into turn-based combat before.
@@CC-oi9mc Do you have any specific criticisms? I would appreciate it if you kept them to stuff before the point at which they leave farnsport and cross the border since I don't wanna be spoiled.
Your experience with Chained Echoes seems to be similar to mine with CrossCode: I expected it to be just another game to complete on my list, only to be so hooked that it now one of my top 5 personal favorites of all time!
Honestly same. I went into Crosscode expecting little more than a neat game. Came out adoring Crosscode. I don't know if it's in my top 5, but definitely somewhere among my personal favorites.
Indies are awesome. Even though I don't like roguelikes so much that not even Hades could hold me, I absolutely recognize that it's an absurdly stylish and polished game and I still recommend it to people. I like every single aspect of Hades, it's just that my goopy goblin gamer brain doesn't like that I have to restart from the beginning every time.
Nice to see I'm not the only one who felt that way about Hades. It's such a phenomenally well-made game that I enjoyed it in spite of normally not liking the inherently repetitive nature of roguelites... for a while. That says a lot about the game, though, normally I don't touch the genre at all because I get bored with them way too fast.
The only roguelite that was able to hold me over was Wizard of Legend for being able to unlock all the drip and magic. Hades got me to that place with Hercules, but I dropped it after. Minor stat boosts just weren't enough, but I still think that game has some Sweet Sexy Style.
I don't like roguelikes either, but that's not why I bounced off of Hades. I bounced off of it because the story and gameplay felt completely at odds with each other. I like the story and characters, they're really good. And it's not as if the gameplay is particularly bad, I find it to be one of the more enjoyable roguelikes alongside Enter the Gungeon. But the fact that I can only get a few conversations at a time every time I enter the House of Hades, and to talk more, I need to start a new run. And then there's the Olympians and Chaos. And the people I can encounter on the runs. All of which have story beats too. It adds up, and the game feels conflicted as a result.
Yeah, I couldn't be held by hades either. I would recommend you patch quest, a brilliantly designed game that fixes a lot of my problems with rougelikes and is criminally underrated.
Games like Outer Wilds that are best played completely blind are so good because they really immerse you in the games world. I’ve been playing games like Rain World and Tunic recently that give the same feeling. Definitely try those games out.
Mate, just a heads up - announcing "there's a twist" absolutely spoils the twist. Just say it has a really strong ending or something. No need to spoil anything. Same goes for movies.
I think that Tunic is the closest game to outer wilds in term of discovering game mechanics to progress. I also wanna talk about evil tonight, really fun game, it's basically a 2d resident evil. Anodyne 2 is also amazing
I strongly disliked Tunic. There were moments where I did a thing and felt smart, but they were rare and they make some things absurdly hard to find just for the sake of making things difficult, like figuring out the language and the golden path.
Hollow Knight is the GOAT of indies, its not not only the best indie, it seriously challenges the best games ever made in its genre going back 4 decades, its really that polished and well designed.
Yeah, Hollow Knight is easily the best metroidvania since SotN gave birth to that term. I'm hoping against hope that Silksong can capture the same brilliance, but it's got really, REALLY big shoes to fill!
@@SnapDragon128 I prefer Ori and the Blind Forest. Also an Indie metroidvania. I just find it way more appealing. The visuals, the music, the story, the gameplay. All of it.
Here's some indie games I like (minus ones that everyone knows): Horizon's Gate, Time Break Chronicles, Skul the Hero Slayer, Crystal Project, Fell Seal, Wildermyth, Tales of Maj'Eyal, Ara Fell, Rise of the Third Power, Siralim Ultimate, Fight'N Rage, One Step from Eden
A pretty great and overlooked roguelike I enjoyed recently is Revita. Has a pretty great system of using your health as currency for items, so every decision you make feels immensely impactful. Crown Trick is also great and similarly overlooked, but it's so unique, it's difficult to talk about it succintly.
Yes! I hope they read your message! Specially since we all seem to have about the same taste in video games. And that game really needs to be known and have more support!
Hey, just got enough money to get one of these two: stardew valley or hollow knight. Need help. Edit: this got pinned by mhswoocer and a lot of people had hollow knight as their answer. Thank you all so much I an having so much fun with the game ❤️
I'm not a farm sim guy so I'd say hollow knight. Everything about it is so masterfully crafted that I think it would be real disservice to never get to.
Here's my take: They're both very different games. One is a metroidvania about exploration, tough boss fights, and discovery, while the other is a much more laid back chill game about farming and talking to people. I think it depends on your current mood and what you're looking for in a game right now. If you're life is already really stressful and overwhelming, maybe stardew is the way to go, but if you want something more intense I'd go with Hollow Knight. Hope this helps!
The fact that "best" is subjective doesn't even pose a problem when it comes to indie games, because their sheer genre diversity, creativity, and quality nowadays means that it's possible to find several fantastic games that will suit your personal definition of "best" almost flawlessly. I love RPGs and metroidvanias, so for me, the "best" indie games are things like OneShot, Ori and the Blind Forest/Will of the Wisps, and Undertale. And yes, also CrossCode. Also, I like mangos.
@@VulpineFox7 That's the fun part of best being subjective. You rate Undertale as an ultimate masterpiece, where I don't. I'm not saying Undertale is a bad game by any means, the ending had me misty-eyed (and I've purchased it for multiple systems), but for me, the meta-narrative done by OneShot was superb and more impactful than Undertale's. Granted, my experience with OneShot was all the way back when it was a free title and you only had one shot to play through the story, even though I own the extended version on Steam, and plan on getting the World Machine edition on Switch sooner rather than later. The fact that you and I can have completely different and valid views of these games is the beauty of the subjective nature of best that lolhwaet mentioned. Where, when, how, and mental state all add subtle variations to the impact of a game and how it sits in your memories.
Uuuuh Celeste vs Hades is a very very interesting discussion to have, i absolutely adore both games and think they are masterful in their own right. For me what tips the balance towards Celeste is that it's probably the best designed game I've ever played in the fact that it weaves gameplay, story, themes, and presentation (both visual and in terms of sound design) to an extent I'm not sure it's been replicated in the entire medium. Playing "reach for the summit" (that's the song not the level but you guys get it) for the first time was a near transcendental experience for me, it might be my favorite level ever created for any game, and I wouldn't say it particularly stands out above the rest of the game in terms of quality, it's actually because the whole game is so consistently incredible that the level becomes so special. Hades is the culmination (so far, i have huge hope for the future) of my favorite game studio, playing Bastion was one of the most important gaming experiences of my childhood, but Celeste is for me the culmination of gaming as a medium so far, not foregoing any of it's aspects in order to heighten others, but rather polishing and tuning gameplay, story and presentation in an unprecedented way.
And when you think it couldn't get any better, Celeste devs give us Farewell DLC haha. But yeah Celeste executes every aspect of video games perfectly while Hades has some shortcomings for example the story pacing is rng and gets annoying to conclude when the gods simply won't give you the dialogue you need to advance
Thank you for this video, and for everyone adding recommendations! I'll add a few of my own unique ones: go play Enter the Gungeon, Bug Fables, Ultrakill, and Rain World. Heads up for RW: Each character plays in a different year/time, so stuff changes. Great games, one and all.
I think most people go into Hades not liking roguelikes/rouguelites and end up liking the formula over all because of the characters and story too... but I highly recommend you play risk of rain 2 or dead cells if you haven't tried those yet. Those are some great action roguelites. For some reason I didn't get that into Hades (maybe is the slow start it has) but I loved Bastion and Transistor. Maybe one day I will give Hades another shot.
If you like the combat of Hades and Cross Code, you NEED to try wizard of legend. Not as good as either of those games, but the combat? The combat is better.
I just bounced off of Hades because it felt like the story and gameplay were at odds with one another. I loved the story and characters. Even the gameplay I found to be more enjoyable than most roguelikes. But the two just did not mesh well, imo.
I've heard it's common that most people that don't like roguelikes love Hades, while many people who love roguelikes find Hades very mediocre. I'm part of the second group, and I find this an interesting trend.
It took me over a year to commit to playing the dlc for Outer Wilds for the same reason as you, I just didn't want to be finished with the game, I was also worried about it tainting the base game. Fortunately they absolutely nailed it and it felt like it naturally belonged. You won't be disappointed
REAAAALLLYYYY wanted to play the DLC. But I'm way too freaked out by the foreignness and hostility of the new location. Like the Hearthians really don't belong there. Haven't touched it despite having the DLC for almost a year.
My rec is for a game coming in about a week after i post this on april 26th. Cassette beasts. A monster taming rpg with heavy 80s aesthetics and where you scan monsters to become them in battle and also has fusion mechanics. Played the demo and loved it and heavily looking forward to the full release.
All the "gaming is doomed" videos I watch are insane. Participate in the Steam Next Fest and your wishlist will double in size just with games that aren't coming out even within the year. Gaming is only getting brighter.
That thumbnail almost made me pop a vein the mark of a high quality thumbnail right there also considering you enjoyed outer wilds so much, perhaps rain world would be one you'd enjoy as well?
god I love A Short Hike, it just got me to shut up and enjoy something, just listening to the wing rush by in that game gives me a sense of calm no other game ever has.
You should give Tunic a try, it's similar to Outer Wilds in you have to go in blind but there comes a point where you need to flip that stay blind conception on its head if you get really stuck in the late game you can ask for help but if you how to read the clues right you can do it yourself.
Great video! There's so many great indie games out there. One that I would recommend that wasn't in the video is Death's Door. It's a game that I always recommend! Another one I personally love is A Hat in Time. I hope you enjoy the Outer Wild DLC when you decide to play it. I was a bit sad when it ended, but it still left me happy that I experienced it. [ also, strawberries ::) ]
Gonna have to check out Chained Echoes but if we’re talking send ups to older games, I’d call The Messenger one of the best indies I’ve ever played. A beautiful love letter to Ninja Gaiden with a good sense of humor and killer music
The messenger isn’t the best Metroidvania I’ve played, but it’s probably my favorite game that happens to be a metroidvania (If that makes sense). The Metroidvania elements are whatever but that doesn’t matter when the gameplay is so fun, the humor so good, and the music so insanely amazing
Amazing video as always. It's such a hard question, one that I don't know if I can even give an answer to. In contrast to the many lifeless triple-As, so many indie games just utterly ooze personality, creativity, fantasticalness, and love. So many contenders come to mind: Celeste; my favourite of all time, a game I love so dearly. Precise, concise controls, and every single level was something new and amazing. Hades; the art, the gameplay, the dialogue, everything about it is so refined, so much so that when I first played it I did so for 24 hours straight. Hollow Knight; arguably the single greatest modern metroidvania. Spearheaded the indie metroidvania boom. What Remains of Edith Finch; this game left me speechless. There's many more but it'll take so long to comment on all of them; Undertale, A Hat in Time, Furi, Dead Cells, Ori 2, Jazzpunk, Inscryption. But those are just out of the ones I've played, there are SO many that I am yet to play; Outer Wilds, Bloodstained, CrossCode, Chained Echoes, Omori, Disco Elysium just to name a few. Two of the best are even getting sequels, in Hades 2 and Silksong. Indie games are incredibly beautiful, they are so diverse yet so amazing. So many people can have so many different valid answers to this question. Compared to the double/triple-A library, such a high percentage of indie games can be argued to be the best. So I don't know when or if ever I'll be able to definitively answer, "What is the best indie game?". But personally, for right this second, it's Celeste. (couldn't even type that without second guessing myself).
took me an hour or so to type xd note: there's so many more amazing indies i love and recommend but I either didn't list them because the list would be too long or they don't fit my vague criteria for contending "the best"
I love a few things in gaming: Indies, retro Metroidvania's, & Dating/Social Sims. 2022 alone has a multitude of genre-defining great titles: Neon White is a masterpiece. It expertly paces itself between the dopamine rush it grants from completing a level with better and better times, to easing up and exploring each level looking for the collectible hidden within, before finally letting you cool off by chatting with the cast of goofy and fun characters. It is a thoroughly enjoyable experience that caused me to range from having a small smile creep into my focused expression to a big goofy smile with genuine laughter at the dialogue and characters. This barely won out for my 2022 GotY -------------------- Potionomics executed every idea it had to perfection. The moment to moment gameplay in making high quality potions versus bartering their value up is addictively good. The character interactions and overall writing is high quality, makes you feel like you are talking to complete and fun people, all while backed by a progressive underpinning which I cannot get enough of. The visuals are the absolute best use of cg-animation I have ever and may ever see with characters being unbelievably expressive in what is a clear labour of love. With the music having entered some of my playlists for reading and relaxing in my down time. I fully recommend this title to people who are even ambivalent towards the genres present in this title. --------------------------------- Hush Hush is a warm and bright game. Warm in the dialogue that is always flirty and full of banter. Bright in that it is not afraid to be a dating simulator. This is a game for people who like to go on dates with cute girls, it doesn't need to obscure this through parody like other titles. The game also isn't just a "regular bouquet in a bowl" as it goes on it gets more serious in subject matter and treats its characters as real people with their own problems and emotional needs. The core of the gameplay requires you to connect through pathos/empathy and it thoroughly tests your social skills. I don't know if I will ever praise a Social Simulator as highly as this title again in my life, it is just so exceptionally written/performed/drawn and I hope other games follow suit as the medium develops. --------------------------------------- Anyone interested in Social Simulators or just enjoys conversing with interesting people should give these 3 a shot. ---------------------------- *Upcoming Indie Shoutout:* Chants of Senaar is a game where you must learn to decipher a foreign language depicted in hieroglyphics and solve puzzles along the way. I played its demo during the latest Steam Next Fest and was thoroughly sold on its gameplay and premise. I would love to mention a boatload more but this comment is already longer than my last homework assignment.
Love these 3 picks as for a recommendation it would be rain world it is such a magical experience with a good amount of similarities to outer wilds but absolutely brutally challenging.
If you are into metroidvanias, Phoenotopia awakening is my favorite indie game alongside crosscode. It is very similar to Zelda 2 in terms of exploration and abilities, but the charm, the story, and the characters are just so good, I really want it to be well known because I havent seen that much people talking about it
It's a toss-up between watermelon and mangoes for my favorite fruit, between my favorite fruit as a kid and the fruit I never ate as a kid but now really enjoy eating. I've long found indie games to be a fascinating market, because they thrive on thousands of individuals who grew up with video games deciding that there needs to be a game that merges concepts from multiple other games they played, or has a unique method of story telling, or even simply one with an aesthetic that they don't see often enough. Someone missed the Battle Network games, and came up with the idea for One Step From Eden. Someone lived for intriguing mystery writing and came up with Return of the Obra Dinn. Someone loved JRPGs (FF in particular) and wanted to merge that gameplay with open-world exploration and platforming, and came up with Crystal Project. A group of people were really into fighting games and a particular cartoon, and eventually created Them's Fightin' Herds from their passion project. There are *thousands* of stories like this for all sorts of amazing games, spanning every possible genre and inventing new ones. And the most incredible part is that their appeal can defy genre preference. As mentioned in the video, Hades is probably the strongest example, as it can appeal to people even if they aren't particular to roguelike/roguelite gameplay, just because the game at its core is what many might call perfection. Just to round off this comment, I'll list some indies I enjoy that I don't see from a quick scroll. 20XX and 30XX are a fun pair of roguelike games based off Megaman and Megaman X respectively, with co-op. UnMetal is a fun, comedic spoof of the old Metal Gear games. Astro Colony is a game that looked at Raft and thought, "but what if in space?" SYNTHETIK and its sequel are incredibly tight top-down roguelike shooters. Bug Fables is a charming recreation of the old Paper Mario aesthetic. Monster Sanctuary is a fun adventure that combines monster catching and metroidvania exploration. Lastly, The Fall and its sequel were the first time I ever played through a series of point-and-click adventure games, despite usually being unable to enjoy that style of game. I can hope that name dropping a bunch of titles like this leads someone to finding something new to enjoy.
Rain world for me the game is quite good. It can feel brutal at times but that kind of adds to it since your supposed to be low on the food chain. But as you play you unlock stronger characters and learn how to move better and with how complex the movement can be it changes the game completely. lot to learn feels like a world to explore and there is quite a bit of hidden lore for replay ability.
Three games I haven't seen anyone else mention: -Deadbolt: Violent stealth action with really intriguing lore in the background -Hello Charlotte: Weird RPGMaker adventure with some horror and lots of feels -Roadwarden: A fantasy RPG that elevates text-based games into truly feeling like an interactive novel, makes every other text adventure I've played look like amateur hour
Apple. Rainworld is like being dropped naked into a jungle and being told to survive. It's got lots of depth in its mechanics that are satisfying to learn and master. The only thing is, it will only tell you the basics of movement and combat. The rest is up to you to learn and explore. You are given only one goal but many players will arrive there in many different ways since it's nonlinear. The world is merciless and gigantic (bigger than hollow knight's). All creatures will move freely across screens with their own motives and goals, almost like the game is simulating a terrarium. That's really what it aims to do, simulate an ecosystem. It's a punishing, but rewarding experience, and I would recommend it a whole lot. Also it recently got a dlc that doubled its size.
My favorite and most impactful Indie games I ever played are The Beginner's Guide (walk-sim), Sayonara Wild Hearts (my most replayed game ever) and Hi-Fi Rush (idk if this counts as indie but its my favorite action game)
Im gonna reccomend a few games here so here we go. Anuchard while personally I found a bit easy and the gameplay good but not great I mainly reccomend it for the story, i wont say anything because i know im bad for spoiling stuff but id say give it a look.(side note the only reason i found anuchard was because the main character makes an appearence in crosscode as one of the backer character, they're the one wielding the giant bell in that one library in rhombus square) Demon turf is a fun 3d platformer, id say its pretty on par with other games like it like a hat in time, it overall has a good difficulty balance with the main challenge coming from the optional stuff like collectibles or time trials, its story is fun but not anything too special, id recommend it if you like 3d platformers. Floppy Knights is a fun mix of deckbuilder amd turnbased strategy games, it definately starts out a bit easy but it gets really hard towards the end, the characters are fun and the story is serviceable but i mainly played for the gameplay. Stories the Path of Destinies and Omensight are 2 games by the same developers with the same overall premise, you play through the same day multiple times and learn more and more about whats going on with the end goal of getting a good ending. Overall id say Omensight is the better of the 2, you go through the day following one of 4 characters where you get information, you can then give that informatipn to a different character and it will affect how the day plays out with the end goal to figure out how the godless priestess was murdered. Overall i like the premise and gameplay but the main downside to this kind of storytelling is youll go through the same levels several times, sure the story is different and you might take a few paths differently but it can get a bit old. Oneshot is my favorite meta game, it makes use of the files and other stuff on your desktop to make some really cool puzzles. I also love how you interact with the main character niko, niko talks directly to you since you are the god of this world, wont say anything else of the story though as thats what the game mostly is, sure it has a few puzzles bit the gameplay mostly consists of walking around talking to people and combining items, its simple but nothing special. If you want a good story amd dont care too much about gameplay i reccomend it. What lies in the multiverse is a puzzle game where you hop between universes to traverse the levels, has a cool story and quite a few great characters like everett, an old guy who just likes messing with you by doing stuff like seemingly teleport around. Overall the puzzles arent too difficult and the story takes a bit to get going but its a fun time. Eastward is an action game with good combat and puzzles but i mostly played for the story and characters, I wont say much else as its been awhile and i dont want to do the game a disservice by getting details wrong. It also has an entirely optional game inside of it akin to the original final fantasy games which is pretty cool. Overall id reccomend these games for story: Oneshot and What Lies in the Multiverse These games for gameplay: Demon Turf and Floppy knights And these games for a good mix of story and gameplay: Anuchard, Omensight and Eastward If i remember any other games i'll comment on this comment.
Raspberries are my favorite fruit. Also, great recommendations. I don't have a lot of time to play games and therefore have to be very selective when playing games (like, I still haven't played Hades or Disco Elysium), but I think our tastes align so I'll have these games on my mind. Last thing, I got CrossCode on Early Access and loved it, I basically went "What's a game sort of like Secret of Mana" before the remakes came out. Maybe the best discovery I ever made.
One that i'll always recommend is Library of Ruina. The combat is super original, deep and manages to progressively add depth into its already complex system without overbearing the player, and the amount of crazy stuff you can pull off with certain page and power-up combinations is amazing, sometimes down-right broken, which is part of its charm. My favourite is equipping a bunch of cards with dices with little variation (like, they roll something like 1-2) to a character that raises the minimal dice roll value on a floor that has a power-up that gives you more dice power every time you roll the minimum value, it's not uncommon to end up with like +12 power on your next turn. The presentation is superb, everything from how every floor or the library itself looks, the character designs, the visual novel UI, the pages, all look so great. Furthermore, the music is amazing, every floor has pretty original music that fits the patron librarian and gets progressively more intense as the tension builds up and the boss themes are also incredible. The story is a great continuation of what was established in Lobotomy Corp (i don't blame anyone for watching a story summary instead of playing it, after all, it's pretty much a SCP colony sim) and far from keeping the ending as we thought (as in, not very satisfying), it builds upon it and develops the previous characters even more with room, keeping those at the end of their arcs relevant all the while making room for great new ones. It also gives more and more information about the City, of which we didn't know that much in Lobotomy Corporation outside of like a few other districts and the ordeals. Also, the floor realizations are imo the peak of the game. A perfect blend of combat and character development.
I've come to accept that I can't really recommend most of my favorite games, because they deliberately aren't for everyone. It is disheartening to see some of these developers struggle to find commercial success. Some of them at least have critical acclaim (Mobius Games). Others don't even have that (Radical Fish Games). I can only hope this changes for the better in the future for them, as they deserve so much more than they have.
I have played CrossCode a few years ago and I really enjoyed my time with it, that game is such a gem. Pretty much the same thing goes for Celeste, Hades and especially Outer Wilds (although I too haven‘t played the DLC), but the quality of these games is certainly no secret. Since you seem to have very good tastes (in my eyes), when it comes to indies, I‘m just going to trust you and try out Chained Echoes. I‘m generally not the biggest JRPG fan in the world, mainly due to their slow nature and often quite boring and repetitive gameplay, but after watching your video on the game, I‘m really excited for it. Thank you for the recommendation!
Bug Fables is is my favorite RPG and I cannot recommend it enough. It takes inspiration from the first two Paper Mario games, and has an absolutely incredible story.
I gave up on that game 😅 It's beyond easy on the default setting, and way too difficult with the hard mode badge Your only options are brain dead easy or super sweat try hard. Not a very fun game in my opinion Not to mention the sections where they make you cross bodies of water with leif's icicle ability...so annoying
My recommendation is INSIDE. I can't say much about the game but it's short and bat shit crazy. great atmosphere and element of mystery. The art style is awesome as well.
I watched the Outer Wilds chunk of the video with my hands on my pause button just in case. I'm (I think?) like... 70ish percent of the way through the game, and everyone I've talked to has insisted that this game NEEDS to be finished blind. Strongly agree on all of the other games in the list too. I just finished Chained Echoes last night. I didn't expect to like the game as much as I did, but I was HOOKED.
Indies are on the rise and there's a few reasons why this is happening and will continue to happen; - Triple AAAs have the expectation of high graphical fidelity, this qualitative expectation increases over time in line with advancements in hardware and software. Conversely the expectation for Indie games has completely plateaued - an indie can create a pixel art game now and be relatively certain it will still be accepted in 2050. If you could imagine GTA6 was made with pixel art, it just wouldn't fly. - Triple As also also necessitate the use of a team (in part due to the above), the use of a big team brings a high degree of risk ("too many cooks spoil the broth" could not be anymore of an apt expression - (except that you _need_ lots of them to make a AAA game)) when trying to create an artistic product with a clear vision. This risk can be mitigated with a director that is both highly skilled at managing people and designing games with a clear vision on how to proceed, a person with a high level of both of these skills is extraordinarily rare, and even with such a person at your helm, they still have to work with what you have at your disposal. - Some Triple As are funded by investors that don't know or care about games, they visit the studio and without directly saying it, demand that you make something fun, but fun doesn't work that way, fun can't be forced nor coerced, love and passion are the key ingredients to creating something fun and a big office block with hundreds of cubicles is often not the environment where love and passion flourish. Indies on the other hand, as well as having none of the above to contend with is the fact that the tools indies have access to continue to improve over time facilitating all manner of projects, the quality and scale of which were previously inaccessible to them. While Triple As do make use of Engines like Unity and Unreal, they don't really benefit from this anywhere near as much as indies do. Sadly I can see that in the not so distant future, as Triple As will begin posing as indies in order to curry favour from players - I've seen this being done on a few occasions and unfortunately it works. Next time you see something insisting it's an "indie title" have a look at their payroll if it's available.
Since you seem to be big on obscure indie RPGs, allow me to suggest another one to you: TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children. You have your action RPG with CrossCode, and your turn-based JRPG with Chained Echoes. So with Troubleshooter, you get your tactical RPG, otherwise referred to as “anime XCOM” by a lot of reviews. The premise of the game is that you’re playing as a “Troubleshooter”, which is sort of a volunteer, mercenary-for-hire type of police, living within the city-district of Valhalla. Criminal activity has exploded to overwhelming numbers, so ordinary citizens have taken up arms and work alongside the police to help cull the various gangs and other threats that plague Valhalla. You begin playing as Albus, who’s recently completed his training to become a Troubleshooter, and you set off into the city to establish a new Troubleshooter company. Along the way you meet various other characters that eventually join your company and tag along on your team to tackle missions. The main draw of the game that I see everyone praise is the deep character customization. It’s quite a complex game with loads of different stats, equipment, upgrades, character classes, and much more. The game does a fairly good job at slowly unraveling all of its mechanics to where it’s not _too_ much to take in all at once, at least in my opinion. It’s one of those games where you’ll be dozens of hours into the story and they’ll still be introducing new systems to you. (There’s apparently an entire pet system that comes with a certain character joining your company, which I haven’t even seen yet myself.) There are some restrictions - each Troubleshooter can only equip certain types of gear, and classes aren’t universal to everybody - but there’s still tons of space for creativity and coming up with your own ideas. The big one is the Masteries systems. A Mastery is an upgrade that provides (usually) passive buffs to a character, like extra health, or extra damage under a specific condition, or a buff to a particular class skill - things of that nature. There are over *800* unique Masteries in the game, all acquired through killing different enemy types or by using the crafting station to research and produce new upgrades by sacrificing duplicates. Every character has a Mastery Board with five categories of Masteries - Basic, Attack, Defence, Support, and Ability (related to class skills) - and a sixth called Mastery Sets, which are hidden upgrades that grant an all-around buff for equipping a specific combination of regular Masteries, and you can have multiple Mastery Sets on a single character. This gives you pretty much complete control over fine-turning every aspect of a character’s playstyle. You can make them good at fighting up close or at range, give them boosts when near allies or lone wolf flankers, be good as soaking up damage, landing critical hits constantly, applying debuffs, or whatever else you want that will synergize with your other teammates. And to boot, you can eventually unlock more Mastery Board presets, which means you can set up multiple load outs for different scenarios and team compositions. You could literally spend hours just customizing your characters’ Mastery Boards, which I have. I am suggesting this game as an on-going recommendation, if you want to call it that. I haven’t finished TROUBLESHOOTER myself, in fact I am nowhere _near_ the end. Much like with CrossCode, this title has a *ludicrous* amount of content. I’ve played almost 40 hours of TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children thus far, and I’m at about the end of Chapter 2 of what I think might be 10 chapters for the story, and I’ve only got 4 of the 12 Troubleshooters on the team. Half of the reviews that I’ve seen of this game are sitting in the 150-200 range, and that’s for people that’ve basically completed the main story. Some people, who’ve gone on to try and gather all of the Masteries I imagine, are in the 300-400 hour range. And quite often you will see reviews that say things like, “One of the best games I’ve ever played.”, and stuff like that. So if you decide to play it, be prepared for a very long, _very big_ game. The developers also show a high level of passion and dedication for the project, as well. The game was in Early Access for a few years, and finally released into 1.0 back in 2020, and they’re still updating the game on like a weekly or bi-weekly basis to this day. They’ve released a free DLC, some character outfit sets for all the Troubleshooters, and they’re working on another expansion that’s being released in segments. They also claim, on the game’s store page, that this is apparently the first game in what they’re looking to make into a series, which is just... that’s some next-level ambition, in my eyes. To everyone who reads this, please do check the game out. Just like what people say about CrossCode and I think Chained Echoes too, TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children is one of those indie titles that deserves way, _way_ more recognition that it has. I’ve seen virtually nobody talk about it; even CrossCode has received more attention than it, at this point. And on a completely unrelated note: strawberry. So... yeah.
For the past decade I've been playing a lot more indies than some triple a games that launch from what I've noticed. Some personal favorites I'd suggest for anyone reading to check out is Katana Zero, Prodigal, Neon White, Grindstone, Dave the Diver, Demon Turf, and Cloudbuilt.
Cloudbuilt specifically not super cloudbuilt. There's some jank going on there with the licensing so CB is getting updated again. Good news is that a spiritual successor is planned.
Mango On the topic of games you can't talk about, I'd highly recommend TUNIC, a Zelda-esque game about a smol fox on a big adventure. I do love Hades a great deal, but I'd personally rank both Outer Wilds and Tunic, for this reason: Hades is an excellent game by virtue of polish and craftsmanship, whether in narrative structure or in the tight combat mechanics. Outer Wilds and Tunic, however, share this element of discoverability, unknown unknowns around every corner that a player gets to piece together for themselves, with limited in game guidance. I find the latter quality to be rarer in games, and harder to replicate.
Play some indies and they're all ok, but then I played Chained Echos and was blown away, and I also played Hades and quite honestly for the first time got lost in the world and spent countless hours playing, and falling in love more and more every step of the way
Do you ever just sit and wonder why there are so many good games? And how developers have poured so many hours into these passion projects for the world to enjoy, so much so that you feel guilty of not playing them to the fullest. Of course nobody has the time for that, however it would be great to live in a world unbounded by time.
The video game medium is one with limitless expression. Sadly in recent years, they have (at least to me) became very same-y. That's why indie games shine so brightly. They're made by video game fans for video game fans, fueled by passion and love for the craft. They can take risks and put new spins on, well, everything. Some of my favorites are Hollow Knight for having beautiful atmosphere and music, fun abilities with a ton of ways to build a charm loadout, and a wonderful balance of good combat and exploration that I feel hasn't been matched by anything else I've encountered. Inscryption for having spot-on ominous atmosphere and suspense and mystery, and a fun, innovative card game that meshes perfectly with the rouge-lite genre. Stardew Valley for being exactly what you'd expect. A mellow-but-rewarding break from the stresses and tension of daily life. A blank-slate farm to build, a cozy town to explore, and colorful people to get to know. One I discovered literally yesterday, that is still only available in demo form (I guess, honestly, still too early to say whether or not it's recency-bias on my part). Slay the Princess. Has a Stanly-Parable sort of narrator and plays around with meta-story concepts, tons of branching paths stemming from almost every choice you can make. It has a way of inspiring endless thought about what everything means and what anything even IS. Can't wait for the full game to come out. Also, apples.
Maybe they have already recommend this duo of games but I have to regardless. Lobotomy Corporation and Library of Ruina, two games that tell one really great story combined with interesting gameplay. Lobotomy Corp puts you into the shoes of a new appointed manager of the main Lcorp brqnch where you need manage "abnormalities" (or SCP's) to harvest energy from.them. The strongest point of LC surprisingly is the story and characters, the origin of this "abnormalities" and the mysteries that are unfoulded the more you play and complete missions. On the other part Library of ruina has one of the Best if not the Best "turn based combat" i have seen in any videogame... but maybe calling it turn based is a little bit misleading. LoR is a continuation of the events that happended in LC. The genre is chaged and now it is an rpg with deckbuilding mechanics with a Clash system that feels turn based but your attacks and defenses options you chosse always clash with your opponts creating and really dinamic and action pack combat. Both games for me are Master pieces even with all their defects (most of them found on LC), so I believe these games could bring You a great experience. Thanks for reading My comment. PS: If you are going to play the games I recommend you to install some mods. In LC You want the mod that fixes memory leaks and in LoR you want the No grind mod.
indies I can recommend, One step from Eden, this thing is the literal reason the megaman battlenetwork series got revived, the second one is Kenshi, the first open world Indie that existed, you are not the chosen one, have several different starts (from a trader with a pack animal and no coins trying to sell luxury items to a rather infamous cirminal who found a legendary sword in a battlefiel to a pair of slaves whi have to escape, or someone who woke up naked and afraid in the middle of the desert while missing some limbs) the third one is streets of rogue, it's a roguelike that feels like the more classic ones, the city is still a dungeon after all but has this je ne sais quois of you being a thief, or engineer or a random factory worker in a city instead of your typical fantasy characters, and then there's flamebreak someone somewhere once decided to combine league of legends with a roguelike and got this thing that sounds like an abomination on paper and made me lsoe hours of my life
If you like Mystery games, Return of the Obra Dinn is pretty good. You have to figure out how each crew member of a ship died or survived to complete the story. I have some qualms with the guesswork you need to do, but overall it's pretty good. Unheard is another mystery game that is very unique. A murder mystery type game where the gameplay is centered around audio. Good story twist at the end as well. A tactics like game I've been enjoying recently is Wartales. It's in the latest stages of its development but is supposed to release this year. It's a Play-Your-Way kind of game with lots of ways to customize your units, and party as a whole.
I tried Outer Wilds when it first dropped on Gamepass, but I just couldn't finish it. For some reason I found it a little bit disturbing, I can't really articulate why. Something about being trapped in a loop reliving the violent death of a solar system for eternity, maybe. Also, I died in the rising sand planet several times and the whole process of trying to find my way through was just wearing me down.
I would love to recommend phoenotopia awakening, it's really amazing metroidvania with very cute story. I loved all aspects of the game and in my opinion it felt better than hollow knight
Rabi-Ribi, from Taiwanese indie devs CreSpirit, is a one-of-a-kind genre-blending of metroidvania, bullet hell platforming, and non-linear boss rushing, packaged together in a cutesy presentation that belies just how hardcore the game is, both in its difficulty scaling mechanics and in its exploit-friendly level design. There are some areas where other games trounce it for sure (the story is largely fluff, and clearly was treated just as a generic framing for boss encounters) but mechanically it scratches an itch that even seven years after release still endears me.
Rain World. Take everything you said about Outer Wilds, and apply it to Rain World. To anyone who is tired of games and wants to experience something different, get the game, then take a note book and make entries for anything you find, give things your own names, find out what they do, how they react when you do certain things, and how they interact with other stuff. I only have some small advice (no spoilers). - Everything in this game has a use in the gameplay department, you won't receive upgrades or stat boosts, you have full access to everything you need to beat the game since the tutorial, if it's there, it has a purpose. If you ever get stuck, go back a couple sections and experiment with anything, yeah, ANYTHING that isn't part of the background that you may have overlooked or dismissed as worthless. - Think outside of the videogame logic, don't think of this as a stage, but a world of its own, enemies are not obstacles to kill for loot or points that have predetermined attack patterns, there isn't coins, floating platforms or spikes that someone put on the ground for some reason, everything has a purpose and tries to be coherent as a living and breathing ecosystem. - You're not a hero, or even particuarly strong. Your most useful asset is your brain, both inside and outside the game's universe, pick your battles carefully and avoid them until you get comfortable with your controls, they're simple, even if you don't like platformers, as the game doesn't ask much of you in that department, but they will seem clunky at first, there's a lot of small things you will learn that influence them, and once you catch up with them, you'll be flying across the game. That's all. Play Rain World, then play the dlc if you like it, it's even better. Don't get it beforehand though, buy it only after finishing the main game. Edit: An extra tip that has just occured to me, if an area is too hard, you can always try backtracking and going somewhere else, the game gives you a lot of paths you can go through.
A couple indie games I recommend, specifically RPG games are Yuppie Psycho, a survival horror game set in an office building, and Fear & Hunger1/2, an incredibly difficult sort of survival horror game that takes place in a dungeon or eastern europe. Both of them are very good, although one is definitely way harder than the other, but both deserve some more time in the spotlight!
Have you tried playing Rain World? this cute game requires you to experiment and learn advanced movement if possible. in some cases this game can be really not fair
I bought one of those charity bundles that have like 100 games and so far I played Absolute Drift and Chronicon. Both very simple games but great at what they do, a short, relaxing (besides some tough missions) drifting simulator and a Diablo-like that introduced me back to that genre after years and had me sink 60 hours in. And from what I heard it works because it takes the things that worked and gets rid of those that didn't. They definitely didn't wow me as much as Celeste, Crosscode, Enter the Gungeon etc. did, but they were focused on those less common genres, and they did it right, so I'd say they were just as worthwile experiences in between all the legendary ones. For some others that are pretty popular but not mentioned, I've been playing Epic Battle Fantasy for maybe 10 years and recently played Freedom Planet and OMORI.
Play Rain World. Similar level of raw exploration of a world that doesn't revolve around you to outer wilds. Amazing gameplay even better atmosphere and world building
It's so hard to define what an Indie game is. If Hades is an Indie game, then why isn't Mega Man II? Link's Awakening? Heck, is Wayforward an indie developer? There's more staff on Hollow Knight than there is on most NES games. I actually turned to indie games intentionally because I felt like indies were closer to what I fell in love with as a kid.
Honestly, Unsighted is one of the best indie games I've ever played. It's what got me into Metroidvanias when I used to dislike them. It's extremely underappreciated
Dead Cells sure is something else man you should try it! It's a roguelike-metroidvania starring The Beheaded(or Bobby in the animated trailers) Although if I talk about it the worse it would sound like but when the game gets a current 5 year support,crossing over with not only the other indie games(Hollow Knight,Slay the Spire,Shovel Knight,...) but also Castelvania you know the game accomplished something spectacular. also if another "Everyone is here Vol.3" gets dropped in the future,I want to see Hat Kid's Umbrella or Peppino's Shotgun a weapon of choice for sure :)
Thanks for the recommendations! I actually found out I already had chained echoes installed I just hadn’t played it yet so thanks for letting me know! Some good indie games are Celeste, Hollow-knight, firewatch, ddlc(Doki Doki), Undertale and Omori.
the indie game that blew my expectations was MO:Astray, it's a simple platforming/puzzle game in which you are a slime that sticks up to surfaces. as the game progressed the level design got pushed so incredibly well to its limits I was shocked at just how good it was thought out. It also has great visuals and an okay story added to it. Would recommend
I tend to be drawn more by storytelling than by exploration and discovery. But even though I'm not exactly the kind of person Outer Wilds was made for, I still wish I could experience it for the first time again. It's amazing for what a unique experience it is.
All 3 games you mentioned are amazing, but Hades takes the cake for me. As someone who likes to exhaust the dialogue of every character in the games I play, Hades was brilliant to me. The fact that you could play dozen, and dozens, and dozens of runs and no character repeats dialogue is just astounding.
My list of best indie games in no particular order goes Noita for depth, discovery, and meaningful freedom. Hotline Miami for being hotline miami Blasphemous for the worldbuilding, art, and bosses Deep Rock Galactic for a great multiplayer experience for all skill levels and continued support. Osu! because god knows there's a drought of rhythm games, racing games, and imsims, and osu is a shining beacon of quality and community support in the midst of it. Dusk manages to shine in a 30 year old genre . Signalis could be in here for many reasons like the writing, art, music, and mechanics which all make it worthy of a bonus mention, but as a horror game I don't really find it scary. Risk of Rain 2 fits in the same category as drg and it was developed as an indie but gearbox now owns it so idk if that disqualifies it. It's really tough to keep this list short in part because I find it hard to compare games from wildly different genres. And I'm not including my favourite indie game either which is Underrail. If I mentioned an rpg it would probably be Divinity: Original Sin 2. There's also like a million games I haven't played which I feel belong here.
@@Frosthowl93 Funny enough that only happened to me once but let's be real if I'm low enough that an offscreen explosion killed me then I should've moved on from that level long ago. The real enemy in noita is your own hubris. My latest near-to-god run ended because I wanted to unlock giga disc projectile in the progress menu and replaced my teleport spell to try it.
1:16 We really need to, collectively, as a society, get over the idea that spending time doing what you love can constitute "the least productive day you've had in a while", imo. Also, banana
In my opinion hotline miami (and hm 2) is the best indie game. The fast adrenalin-fueled hard gameplay and indepth complex story just make it in my opinion the goat. But not only that the soundtrack is a banger as well
Love this video, especially being a very big crosscode fan and that game being very dear to me, knowing its one of your favs just got me a little excited. Anyway watched your Chained echo vid a couple days ago and gonna get it so thank you for spreading the message that that game exiists cause I prob wouldnt have found it either way. Havent heard of outer wilds so ill prob check it out!
I've just finished playing chained echoes and the void I always feel after dedicating a week or two of my life to a game that I was so engrossed with felt just as strong as after I finished Cross code (I haven't played the DLC yet) these games are so amazing and I wish they would go mainstream just so that these devs get the recognition they deserve. Also I like Durian. :D
Excellent picks! Not the best by any means but a few of my favourites. Hollow Knight, just really interesting take on a classic genre, beautiful, polished, haunting, can go on. Mighty Switch Force, not everything has to be deep/meaningful sometimes just quick bursts of fun are whatcha need, and basically something between a Mega Man Boss Rush Mode and Mischief Makers on pretty much everything now but originally for the 3DS then the sequel on Wii U, make it a memorable experience for me. Shovel Knight, Touhou, and Shantae series are perhaps old hat for many, but important imo because they were games on big company platforms that did well enough to generate a following and enhance the scope, quality, ability to create loyal a following, sequels/spin offs, and without their relative success the current ones might never have been greenlit or got the standing/support required to exist now.
Indie games nowadays feel so much more valuable than AAA-titles for me. You can still see the heart and soul the devs can put into those. There's just so many one can recommend and whenever videos like these pop up, the comment section turns into a treasure trove of amazing titles.
that's exactly what I'm doing now😁
I regularly go into indie game videos with a pen and paper so I can keep track of games that look appealing.
I'm currently working through Dirge it's been very enjoyable.
I feel the opposite. I hardly find indie games that I really like. Compared to AAA, which I tend to find more memorable.
My list of reccomendations since you mentioned people doing this:
Iconoclasts. Not a deep story but a good one. Interesting elements with nothing overstaying its welcome. Puzzle platformer. Ending kinda blows though. 9.5/10 for an indie, 8.5/10 for a puzzle game in general
huntdown. Cyberpunk, 80s aesthetic, 2d shooter with cover system. Solid in all of those aspects. 8.5/10 for an indie, 7.5/10 for a regular game.
Valfaris. The last game but on the warhammer40k equivalent of crack. No cover system, only bloodshed and a far-future grimdark setting and feel. 9/10 for an indie, 8.3/10 for a regular game
Steamworld dig 1 and 2: Both are fantasticly unique metroidvanias where instead of exploring a world, you dig it out. play them in order (and add in heist, which is a 2d shooter rpg, if you have the time between 1 and 2). Short, sweet, 2 has banger music, both are addictive. og is a 8.5/10 for indie, 8 for reg, 2 is a 9.0 for indie, 8.5 for a reg
Domekeeper. Also a mining based game, but a roguelike, more focus on procederal generation and resource management. Monsters come out at night so it's also kind of a 2d shooter. 8.5 for an indie, a good 7.7 for a regular game
Record of Lodoss: Deedlit in wonder labyrinth. Everything good about a classic castlevania. The only problem is that it's too short. 9.5/10 for indie, 8.5 for a regular game.
Yes
Showed up for the Cross Code love, stayed for the Chained Echoes love.
I wanna buy Cross Code but I didn't love Chained Echoes (I mean I didn't hate it, it was okay). Combat and exploration were fine, but the story beats were so contrived and J-RPGEY and turned me off quite a bit
Should I buy or nah
Cross code is awesome
@@stevered9659 Top 3 for me
@@jac6548 I'd say the two are far to different to base the decision for one on the other. It's a wholly different kind of story and totally different gameplay.
@@Llortnerof Meh I ended up buying then refunding lol
Pure and simple Outer Wilds changed me life. I don't approach the world the same way anymore. The curiosity that game tugged at and the wonder of discovery it gave me transferred over into this world 1 to 1. Exploring physics, asking the biggest questions our universe has to offer, and working towards their beyond imagination solutions has been one of the great joys of my life and it's Outer Wilds that brought me to realizing just how amazing it all is.
It's one of the few things that's tempted me to actually get a tattoo. It's made me feel so much wonder and appreciation for the world and people around me. Furthermore, it's helped me over that last hurdle of my existentialism, and for that I can't thank it enough.
@@HolyApplebutter same here, since finishing the dlc I’ve been thinking about getting an outer wilds tattoo which is more tempting the more time passes because of how long it still stays in my mind
@@twixchexmix I played Outer Wilds within half a year of it's launch. I don't think I've gone more than a day or two, definately never a week, without thinking about it, and how it shaped my view of life in the almost 4 years since. Tattoos aren't for me, but I would not have any problem carrying a marker of this game permanently on my body, since it already has one on my mind.
@@HolyApplebutter I did get a tattoo of outer wilds (all the planets, sun and the big spoiler* on my arm) and everytime I look at it, I'm just happy, simple as that
The way I see people talk about how Outer Wilds affected them reminds me of how people act after taking shrooms.
I think this also shows the three ways you can succeed as an indie game developer:
1. Polish and improve a beloved but flawed formula (Chained Echoes)
2. Do something unique that may not be for everyone can be appreciated for what it is (Outer Wilds)
3. Just be damn good and make the best and polished exampled of an existing formula (Hades)
does CrossCode fall into the first or the third type?
hades's difficulty handling at later stages of the game is kinda bad
I geniunly think Hades is a very mediocre roguelike. I just can't see anything it does better than other roguelikes besides the characters
People will make excuses because they're "indie" ...
@@whenthehowisandmebutthedot8493 I think the way it shows players how to get cool build synergies in your runs is much better done than in the holy grail roguelikes of the genre such as Binding of Issac. The combat is much much more fun than Binding of Issac and Enter The Gungeon. Also the Characters are fundamentally integrated into the Roguelike systems, which is something I haven't seen any roguelite do before it. Also the presentation, music, and setting goes a long way into making it enjoyable for many.
Inscryption gives the same vibes as Outer Wilds, but in a different way. The more I talk about it the worse it will get. One of the most unique games I've played in a while.
It is like that with all of Daniel Mullins games, but Inscryption really is a whole other step forward
@@mrburger I think the game is enjoyed most by people already familiar with the genre. If I couldn't clear each run at a good pace, it would have been extremely dull. It's balanced heavily in the player's favor (despite the unfair one-off events, to progress the story), and each failed run tends to make the gameplay easier. As a straight-up card game, it's not very good - and it's not really meant to be. It sounds like you're near the stage where it turns more from a card game into an adventure. But if you feel it's a slog, may just not be worth forcing yourself.
I agree that Inscryption is a great game, but I think it's a disservice to compare it to Outer Wilds. You can play Inscryption again, even if the experience is different. That's no different from every other game. You can't play Outer Wilds again. You literally can't, period.
@@felatras9503 same as obra dinn
@@mrburgerThe gameplay is supposed to be enjoyable on its own merits for the length of time you engage with it. It's nothing groundbreaking, but it also doesn't overstay its welcome. If you played it for a few hours, you were probably pretty close to a significant shakeup in the gameplay.
I don't know why it's being compared to Outer Wilds though. Inscryption is an enjoyable ride, but doesn't really have much to say at the end if the day. Outer Wilds OTOH, is one if the games that I think can truly be called profound.
Outer Wilds will always hold a place in my heart as my favorite game of all time. At a time when I was mainly playing fast paced multiplayer shooters, Outer Wilds made me slow down and really think about the game I was playing.
For me, A Short Hike is the quintessential indi game. Small, creative, low poly, made with love by one guy.
I'm planning on playing that, it seems really fun
I adore a short hike
Truly an amazing experience, nothing I've ever experienced playing any game. That and pikuniku have a special place in my heart.
definitely +1 this, A Short Hike is very fun and charming!
Yeah fr
The strength of indie games for me is that they're able to tackle such a unique range of ideas, mechanics, and art styles that big budget publishers are often too afraid to touch these days, so I don't think I can rank a Number 1 because they're so different in what they try to do.
Disco Elysium has both some of the funniest and most emotionally impactful character building I've ever seen in a game. Hollow Knight reminded me of how fun it can be to get lost if you're in a world that's worth exploring. Katana Zero combines a gritty neo-noir atmosphere with sleek fast-paced one-hit-kill gameplay. Wildermyth is incredibly creative in how every player's experience can be different with their characters and their relationships organically developing over time as a group. SOMA was a horror game that had less jump scares and more existential crises. And Wandersong gave a spin on the classic tale of the hero's journey about a silly bard and cynical witch that made me both laugh and cry.
Hey Wildermyth mentioned, that reminds me to play some more Wildermyth, it is by far the game I stuck the most hours in. The cross campaign character building, the character interactions and even the generated campaigns can be fun. My favourite campaign by far is Eluna and The Moth.
@@alexdoorn234 I haven't played the final DLC yet but Eluna and the Moth was my favorite by far as well. Every campaign has its fun gimmicks but Eluna tightened up a lot on its core plot. Just a solid blend of cosmic horror, tragic fae folktales, and the personal story of siblings that are caught in the middle of all of it.
@@YorkJonhson I am currently playing the campaign from the newest DLC, it is a bit dense. A lot of reading so far and no map that you travel by. It is good to meet someone that also likes Eluna and the Moth, it is just so charming and the moth wings are very useful in those escape missions.
I’ve always really loved the granddaddy of all indie games, Cave Story. It’s definitely the sort of game you can tell was made by one person with no one else on the team to tell them “hey maybe don’t do that” which I mean in mostly a good way. In terms of “influence” I think it has to stand above all other indie titles just by default, and the fact that it’s a really excellent game definitely helps.
"Hey kid... Ever heard of Katana Zero?"
Return of the Obra Dinn is a game that completely blew me away. Would recommend to everybody who enjoys a mystery and feeling smart.
Ahh I'm waiting for my memory of it to fade so I can enjoy it again. Except it was so dang amazingly memorable
*dumb
Obra Dinn was incredible. I need more games like that from Lucas Pope
Strongly recommend Chicory: A Colorful Tale. The most basic way I can describe it is it's a 2D Zelda crossed with a coloring book, but it's also so much more than that. It has a great story that I think can resonate with anyone who's ever tried to do something creative, and the way it uses game mechanics as part of that storytelling is some of the best I've seen in a game. And of course the soundtrack by Lena Raine of Celeste fame is outstanding.
Thank GOD someone is talking about something other than the giant meme games that everyone thinks they're special for knowing about while everyone else talks about the exact same shit
@@colbyboucher6391 There is no reason to shit on others because they are all liking the same popular indie games. They are popular because they are good. You aren't any more or less special than they are because you have a game you like that is talked about less. It's unnecessarily catty and immature.
@@robertdouth8979 Not claiming I'm special, sick of other people acting like extremely well-known games are ""hidden gems"" and sick of people not looking harder while a lot of great stuff goes basically unknown
Signalis was the most recent hook that got me, made by two people that game blew me away its insane how a game can be resident evil, dead space, silent hill and metal gear all at the same time while simultaniously being none of those things and something completely new and fresh
I bought Chained Echoes and played for hours yesterday, it was a blast. Not only is the narrative quite compelling, but I was surprised to enjoy the combat as someone who wasn't into turn-based combat before.
@@CC-oi9mc Do you have any specific criticisms? I would appreciate it if you kept them to stuff before the point at which they leave farnsport and cross the border since I don't wanna be spoiled.
VA-11 HALL-A, OMORI, Katana Zero, and Hotline Miami are some of my favorite indies ^^
Your experience with Chained Echoes seems to be similar to mine with CrossCode: I expected it to be just another game to complete on my list, only to be so hooked that it now one of my top 5 personal favorites of all time!
Honestly same. I went into Crosscode expecting little more than a neat game. Came out adoring Crosscode. I don't know if it's in my top 5, but definitely somewhere among my personal favorites.
Indies are awesome. Even though I don't like roguelikes so much that not even Hades could hold me, I absolutely recognize that it's an absurdly stylish and polished game and I still recommend it to people. I like every single aspect of Hades, it's just that my goopy goblin gamer brain doesn't like that I have to restart from the beginning every time.
Nice to see I'm not the only one who felt that way about Hades. It's such a phenomenally well-made game that I enjoyed it in spite of normally not liking the inherently repetitive nature of roguelites... for a while. That says a lot about the game, though, normally I don't touch the genre at all because I get bored with them way too fast.
@@zibbitybibbitybop Hey, nice to see a fellow brother!
The only roguelite that was able to hold me over was Wizard of Legend for being able to unlock all the drip and magic. Hades got me to that place with Hercules, but I dropped it after. Minor stat boosts just weren't enough, but I still think that game has some Sweet Sexy Style.
I don't like roguelikes either, but that's not why I bounced off of Hades. I bounced off of it because the story and gameplay felt completely at odds with each other. I like the story and characters, they're really good. And it's not as if the gameplay is particularly bad, I find it to be one of the more enjoyable roguelikes alongside Enter the Gungeon. But the fact that I can only get a few conversations at a time every time I enter the House of Hades, and to talk more, I need to start a new run. And then there's the Olympians and Chaos. And the people I can encounter on the runs. All of which have story beats too. It adds up, and the game feels conflicted as a result.
Yeah, I couldn't be held by hades either. I would recommend you patch quest, a brilliantly designed game that fixes a lot of my problems with rougelikes and is criminally underrated.
Games like Outer Wilds that are best played completely blind are so good because they really immerse you in the games world. I’ve been playing games like Rain World and Tunic recently that give the same feeling. Definitely try those games out.
I would recommend The Mark Of The Ninja Remastered. It's mostly gameplay focused with a cool story twist at the end. Really solid game for sure.
Defs one of the best games of all time.
Mm, really good one
I heard it didn't run that well on Switch at launch. Is that still the case? I'd skipped it just for that.
Mate, just a heads up - announcing "there's a twist" absolutely spoils the twist. Just say it has a really strong ending or something. No need to spoil anything. Same goes for movies.
I think that Tunic is the closest game to outer wilds in term of discovering game mechanics to progress.
I also wanna talk about evil tonight, really fun game, it's basically a 2d resident evil.
Anodyne 2 is also amazing
Bad music, flat environments, and a combat difficulty level that excludes probably half of gamers, myself included - Tunic was an awful experience.
I strongly disliked Tunic. There were moments where I did a thing and felt smart, but they were rare and they make some things absurdly hard to find just for the sake of making things difficult, like figuring out the language and the golden path.
Hollow Knight is the GOAT of indies, its not not only the best indie, it seriously challenges the best games ever made in its genre going back 4 decades, its really that polished and well designed.
Yeah, Hollow Knight is easily the best metroidvania since SotN gave birth to that term. I'm hoping against hope that Silksong can capture the same brilliance, but it's got really, REALLY big shoes to fill!
@@SnapDragon128 I prefer Ori and the Blind Forest. Also an Indie metroidvania. I just find it way more appealing. The visuals, the music, the story, the gameplay. All of it.
Hollow Knight is the Living on a Prayer of indie games. Overplayed, overrated, repetitive, goes on way too long for what it is.
gayest of all time
Hollow knight is def the king cant wait for silksong
Here's some indie games I like (minus ones that everyone knows):
Horizon's Gate, Time Break Chronicles, Skul the Hero Slayer, Crystal Project, Fell Seal, Wildermyth, Tales of Maj'Eyal, Ara Fell, Rise of the Third Power, Siralim Ultimate, Fight'N Rage, One Step from Eden
A pretty great and overlooked roguelike I enjoyed recently is Revita. Has a pretty great system of using your health as currency for items, so every decision you make feels immensely impactful.
Crown Trick is also great and similarly overlooked, but it's so unique, it's difficult to talk about it succintly.
Wishlisted both thanks for the share.
I'll definitely play these games. As for underrated indie games, I recommend Phoenotopia Awakening
Yes! I hope they read your message! Specially since we all seem to have about the same taste in video games. And that game really needs to be known and have more support!
Hey, just got enough money to get one of these two: stardew valley or hollow knight. Need help.
Edit: this got pinned by mhswoocer and a lot of people had hollow knight as their answer. Thank you all so much I an having so much fun with the game ❤️
This is a really tough choice! I'll pin this comment for a bit so people can help you out!
I'm not a farm sim guy so I'd say hollow knight. Everything about it is so masterfully crafted that I think it would be real disservice to never get to.
Both are really good so it's tough. Flip a coin, let fate choose for you
Here's my take: They're both very different games. One is a metroidvania about exploration, tough boss fights, and discovery, while the other is a much more laid back chill game about farming and talking to people. I think it depends on your current mood and what you're looking for in a game right now. If you're life is already really stressful and overwhelming, maybe stardew is the way to go, but if you want something more intense I'd go with Hollow Knight. Hope this helps!
@@mhswoocer pretty much same opinion
The fact that "best" is subjective doesn't even pose a problem when it comes to indie games, because their sheer genre diversity, creativity, and quality nowadays means that it's possible to find several fantastic games that will suit your personal definition of "best" almost flawlessly. I love RPGs and metroidvanias, so for me, the "best" indie games are things like OneShot, Ori and the Blind Forest/Will of the Wisps, and Undertale. And yes, also CrossCode.
Also, I like mangos.
I think OneShot is an incredible game, and it doesn't even reach my top 5. You really need an ultimate masterpice like undertale to reach the top 3
@@VulpineFox7 That's the fun part of best being subjective. You rate Undertale as an ultimate masterpiece, where I don't. I'm not saying Undertale is a bad game by any means, the ending had me misty-eyed (and I've purchased it for multiple systems), but for me, the meta-narrative done by OneShot was superb and more impactful than Undertale's. Granted, my experience with OneShot was all the way back when it was a free title and you only had one shot to play through the story, even though I own the extended version on Steam, and plan on getting the World Machine edition on Switch sooner rather than later.
The fact that you and I can have completely different and valid views of these games is the beauty of the subjective nature of best that lolhwaet mentioned. Where, when, how, and mental state all add subtle variations to the impact of a game and how it sits in your memories.
You'd probably love Hollow Knight if you haven't played it. It's widely considered the best metroidvania ever made.
@@whenthehowisandmebutthedot8493 Yes Hollow Knight is literally my favorite videogame of all time!
@@VulpineFox7 Mine is, and likely always will be Outer Wilds, but Hollow Knight comes pretty close for me
Uuuuh Celeste vs Hades is a very very interesting discussion to have, i absolutely adore both games and think they are masterful in their own right. For me what tips the balance towards Celeste is that it's probably the best designed game I've ever played in the fact that it weaves gameplay, story, themes, and presentation (both visual and in terms of sound design) to an extent I'm not sure it's been replicated in the entire medium. Playing "reach for the summit" (that's the song not the level but you guys get it) for the first time was a near transcendental experience for me, it might be my favorite level ever created for any game, and I wouldn't say it particularly stands out above the rest of the game in terms of quality, it's actually because the whole game is so consistently incredible that the level becomes so special. Hades is the culmination (so far, i have huge hope for the future) of my favorite game studio, playing Bastion was one of the most important gaming experiences of my childhood, but Celeste is for me the culmination of gaming as a medium so far, not foregoing any of it's aspects in order to heighten others, but rather polishing and tuning gameplay, story and presentation in an unprecedented way.
And when you think it couldn't get any better, Celeste devs give us Farewell DLC haha. But yeah Celeste executes every aspect of video games perfectly while Hades has some shortcomings for example the story pacing is rng and gets annoying to conclude when the gods simply won't give you the dialogue you need to advance
Thank you for this video, and for everyone adding recommendations! I'll add a few of my own unique ones: go play Enter the Gungeon, Bug Fables, Ultrakill, and Rain World. Heads up for RW: Each character plays in a different year/time, so stuff changes. Great games, one and all.
Rain World my beloved - I wish I could experience it for the first time again!
I think most people go into Hades not liking roguelikes/rouguelites and end up liking the formula over all because of the characters and story too... but I highly recommend you play risk of rain 2 or dead cells if you haven't tried those yet. Those are some great action roguelites.
For some reason I didn't get that into Hades (maybe is the slow start it has) but I loved Bastion and Transistor. Maybe one day I will give Hades another shot.
If you like the combat of Hades and Cross Code, you NEED to try wizard of legend. Not as good as either of those games, but the combat? The combat is better.
@@GuybrushTThreepwood I'll second Wizard of Legend. Too bad it doesn't have online co-op, because the multiplayer is so good.
I just bounced off of Hades because it felt like the story and gameplay were at odds with one another. I loved the story and characters. Even the gameplay I found to be more enjoyable than most roguelikes. But the two just did not mesh well, imo.
I've heard it's common that most people that don't like roguelikes love Hades, while many people who love roguelikes find Hades very mediocre. I'm part of the second group, and I find this an interesting trend.
@@andinuruljihad2912 boy do i have news for you
It took me over a year to commit to playing the dlc for Outer Wilds for the same reason as you, I just didn't want to be finished with the game, I was also worried about it tainting the base game. Fortunately they absolutely nailed it and it felt like it naturally belonged. You won't be disappointed
REAAAALLLYYYY wanted to play the DLC. But I'm way too freaked out by the foreignness and hostility of the new location. Like the Hearthians really don't belong there. Haven't touched it despite having the DLC for almost a year.
@A Pyro Main you've just got to commit to it, don't let the fear overpower you. If you managed dark bramble then the dlc shouldn't be a problem.
Pyre, blasphemous, fortune summoners, Recettear, Pyre, Oneshot, Disco Elysium, Return to Obra Dinn are some of my fav games ever
also bananas
Blasphemous made it's motifs agonizingly tangible. Its haunting.
"VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action" "Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark" "To The Moon" "Star Traders: Frontiers" Hopfully will add to your backlog
My rec is for a game coming in about a week after i post this on april 26th. Cassette beasts. A monster taming rpg with heavy 80s aesthetics and where you scan monsters to become them in battle and also has fusion mechanics. Played the demo and loved it and heavily looking forward to the full release.
All the "gaming is doomed" videos I watch are insane. Participate in the Steam Next Fest and your wishlist will double in size just with games that aren't coming out even within the year. Gaming is only getting brighter.
That thumbnail almost made me pop a vein
the mark of a high quality thumbnail right there
also considering you enjoyed outer wilds so much, perhaps rain world would be one you'd enjoy as well?
god I love A Short Hike, it just got me to shut up and enjoy something, just listening to the wing rush by in that game gives me a sense of calm no other game ever has.
You should give Tunic a try, it's similar to Outer Wilds in you have to go in blind but there comes a point where you need to flip that stay blind conception on its head if you get really stuck in the late game you can ask for help but if you how to read the clues right you can do it yourself.
Great video! There's so many great indie games out there. One that I would recommend that wasn't in the video is Death's Door. It's a game that I always recommend! Another one I personally love is A Hat in Time. I hope you enjoy the Outer Wild DLC when you decide to play it. I was a bit sad when it ended, but it still left me happy that I experienced it. [ also, strawberries ::) ]
What about Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling?
When combined with other foods, lemons are probably my favorite fruit, but on its own, I'd have to say kiwis.
Gonna have to check out Chained Echoes but if we’re talking send ups to older games, I’d call The Messenger one of the best indies I’ve ever played. A beautiful love letter to Ninja Gaiden with a good sense of humor and killer music
The messenger isn’t the best Metroidvania I’ve played, but it’s probably my favorite game that happens to be a metroidvania (If that makes sense). The Metroidvania elements are whatever but that doesn’t matter when the gameplay is so fun, the humor so good, and the music so insanely amazing
Amazing video as always.
It's such a hard question, one that I don't know if I can even give an answer to. In contrast to the many lifeless triple-As, so many indie games just utterly ooze personality, creativity, fantasticalness, and love. So many contenders come to mind:
Celeste; my favourite of all time, a game I love so dearly. Precise, concise controls, and every single level was something new and amazing.
Hades; the art, the gameplay, the dialogue, everything about it is so refined, so much so that when I first played it I did so for 24 hours straight.
Hollow Knight; arguably the single greatest modern metroidvania. Spearheaded the indie metroidvania boom.
What Remains of Edith Finch; this game left me speechless.
There's many more but it'll take so long to comment on all of them; Undertale, A Hat in Time, Furi, Dead Cells, Ori 2, Jazzpunk, Inscryption.
But those are just out of the ones I've played, there are SO many that I am yet to play; Outer Wilds, Bloodstained, CrossCode, Chained Echoes, Omori, Disco Elysium just to name a few. Two of the best are even getting sequels, in Hades 2 and Silksong.
Indie games are incredibly beautiful, they are so diverse yet so amazing. So many people can have so many different valid answers to this question. Compared to the double/triple-A library, such a high percentage of indie games can be argued to be the best.
So I don't know when or if ever I'll be able to definitively answer, "What is the best indie game?". But personally, for right this second, it's Celeste. (couldn't even type that without second guessing myself).
took me an hour or so to type xd
note: there's so many more amazing indies i love and recommend but I either didn't list them because the list would be too long or they don't fit my vague criteria for contending "the best"
I love a few things in gaming: Indies, retro Metroidvania's, & Dating/Social Sims. 2022 alone has a multitude of genre-defining great titles:
Neon White is a masterpiece. It expertly paces itself between the dopamine rush it grants from completing a level with better and better times, to easing up and exploring each level looking for the collectible hidden within, before finally letting you cool off by chatting with the cast of goofy and fun characters. It is a thoroughly enjoyable experience that caused me to range from having a small smile creep into my focused expression to a big goofy smile with genuine laughter at the dialogue and characters. This barely won out for my 2022 GotY
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Potionomics executed every idea it had to perfection. The moment to moment gameplay in making high quality potions versus bartering their value up is addictively good. The character interactions and overall writing is high quality, makes you feel like you are talking to complete and fun people, all while backed by a progressive underpinning which I cannot get enough of. The visuals are the absolute best use of cg-animation I have ever and may ever see with characters being unbelievably expressive in what is a clear labour of love. With the music having entered some of my playlists for reading and relaxing in my down time. I fully recommend this title to people who are even ambivalent towards the genres present in this title.
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Hush Hush is a warm and bright game. Warm in the dialogue that is always flirty and full of banter. Bright in that it is not afraid to be a dating simulator. This is a game for people who like to go on dates with cute girls, it doesn't need to obscure this through parody like other titles. The game also isn't just a "regular bouquet in a bowl" as it goes on it gets more serious in subject matter and treats its characters as real people with their own problems and emotional needs. The core of the gameplay requires you to connect through pathos/empathy and it thoroughly tests your social skills. I don't know if I will ever praise a Social Simulator as highly as this title again in my life, it is just so exceptionally written/performed/drawn and I hope other games follow suit as the medium develops.
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Anyone interested in Social Simulators or just enjoys conversing with interesting people should give these 3 a shot.
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*Upcoming Indie Shoutout:*
Chants of Senaar is a game where you must learn to decipher a foreign language depicted in hieroglyphics and solve puzzles along the way. I played its demo during the latest Steam Next Fest and was thoroughly sold on its gameplay and premise. I would love to mention a boatload more but this comment is already longer than my last homework assignment.
Love these 3 picks as for a recommendation it would be rain world it is such a magical experience with a good amount of similarities to outer wilds but absolutely brutally challenging.
If you are into metroidvanias, Phoenotopia awakening is my favorite indie game alongside crosscode. It is very similar to Zelda 2 in terms of exploration and abilities, but the charm, the story, and the characters are just so good, I really want it to be well known because I havent seen that much people talking about it
Wishlisted thanks for the tip
It's a toss-up between watermelon and mangoes for my favorite fruit, between my favorite fruit as a kid and the fruit I never ate as a kid but now really enjoy eating.
I've long found indie games to be a fascinating market, because they thrive on thousands of individuals who grew up with video games deciding that there needs to be a game that merges concepts from multiple other games they played, or has a unique method of story telling, or even simply one with an aesthetic that they don't see often enough. Someone missed the Battle Network games, and came up with the idea for One Step From Eden. Someone lived for intriguing mystery writing and came up with Return of the Obra Dinn. Someone loved JRPGs (FF in particular) and wanted to merge that gameplay with open-world exploration and platforming, and came up with Crystal Project. A group of people were really into fighting games and a particular cartoon, and eventually created Them's Fightin' Herds from their passion project. There are *thousands* of stories like this for all sorts of amazing games, spanning every possible genre and inventing new ones.
And the most incredible part is that their appeal can defy genre preference. As mentioned in the video, Hades is probably the strongest example, as it can appeal to people even if they aren't particular to roguelike/roguelite gameplay, just because the game at its core is what many might call perfection.
Just to round off this comment, I'll list some indies I enjoy that I don't see from a quick scroll. 20XX and 30XX are a fun pair of roguelike games based off Megaman and Megaman X respectively, with co-op. UnMetal is a fun, comedic spoof of the old Metal Gear games. Astro Colony is a game that looked at Raft and thought, "but what if in space?" SYNTHETIK and its sequel are incredibly tight top-down roguelike shooters. Bug Fables is a charming recreation of the old Paper Mario aesthetic. Monster Sanctuary is a fun adventure that combines monster catching and metroidvania exploration. Lastly, The Fall and its sequel were the first time I ever played through a series of point-and-click adventure games, despite usually being unable to enjoy that style of game. I can hope that name dropping a bunch of titles like this leads someone to finding something new to enjoy.
Rain world for me the game is quite good. It can feel brutal at times but that kind of adds to it since your supposed to be low on the food chain. But as you play you unlock stronger characters and learn how to move better and with how complex the movement can be it changes the game completely. lot to learn feels like a world to explore and there is quite a bit of hidden lore for replay ability.
Isnt there a sequel coming or something?
@@Frosthowl93 No idea though there was the down poor dlc recently that added pretty much a full game worth of content.
Three games I haven't seen anyone else mention:
-Deadbolt: Violent stealth action with really intriguing lore in the background
-Hello Charlotte: Weird RPGMaker adventure with some horror and lots of feels
-Roadwarden: A fantasy RPG that elevates text-based games into truly feeling like an interactive novel, makes every other text adventure I've played look like amateur hour
I'll stan Deadbolt any day.
Maybe try Not A Hero(the indie game not the RE7 DLC)
@@Frosthowl93 Thanks for the rec, I'll check it out!
Apple. Rainworld is like being dropped naked into a jungle and being told to survive. It's got lots of depth in its mechanics that are satisfying to learn and master. The only thing is, it will only tell you the basics of movement and combat. The rest is up to you to learn and explore. You are given only one goal but many players will arrive there in many different ways since it's nonlinear. The world is merciless and gigantic (bigger than hollow knight's). All creatures will move freely across screens with their own motives and goals, almost like the game is simulating a terrarium. That's really what it aims to do, simulate an ecosystem. It's a punishing, but rewarding experience, and I would recommend it a whole lot. Also it recently got a dlc that doubled its size.
My favorite and most impactful Indie games I ever played are The Beginner's Guide (walk-sim), Sayonara Wild Hearts (my most replayed game ever) and Hi-Fi Rush (idk if this counts as indie but its my favorite action game)
I think Hi-Fi Rush is more AA than indie but it gets a pass for going against the grain and being incredible.
Im gonna reccomend a few games here so here we go.
Anuchard while personally I found a bit easy and the gameplay good but not great I mainly reccomend it for the story, i wont say anything because i know im bad for spoiling stuff but id say give it a look.(side note the only reason i found anuchard was because the main character makes an appearence in crosscode as one of the backer character, they're the one wielding the giant bell in that one library in rhombus square)
Demon turf is a fun 3d platformer, id say its pretty on par with other games like it like a hat in time, it overall has a good difficulty balance with the main challenge coming from the optional stuff like collectibles or time trials, its story is fun but not anything too special, id recommend it if you like 3d platformers.
Floppy Knights is a fun mix of deckbuilder amd turnbased strategy games, it definately starts out a bit easy but it gets really hard towards the end, the characters are fun and the story is serviceable but i mainly played for the gameplay.
Stories the Path of Destinies and Omensight are 2 games by the same developers with the same overall premise, you play through the same day multiple times and learn more and more about whats going on with the end goal of getting a good ending. Overall id say Omensight is the better of the 2, you go through the day following one of 4 characters where you get information, you can then give that informatipn to a different character and it will affect how the day plays out with the end goal to figure out how the godless priestess was murdered. Overall i like the premise and gameplay but the main downside to this kind of storytelling is youll go through the same levels several times, sure the story is different and you might take a few paths differently but it can get a bit old.
Oneshot is my favorite meta game, it makes use of the files and other stuff on your desktop to make some really cool puzzles. I also love how you interact with the main character niko, niko talks directly to you since you are the god of this world, wont say anything else of the story though as thats what the game mostly is, sure it has a few puzzles bit the gameplay mostly consists of walking around talking to people and combining items, its simple but nothing special. If you want a good story amd dont care too much about gameplay i reccomend it.
What lies in the multiverse is a puzzle game where you hop between universes to traverse the levels, has a cool story and quite a few great characters like everett, an old guy who just likes messing with you by doing stuff like seemingly teleport around. Overall the puzzles arent too difficult and the story takes a bit to get going but its a fun time.
Eastward is an action game with good combat and puzzles but i mostly played for the story and characters, I wont say much else as its been awhile and i dont want to do the game a disservice by getting details wrong. It also has an entirely optional game inside of it akin to the original final fantasy games which is pretty cool.
Overall id reccomend these games for story: Oneshot and What Lies in the Multiverse
These games for gameplay: Demon Turf and Floppy knights
And these games for a good mix of story and gameplay: Anuchard, Omensight and Eastward
If i remember any other games i'll comment on this comment.
The moment i saw iconoclaste and kamiko I WAS HOOKED
Raspberries are my favorite fruit.
Also, great recommendations. I don't have a lot of time to play games and therefore have to be very selective when playing games (like, I still haven't played Hades or Disco Elysium), but I think our tastes align so I'll have these games on my mind.
Last thing, I got CrossCode on Early Access and loved it, I basically went "What's a game sort of like Secret of Mana" before the remakes came out. Maybe the best discovery I ever made.
One that i'll always recommend is Library of Ruina. The combat is super original, deep and manages to progressively add depth into its already complex system without overbearing the player, and the amount of crazy stuff you can pull off with certain page and power-up combinations is amazing, sometimes down-right broken, which is part of its charm. My favourite is equipping a bunch of cards with dices with little variation (like, they roll something like 1-2) to a character that raises the minimal dice roll value on a floor that has a power-up that gives you more dice power every time you roll the minimum value, it's not uncommon to end up with like +12 power on your next turn.
The presentation is superb, everything from how every floor or the library itself looks, the character designs, the visual novel UI, the pages, all look so great. Furthermore, the music is amazing, every floor has pretty original music that fits the patron librarian and gets progressively more intense as the tension builds up and the boss themes are also incredible.
The story is a great continuation of what was established in Lobotomy Corp (i don't blame anyone for watching a story summary instead of playing it, after all, it's pretty much a SCP colony sim) and far from keeping the ending as we thought (as in, not very satisfying), it builds upon it and develops the previous characters even more with room, keeping those at the end of their arcs relevant all the while making room for great new ones. It also gives more and more information about the City, of which we didn't know that much in Lobotomy Corporation outside of like a few other districts and the ordeals.
Also, the floor realizations are imo the peak of the game. A perfect blend of combat and character development.
I've come to accept that I can't really recommend most of my favorite games, because they deliberately aren't for everyone. It is disheartening to see some of these developers struggle to find commercial success. Some of them at least have critical acclaim (Mobius Games). Others don't even have that (Radical Fish Games). I can only hope this changes for the better in the future for them, as they deserve so much more than they have.
I have played CrossCode a few years ago and I really enjoyed my time with it, that game is such a gem. Pretty much the same thing goes for Celeste, Hades and especially Outer Wilds (although I too haven‘t played the DLC), but the quality of these games is certainly no secret.
Since you seem to have very good tastes (in my eyes), when it comes to indies, I‘m just going to trust you and try out Chained Echoes. I‘m generally not the biggest JRPG fan in the world, mainly due to their slow nature and often quite boring and repetitive gameplay, but after watching your video on the game, I‘m really excited for it. Thank you for the recommendation!
I know it's not indie but I still really recommend the Ys series if you love CrossCode
And the trails series for chained echoes
Bug Fables is is my favorite RPG and I cannot recommend it enough. It takes inspiration from the first two Paper Mario games, and has an absolutely incredible story.
I gave up on that game 😅
It's beyond easy on the default setting, and way too difficult with the hard mode badge
Your only options are brain dead easy or super sweat try hard. Not a very fun game in my opinion
Not to mention the sections where they make you cross bodies of water with leif's icicle ability...so annoying
My recommendation is INSIDE. I can't say much about the game but it's short and bat shit crazy. great atmosphere and element of mystery. The art style is awesome as well.
I watched the Outer Wilds chunk of the video with my hands on my pause button just in case. I'm (I think?) like... 70ish percent of the way through the game, and everyone I've talked to has insisted that this game NEEDS to be finished blind.
Strongly agree on all of the other games in the list too. I just finished Chained Echoes last night. I didn't expect to like the game as much as I did, but I was HOOKED.
Indies are on the rise and there's a few reasons why this is happening and will continue to happen;
- Triple AAAs have the expectation of high graphical fidelity, this qualitative expectation increases over time in line with advancements in hardware and software. Conversely the expectation for Indie games has completely plateaued - an indie can create a pixel art game now and be relatively certain it will still be accepted in 2050. If you could imagine GTA6 was made with pixel art, it just wouldn't fly.
- Triple As also also necessitate the use of a team (in part due to the above), the use of a big team brings a high degree of risk ("too many cooks spoil the broth" could not be anymore of an apt expression - (except that you _need_ lots of them to make a AAA game)) when trying to create an artistic product with a clear vision. This risk can be mitigated with a director that is both highly skilled at managing people and designing games with a clear vision on how to proceed, a person with a high level of both of these skills is extraordinarily rare, and even with such a person at your helm, they still have to work with what you have at your disposal.
- Some Triple As are funded by investors that don't know or care about games, they visit the studio and without directly saying it, demand that you make something fun, but fun doesn't work that way, fun can't be forced nor coerced, love and passion are the key ingredients to creating something fun and a big office block with hundreds of cubicles is often not the environment where love and passion flourish.
Indies on the other hand, as well as having none of the above to contend with is the fact that the tools indies have access to continue to improve over time facilitating all manner of projects, the quality and scale of which were previously inaccessible to them. While Triple As do make use of Engines like Unity and Unreal, they don't really benefit from this anywhere near as much as indies do.
Sadly I can see that in the not so distant future, as Triple As will begin posing as indies in order to curry favour from players - I've seen this being done on a few occasions and unfortunately it works. Next time you see something insisting it's an "indie title" have a look at their payroll if it's available.
This is exactly me with the Trails series, albeit not indie, but message holds true.
Since you seem to be big on obscure indie RPGs, allow me to suggest another one to you: TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children.
You have your action RPG with CrossCode, and your turn-based JRPG with Chained Echoes. So with Troubleshooter, you get your tactical RPG, otherwise referred to as “anime XCOM” by a lot of reviews.
The premise of the game is that you’re playing as a “Troubleshooter”, which is sort of a volunteer, mercenary-for-hire type of police, living within the city-district of Valhalla. Criminal activity has exploded to overwhelming numbers, so ordinary citizens have taken up arms and work alongside the police to help cull the various gangs and other threats that plague Valhalla. You begin playing as Albus, who’s recently completed his training to become a Troubleshooter, and you set off into the city to establish a new Troubleshooter company. Along the way you meet various other characters that eventually join your company and tag along on your team to tackle missions.
The main draw of the game that I see everyone praise is the deep character customization. It’s quite a complex game with loads of different stats, equipment, upgrades, character classes, and much more. The game does a fairly good job at slowly unraveling all of its mechanics to where it’s not _too_ much to take in all at once, at least in my opinion. It’s one of those games where you’ll be dozens of hours into the story and they’ll still be introducing new systems to you. (There’s apparently an entire pet system that comes with a certain character joining your company, which I haven’t even seen yet myself.) There are some restrictions - each Troubleshooter can only equip certain types of gear, and classes aren’t universal to everybody - but there’s still tons of space for creativity and coming up with your own ideas.
The big one is the Masteries systems. A Mastery is an upgrade that provides (usually) passive buffs to a character, like extra health, or extra damage under a specific condition, or a buff to a particular class skill - things of that nature. There are over *800* unique Masteries in the game, all acquired through killing different enemy types or by using the crafting station to research and produce new upgrades by sacrificing duplicates. Every character has a Mastery Board with five categories of Masteries - Basic, Attack, Defence, Support, and Ability (related to class skills) - and a sixth called Mastery Sets, which are hidden upgrades that grant an all-around buff for equipping a specific combination of regular Masteries, and you can have multiple Mastery Sets on a single character. This gives you pretty much complete control over fine-turning every aspect of a character’s playstyle. You can make them good at fighting up close or at range, give them boosts when near allies or lone wolf flankers, be good as soaking up damage, landing critical hits constantly, applying debuffs, or whatever else you want that will synergize with your other teammates. And to boot, you can eventually unlock more Mastery Board presets, which means you can set up multiple load outs for different scenarios and team compositions. You could literally spend hours just customizing your characters’ Mastery Boards, which I have.
I am suggesting this game as an on-going recommendation, if you want to call it that. I haven’t finished TROUBLESHOOTER myself, in fact I am nowhere _near_ the end. Much like with CrossCode, this title has a *ludicrous* amount of content. I’ve played almost 40 hours of TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children thus far, and I’m at about the end of Chapter 2 of what I think might be 10 chapters for the story, and I’ve only got 4 of the 12 Troubleshooters on the team.
Half of the reviews that I’ve seen of this game are sitting in the 150-200 range, and that’s for people that’ve basically completed the main story. Some people, who’ve gone on to try and gather all of the Masteries I imagine, are in the 300-400 hour range. And quite often you will see reviews that say things like, “One of the best games I’ve ever played.”, and stuff like that. So if you decide to play it, be prepared for a very long, _very big_ game.
The developers also show a high level of passion and dedication for the project, as well. The game was in Early Access for a few years, and finally released into 1.0 back in 2020, and they’re still updating the game on like a weekly or bi-weekly basis to this day. They’ve released a free DLC, some character outfit sets for all the Troubleshooters, and they’re working on another expansion that’s being released in segments. They also claim, on the game’s store page, that this is apparently the first game in what they’re looking to make into a series, which is just... that’s some next-level ambition, in my eyes.
To everyone who reads this, please do check the game out. Just like what people say about CrossCode and I think Chained Echoes too, TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children is one of those indie titles that deserves way, _way_ more recognition that it has. I’ve seen virtually nobody talk about it; even CrossCode has received more attention than it, at this point.
And on a completely unrelated note: strawberry. So... yeah.
For the past decade I've been playing a lot more indies than some triple a games that launch from what I've noticed. Some personal favorites I'd suggest for anyone reading to check out is Katana Zero, Prodigal, Neon White, Grindstone, Dave the Diver, Demon Turf, and Cloudbuilt.
Cloudbuilt specifically not super cloudbuilt. There's some jank going on there with the licensing so CB is getting updated again. Good news is that a spiritual successor is planned.
Mango
On the topic of games you can't talk about, I'd highly recommend TUNIC, a Zelda-esque game about a smol fox on a big adventure.
I do love Hades a great deal, but I'd personally rank both Outer Wilds and Tunic, for this reason: Hades is an excellent game by virtue of polish and craftsmanship, whether in narrative structure or in the tight combat mechanics.
Outer Wilds and Tunic, however, share this element of discoverability, unknown unknowns around every corner that a player gets to piece together for themselves, with limited in game guidance.
I find the latter quality to be rarer in games, and harder to replicate.
Unsighted is a criminally overlooked indie game imo
Play some indies and they're all ok, but then I played Chained Echos and was blown away, and I also played Hades and quite honestly for the first time got lost in the world and spent countless hours playing, and falling in love more and more every step of the way
Do you ever just sit and wonder why there are so many good games? And how developers have poured so many hours into these passion projects for the world to enjoy, so much so that you feel guilty of not playing them to the fullest. Of course nobody has the time for that, however it would be great to live in a world unbounded by time.
I buy more games than I'll ever play. But hopefully it's enough for some of these daring devs to get by and do what they love.
The video game medium is one with limitless expression. Sadly in recent years, they have (at least to me) became very same-y. That's why indie games shine so brightly. They're made by video game fans for video game fans, fueled by passion and love for the craft. They can take risks and put new spins on, well, everything.
Some of my favorites are Hollow Knight for having beautiful atmosphere and music, fun abilities with a ton of ways to build a charm loadout, and a wonderful balance of good combat and exploration that I feel hasn't been matched by anything else I've encountered.
Inscryption for having spot-on ominous atmosphere and suspense and mystery, and a fun, innovative card game that meshes perfectly with the rouge-lite genre.
Stardew Valley for being exactly what you'd expect. A mellow-but-rewarding break from the stresses and tension of daily life. A blank-slate farm to build, a cozy town to explore, and colorful people to get to know.
One I discovered literally yesterday, that is still only available in demo form (I guess, honestly, still too early to say whether or not it's recency-bias on my part). Slay the Princess. Has a Stanly-Parable sort of narrator and plays around with meta-story concepts, tons of branching paths stemming from almost every choice you can make. It has a way of inspiring endless thought about what everything means and what anything even IS. Can't wait for the full game to come out.
Also, apples.
Thank you for telling me about slay the princess
@@MochaSlushes I enjoyed the demo a ton! If anyone ends up playing it, I hope they have as much fun as I did.
Maybe they have already recommend this duo of games but I have to regardless.
Lobotomy Corporation and Library of Ruina, two games that tell one really great story combined with interesting gameplay.
Lobotomy Corp puts you into the shoes of a new appointed manager of the main Lcorp brqnch where you need manage "abnormalities" (or SCP's) to harvest energy from.them.
The strongest point of LC surprisingly is the story and characters, the origin of this "abnormalities" and the mysteries that are unfoulded the more you play and complete missions.
On the other part Library of ruina has one of the Best if not the Best "turn based combat" i have seen in any videogame... but maybe calling it turn based is a little bit misleading.
LoR is a continuation of the events that happended in LC. The genre is chaged and now it is an rpg with deckbuilding mechanics with a Clash system that feels turn based but your attacks and defenses options you chosse always clash with your opponts creating and really dinamic and action pack combat.
Both games for me are Master pieces even with all their defects (most of them found on LC), so I believe these games could bring You a great experience.
Thanks for reading My comment.
PS: If you are going to play the games I recommend you to install some mods. In LC You want the mod that fixes memory leaks and in LoR you want the No grind mod.
indies I can recommend, One step from Eden, this thing is the literal reason the megaman battlenetwork series got revived, the second one is Kenshi, the first open world Indie that existed, you are not the chosen one, have several different starts (from a trader with a pack animal and no coins trying to sell luxury items to a rather infamous cirminal who found a legendary sword in a battlefiel to a pair of slaves whi have to escape, or someone who woke up naked and afraid in the middle of the desert while missing some limbs)
the third one is streets of rogue, it's a roguelike that feels like the more classic ones, the city is still a dungeon after all but has this je ne sais quois of you being a thief, or engineer or a random factory worker in a city instead of your typical fantasy characters, and then there's flamebreak someone somewhere once decided to combine league of legends with a roguelike and got this thing that sounds like an abomination on paper and made me lsoe hours of my life
If you like Mystery games, Return of the Obra Dinn is pretty good. You have to figure out how each crew member of a ship died or survived to complete the story. I have some qualms with the guesswork you need to do, but overall it's pretty good.
Unheard is another mystery game that is very unique. A murder mystery type game where the gameplay is centered around audio. Good story twist at the end as well.
A tactics like game I've been enjoying recently is Wartales. It's in the latest stages of its development but is supposed to release this year. It's a Play-Your-Way kind of game with lots of ways to customize your units, and party as a whole.
Hyper light drifter is my favorite indie game of all time but I've put in more hours on Hades than any other indie game.
It's alright Hyper Light Breakers is on it's way. That ones gonna be good.
I tried Outer Wilds when it first dropped on Gamepass, but I just couldn't finish it. For some reason I found it a little bit disturbing, I can't really articulate why. Something about being trapped in a loop reliving the violent death of a solar system for eternity, maybe. Also, I died in the rising sand planet several times and the whole process of trying to find my way through was just wearing me down.
I would love to recommend phoenotopia awakening, it's really amazing metroidvania with very cute story. I loved all aspects of the game and in my opinion it felt better than hollow knight
I started this game expecting nothing too crazy, and man it's deceptively huge.
Rabi-Ribi, from Taiwanese indie devs CreSpirit, is a one-of-a-kind genre-blending of metroidvania, bullet hell platforming, and non-linear boss rushing, packaged together in a cutesy presentation that belies just how hardcore the game is, both in its difficulty scaling mechanics and in its exploit-friendly level design. There are some areas where other games trounce it for sure (the story is largely fluff, and clearly was treated just as a generic framing for boss encounters) but mechanically it scratches an itch that even seven years after release still endears me.
Rain World. Take everything you said about Outer Wilds, and apply it to Rain World.
To anyone who is tired of games and wants to experience something different, get the game, then take a note book and make entries for anything you find, give things your own names, find out what they do, how they react when you do certain things, and how they interact with other stuff.
I only have some small advice (no spoilers).
- Everything in this game has a use in the gameplay department, you won't receive upgrades or stat boosts, you have full access to everything you need to beat the game since the tutorial, if it's there, it has a purpose. If you ever get stuck, go back a couple sections and experiment with anything, yeah, ANYTHING that isn't part of the background that you may have overlooked or dismissed as worthless.
- Think outside of the videogame logic, don't think of this as a stage, but a world of its own, enemies are not obstacles to kill for loot or points that have predetermined attack patterns, there isn't coins, floating platforms or spikes that someone put on the ground for some reason, everything has a purpose and tries to be coherent as a living and breathing ecosystem.
- You're not a hero, or even particuarly strong. Your most useful asset is your brain, both inside and outside the game's universe, pick your battles carefully and avoid them until you get comfortable with your controls, they're simple, even if you don't like platformers, as the game doesn't ask much of you in that department, but they will seem clunky at first, there's a lot of small things you will learn that influence them, and once you catch up with them, you'll be flying across the game.
That's all. Play Rain World, then play the dlc if you like it, it's even better. Don't get it beforehand though, buy it only after finishing the main game.
Edit: An extra tip that has just occured to me, if an area is too hard, you can always try backtracking and going somewhere else, the game gives you a lot of paths you can go through.
A couple indie games I recommend, specifically RPG games are Yuppie Psycho, a survival horror game set in an office building, and Fear & Hunger1/2, an incredibly difficult sort of survival horror game that takes place in a dungeon or eastern europe. Both of them are very good, although one is definitely way harder than the other, but both deserve some more time in the spotlight!
Have you tried playing Rain World? this cute game requires you to experiment and learn advanced movement if possible. in some cases this game can be really not fair
I bought one of those charity bundles that have like 100 games and so far I played Absolute Drift and Chronicon. Both very simple games but great at what they do, a short, relaxing (besides some tough missions) drifting simulator and a Diablo-like that introduced me back to that genre after years and had me sink 60 hours in. And from what I heard it works because it takes the things that worked and gets rid of those that didn't. They definitely didn't wow me as much as Celeste, Crosscode, Enter the Gungeon etc. did, but they were focused on those less common genres, and they did it right, so I'd say they were just as worthwile experiences in between all the legendary ones.
For some others that are pretty popular but not mentioned, I've been playing Epic Battle Fantasy for maybe 10 years and recently played Freedom Planet and OMORI.
If you were into Freedom Planet try Spark the Electric Jester, its neat. Spark 3 is perfect.
As for somewhat hidden gems I can recommend oneshot, furi, hyper light drifter, signalis, tunic, minit
Play Rain World. Similar level of raw exploration of a world that doesn't revolve around you to outer wilds. Amazing gameplay even better atmosphere and world building
It's so hard to define what an Indie game is. If Hades is an Indie game, then why isn't Mega Man II? Link's Awakening? Heck, is Wayforward an indie developer? There's more staff on Hollow Knight than there is on most NES games. I actually turned to indie games intentionally because I felt like indies were closer to what I fell in love with as a kid.
Darkwood - criminally underrated. I wish the Developers would make it Third Person as a remake in Unreal Engine 5
Woah. Now that sounds unsettling.
Honestly, Unsighted is one of the best indie games I've ever played. It's what got me into Metroidvanias when I used to dislike them. It's extremely underappreciated
Maaaan, I wish I was more hooked to Outer Wilds than my two attempts have led me to feel. I’m jealous of those that vibe with it so viscerally.
By two attempts do you mean you've tried getting into the game twice or you've gone through 2 time loops? How much did you discover when you tried?
A short hike is amazing
One of my all time favorites. the characters are so charming, and that beach ball minigame is a blast
Dead Cells sure is something else man you should try it!
It's a roguelike-metroidvania starring The Beheaded(or Bobby in the animated trailers)
Although if I talk about it the worse it would sound like but when the game gets a current 5 year support,crossing over with not only the other indie games(Hollow Knight,Slay the Spire,Shovel Knight,...) but also Castelvania you know the game accomplished something spectacular.
also if another "Everyone is here Vol.3" gets dropped in the future,I want to see Hat Kid's Umbrella or Peppino's Shotgun a weapon of choice for sure :)
Oh are just throwing out favorite hits on a hypothetical vol.3? Because my votes for the Transistor or the Axiom Disruptor.
Thanks for the recommendations! I actually found out I already had chained echoes installed I just hadn’t played it yet so thanks for letting me know! Some good indie games are Celeste, Hollow-knight, firewatch, ddlc(Doki Doki), Undertale and Omori.
the indie game that blew my expectations was MO:Astray, it's a simple platforming/puzzle game in which you are a slime that sticks up to surfaces. as the game progressed the level design got pushed so incredibly well to its limits I was shocked at just how good it was thought out.
It also has great visuals and an okay story added to it. Would recommend
Funny how to most replayed part is the short Crosscode one at the beginning.
I tend to be drawn more by storytelling than by exploration and discovery. But even though I'm not exactly the kind of person Outer Wilds was made for, I still wish I could experience it for the first time again. It's amazing for what a unique experience it is.
I thought I had already subscribed because your videos are so great. but the sub request joke totally got me!
All 3 games you mentioned are amazing, but Hades takes the cake for me. As someone who likes to exhaust the dialogue of every character in the games I play, Hades was brilliant to me. The fact that you could play dozen, and dozens, and dozens of runs and no character repeats dialogue is just astounding.
My list of best indie games in no particular order goes
Noita for depth, discovery, and meaningful freedom.
Hotline Miami for being hotline miami
Blasphemous for the worldbuilding, art, and bosses
Deep Rock Galactic for a great multiplayer experience for all skill levels and continued support.
Osu! because god knows there's a drought of rhythm games, racing games, and imsims, and osu is a shining beacon of quality and community support in the midst of it.
Dusk manages to shine in a 30 year old genre .
Signalis could be in here for many reasons like the writing, art, music, and mechanics which all make it worthy of a bonus mention, but as a horror game I don't really find it scary. Risk of Rain 2 fits in the same category as drg and it was developed as an indie but gearbox now owns it so idk if that disqualifies it. It's really tough to keep this list short in part because I find it hard to compare games from wildly different genres.
And I'm not including my favourite indie game either which is Underrail. If I mentioned an rpg it would probably be Divinity: Original Sin 2. There's also like a million games I haven't played which I feel belong here.
'Depth, discovery and freedom' is a fancy way of saying 'I have no idea what specifically blew me up but I and everything around me is very dead'
@@Frosthowl93 Funny enough that only happened to me once but let's be real if I'm low enough that an offscreen explosion killed me then I should've moved on from that level long ago. The real enemy in noita is your own hubris. My latest near-to-god run ended because I wanted to unlock giga disc projectile in the progress menu and replaced my teleport spell to try it.
1:16 We really need to, collectively, as a society, get over the idea that spending time doing what you love can constitute "the least productive day you've had in a while", imo.
Also, banana
In my opinion hotline miami (and hm 2) is the best indie game. The fast adrenalin-fueled hard gameplay and indepth complex story just make it in my opinion the goat. But not only that the soundtrack is a banger as well
Love this video, especially being a very big crosscode fan and that game being very dear to me, knowing its one of your favs just got me a little excited. Anyway watched your Chained echo vid a couple days ago and gonna get it so thank you for spreading the message that that game exiists cause I prob wouldnt have found it either way. Havent heard of outer wilds so ill prob check it out!
Echoes of the Eye is well worth playing
I've just finished playing chained echoes and the void I always feel after dedicating a week or two of my life to a game that I was so engrossed with felt just as strong as after I finished Cross code (I haven't played the DLC yet) these games are so amazing and I wish they would go mainstream just so that these devs get the recognition they deserve.
Also I like Durian. :D
Excellent picks!
Not the best by any means but a few of my favourites.
Hollow Knight, just really interesting take on a classic genre, beautiful, polished, haunting, can go on.
Mighty Switch Force, not everything has to be deep/meaningful sometimes just quick bursts of fun are whatcha need, and basically something between a Mega Man Boss Rush Mode and Mischief Makers on pretty much everything now but originally for the 3DS then the sequel on Wii U, make it a memorable experience for me.
Shovel Knight, Touhou, and Shantae series are perhaps old hat for many, but important imo because they were games on big company platforms that did well enough to generate a following and enhance the scope, quality, ability to create loyal a following, sequels/spin offs, and without their relative success the current ones might never have been greenlit or got the standing/support required to exist now.
Play outer wilds dlc already, even though I agree you definitely cant experience it twice its still an amazing experience regardless