Upcoming Indie Games to Keep an Eye On

Yeah, I saw Anodyne earlier today, and I can't help but think that they're kind of missing the point. JRPGs didn't look like that because they wanted them that way, they looked that way because it was the best presentation they could come up with on that limited hardware. Aping the same form on much more powerful machines doesn't make the game better, it just makes it look like it's on a SNES. And that should never be a goal, in and of itself, because it's not actually an improvement of any kind.

Simple graphics are cool. 2D is cool. I love that stuff. But do something, you know, new with simple, 2D graphics.

Why are you even making this?

Part of the reason I'm working on this is I noticed there aren't too many GBC Zelda-likes floating around out there. I also noticed there aren't particularly many Yume Nikki-likes. I strongly enjoy the atmosphere and exploration in Yume Nikki, and I also enjoy the dungeons inside of the Game Boy Zeldas. I also had a few ideas floating around that I wanted to express - so anodyne is Jon and I's attempt at combining those elements into something of our own.

Seems like they're hitting the point right on.

It looks nice, the controls feel good, and the music was great.

I've seen some interesting things done with the retro-limited aesthetic; but, then, I was always more about the systems than the looks. If it has GBC-era mechanics, well, we've learned a lot since then. I love digging up old games and replaying them, but even I have to admit that there's a lot of stuff that we just learned how to do better since then. I haven't played this, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

MeatMan wrote:

Little Inferno - coming Winter 2012

Congratulations on your new Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace!
Throw your toys into your fire, and play with them as they burn. Stay warm in there. It's getting cold outside!

Burn flaming logs, screaming robots, credit cards, batteries, exploding fish, unstable nuclear devices, and tiny galaxies. An adventure that takes place almost entirely in front of a fireplace - about looking up up up out of the chimney, and the cold world just on the other side of the wall.

Release date has been announced as November 18.

Malor wrote:

Yeah, I saw Anodyne earlier today, and I can't help but think that they're kind of missing the point. JRPGs didn't look like that because they wanted them that way, they looked that way because it was the best presentation they could come up with on that limited hardware. Aping the same form on much more powerful machines doesn't make the game better, it just makes it look like it's on a SNES. And that should never be a goal, in and of itself, because it's not actually an improvement of any kind.

Simple graphics are cool. 2D is cool. I love that stuff. But do something, you know, new with simple, 2D graphics.

I think that's why I like the last couple of Zeboyd games. They did some good stuff with the game design.

MeatMan wrote:
MeatMan wrote:

Little Inferno - coming Winter 2012

Congratulations on your new Little Inferno Entertainment Fireplace!
Throw your toys into your fire, and play with them as they burn. Stay warm in there. It's getting cold outside!

Burn flaming logs, screaming robots, credit cards, batteries, exploding fish, unstable nuclear devices, and tiny galaxies. An adventure that takes place almost entirely in front of a fireplace - about looking up up up out of the chimney, and the cold world just on the other side of the wall.

Release date has been announced as November 18.

Woo! Lots of faith in what those guys can make.

If you liked Dungeon Defenders and/or Orcs Must Die!, you might be interested in I Am Weapon.

At the official site, you can download the demo or buy the game for $20. Or you could vote for it on Greenlight.

Reminds me more of Crimsonland than anything else, which is a VERY good thing.

Malor wrote:

Aping the same form on much more powerful machines doesn't make the game better, it just makes it look like it's on a SNES. And that should never be a goal, in and of itself, because it's not actually an improvement of any kind.

Sure, but I think (not talking about Anodyne here) in the case of many indies, it's not that the particular look is an explicit goal, but a concession due to limited resources. It's probably easier to make chunky pixel stuff that looks okay* than it is to make non-chunky pixel 2d graphics if you don't have a good artist on your team?

*in the sense that it has a built-in excuse ("looks a bit crap, doesn't it? yeah but anything that chunky is going look a bit crap")

ebarstad wrote:

Prison Architect (alpha) is now available for purchase. Starts at $30.

I don't have time for a new game right now, but I'm really interested in this.

demonbox wrote:
ebarstad wrote:

Prison Architect (alpha) is now available for purchase. Starts at $30.

I don't have time for a new game right now, but I'm really interested in this.

It's good in theory, but it's still very buggy in Alpha. Loaded it the first time, got the tutorial which wasn't made clear at first - thought I'd loaded an endgame save. Loaded the game up again later, and it bypassed the tutorial and took me to a "build my own prison" campaign mode, with no obvious indication of how to get the tutorial back.

Being patient as it's an alpha, but yeah. Was also disappointed to shell out an extra $5 for the art book and OST only to find out they're not being offered until near release.

Super interesting to hear feedback on the game. Since I didn't see one I opened a thread about it.

CY wrote:

Being patient as it's an alpha, but yeah. Was also disappointed to shell out an extra $5 for the art book and OST only to find out they're not being offered until near release.

Yeah, that's irritating.

Konjak's back to work on The Iconoclasts!

You can download the alpha here.

Edit: That is one long and glorious alpha. Konjak's such a tease.

Timber and Stone looks like another DF-like worth keeping an eye on, similar to Gnomoria and Towns, but with a Minecraft aesthetic.

Neat! I threw $30 at the Kickstarter.

myst-like kairo is out for win/osx, but if you want ios/linux, you're going to need to wait. (it's also on greenlight if you want it on steam).

I went through the thread to see which of the games I was interested in had been released yet. The following have NOT been released yet

Harold http://www.moonspiderstudio.com/inde...
Nowhere http://www.duangle.com/ginshu
Environmental Station Alpha http://forums.tigsource.com/index.ph...
Gunpoint http://www.gunpointgame.com/
Reset http://reset-game.net/
Antichamber http://www.antichamber-game.com/
FRACT http://fractgame.com/
The Witness http://the-witness.net/
Cube World http://wollay.blogspot.co.uk/

DanB wrote:

Antichamber http://www.antichamber-game.com/

He has said it's coming out this year. I wish.

cyrax wrote:
DanB wrote:

Antichamber http://www.antichamber-game.com/

He has said it's coming out this year. I wish.

Witness and Gunpoint were expected to be out by now as well. Haven't been following either of them that closely though.

Antichamber made my head hurt when I saw it at PAX. However, I like the aesthetic on a conceptual level.

shoptroll wrote:

Witness and Gunpoint were expected to be out by now as well. Haven't been following either of them that closely though.

You're mistaken on Witness. Blow has constantly said it'll take years to finish, and I think he's still a few away.

oh if it's not been mentioned before, there's also Jazzpunk which is channelling a very 30 Flights of Loving aesthetic:

cyrax wrote:
shoptroll wrote:

Witness and Gunpoint were expected to be out by now as well. Haven't been following either of them that closely though.

You're mistaken on Witness. Blow has constantly said it'll take years to finish, and I think he's still a few away.

Hrmmm. I could've sworn they thought this would be the year, but maybe that's just false hopes after it was included in RPS's list of games for 2012 (which was really speculative to begin with).

This seems like the right crowd, any more news on Fez coming to the PC?

Mark of the Ninja just dropped, Spelunky is on the way, when will this other great console game make it over to the PC?

DanB wrote:

Cube World http://wollay.blogspot.co.uk/

Been following that one for a while (mentioned it on the first page). I think he's trying to rename it, though. It's honestly turning out a bit less appealing to me than I initially imagined

Squee9 wrote:

Mark of the Ninja just dropped, Spelunky is on the way, when will this other great console game make it over to the PC?

I thought it was once the exclusivity period expires.

shoptroll wrote:
Squee9 wrote:

Mark of the Ninja just dropped, Spelunky is on the way, when will this other great console game make it over to the PC?

I thought it was once the exclusivity period expires.

I guess I expected it to be sooner than this.

Squee9 wrote:

This seems like the right crowd, any more news on Fez coming to the PC?

Phil has long stated he doesn't want the game to appear on PC. In Phil's Crazy Land, it's because you can't sit on a sofa and play Fez if it's on the PC. Yet, in Indie Game: The Movie, he uses a PC, a controller, and a TV-scale monitor to demo the game. Yeah. >.>.

CY wrote:
Squee9 wrote:

This seems like the right crowd, any more news on Fez coming to the PC?

Phil has long stated he doesn't want the game to appear on PC. In Phil's Crazy Land, it's because you can't sit on a sofa and play Fez if it's on the PC. Yet, in Indie Game: The Movie, he uses a PC, a controller, and a TV-scale monitor to demo the game. Yeah. >.>.

I have played Fez on the PC! Or at least the demo version at the IGF pavilion at GDC. I got ignored by Phil Fish in person while I was playing it, too, so it was basically the full experience.

CY wrote:
Squee9 wrote:

This seems like the right crowd, any more news on Fez coming to the PC?

Phil has long stated he doesn't want the game to appear on PC. In Phil's Crazy Land, it's because you can't sit on a sofa and play Fez if it's on the PC. Yet, in Indie Game: The Movie, he uses a PC, a controller, and a TV-scale monitor to demo the game. Yeah. >.>.

Well, except that in the last piece of news about Fez when he complained that he couldn't patch the XBox version without paying a large fee to Microsoft and it wouldn't be a problem if the game was on Steam. I imagine the reason he said he didn't want to make a PC version before is because he was tired of working on the game.

I think either the timed exclusivity on Fez is really long, remember that the agreement for Fez is probably ancient and predates many of the newer games that are getting quick ports. Or alternatively he's just having trouble porting the game to PC, not impossible considering the difficulty with which Fez came out on XBLA in the first place.