Upcoming Indie Games to Keep an Eye On

Great list, I hadnt heard of a lot of these. I picked up The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante, which I had never heard of, on its recommendation. We'll see what the life of Bob Brante looks like.

Anytime an article or upcoming game says “turn-based strategy”, I can’t help but be a bit excited and wonder if there’s an iOS version in the works. Conversely “real-time strategy” pretty much pass.

Keithustus wrote:

Anytime an article or upcoming game says “turn-based strategy”, I can’t help but be a bit excited and wonder if there’s an iOS version in the works. Conversely “real-time strategy” pretty much pass.

IMAGE(https://media4.giphy.com/media/xTiIzwKOMCBgMuDKpi/giphy.webp?cid=6c09b952be6e58c58432ae6c9fcd0c52d749474e12ccdd09&rid=giphy.webp&ct=g)

Spoiler:

I wishlisted quite a few of those games.

Polygon just ran an article on the "22 most anticipated indie games of 2022", according to them. A lot of them are new to me.

https://www.polygon.com/gaming/22846...

Some great-looking games there Tasty!

Infernax. A Retro style game inspired by the odd-man out games of their respective franchises, Castlevania II and Zelda II. Castlevania influence is much easier to see and hear in the trailer. Coming to everything except mobile and PS5 on Valentines day.

Well, I decided to click through to see the videos form that channel and found this pretty interesting looking game, Young Souls, too. It looks almost flash cheap in some gameplay animations, until you I saw a cutscene about halfway through the trailer and noticed the facial animations are more involved than expected. I'm intrigued. Delayed from supposed to be out last year to Q1 this year, to PC, Switch, XB1, PS4, & Stadia. Bonus, it's got (local) co-op!

Coming first to Stadia will probably kill it. Although I'm sure they got some coin to do it...

After reading an RPS article about it, I've been playing with WorldBox, a God simulator. You can create worlds and populate with humans, orcs, elves and dwarves, as well as crocodiles, zombies, bears and so on, and then see what happens. They tech up have wars with each other, get old, expand and so on. And you can nuke them, or dump dragons on them and the like.

There aren't any real goals or anything, but it's oddly compelling. I would like them to increase the fidelity of the person simulation I think. I want it to end up being the legend concept of Dwarf Fortress or something similar.

DudleySmith wrote:

After reading an RPS article about it, I've been playing with WorldBox, a God simulator. You can create worlds and populate with humans, orcs, elves and dwarves, as well as crocodiles, zombies, bears and so on, and then see what happens. They tech up have wars with each other, get old, expand and so on. And you can nuke them, or dump dragons on them and the like.

There aren't any real goals or anything, but it's oddly compelling. I would like them to increase the fidelity of the person simulation I think. I want it to end up being the legend concept of Dwarf Fortress or something similar.

Elves are OP. Gotta nuke them from orbit, it is the only way to be sure.

This just dropped from a developer whom I really enjoy. I LOVED their last game, Beast Agenda 2030. This one is a mix of stealth, combat and hacking, and so far it's very fun.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1...

Steam is having a demo day. Thought I post a few of the ones that were fun here:

A pretty solid space base sim. You run a small mobile space colony. Really high quality.
IXION
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IMAGE(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1113120/ss_92936f66748b0a7cfae967399577fdc27604a914.1920x1080.jpg?t=1645467116)

Fun little island crafting game. Seems early but has a bit of automation and nice grind loop of a game.
Nova Islands
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Terraria style game. Mining and crafting with coop. Was pretty solid.
Core Keeper
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This was my favorite so far. It's basically heroes of might and magic. With real time battles. Played a full game worth and enjoyed myself. Did make a broken hero really easily. So it probable could use a little balancing.
Heros Hour

Been playing Hero's Hour on Itch and it is SO. f*ckING. GOOD.

Writer's Block is good - "Boggle by way of Slay The Spire" is a catnip one line description for me. More than a hint of Bookworm Adventures too.

I was encouraged that I got my ass handed to me on my first playthrough by a couple of Elite enemies - I'm a dab hand at word games and sometimes they're too easy. This one seeems pitched perfectly though.

IMAGE(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1841380/ss_51993b02bb3ca2d47d753d924668213de651f702.1920x1080.jpg?t=1640820803)

This Steam demo bonanza seems to have a lot of booze related games, and so far the only one that caught my interest is The Brew Barons. (It caught my interest hard enough to become only the second game I've ever donated to on kickstarter. It's a weird mix of flight arcade, brewery simulator, business management, and apparently some light RPG type stuff that I didn't touch at all my in my demo time so far. The flight-based materials gathering mechanic is just hard enough to feel like it requires skill while still being simple and easy enough that I can see myself enjoying it at the end of a tiring day.

Writer's Block is great. Please don't fail reading comprehension like I did. There are several tiles that you have to used or they will damage you. I though they all damaged you when you used them up until halfway to the boss on my first run

If you haven't tried out Souldiers yet, go give the demo for this metroidvania a try. Here's Wanderbots playing the demo for a bit. The title is a bit of hyperbole, but it's fun.

A friend of mine worked on the art for Potionomics, which just got a Steam page up for release this fall!

Apparently it's playable at PAX East XSEED booth this weekend.

3d Hotline Miami?

Defeat the evil Socks and Sandals!

Oh I should post this here. It’s really worth a watch.

I don't think I'd buy it but Anger Foot looks fun!

fangblackbone wrote:

I don't think I'd buy it but Anger Foot looks fun!

Play the demo and get your fill. I stopped before the levels ran out.

Anger Foot makes me think of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Kick monsters into spikes!

I rarely wander into indie games and fall in love with something but somehow I just played the Dome Keeper alpha demo for 6 hours!

The gameplay is a mash-up of Dig Dug and Missile Command: waves of enemies will occasionally attack your base, so upgrade it to shoot at them, between which you dig and scavenge for resources while looking for a game-winning mcguffin. Good premise, good balance of action and planning, and nice controls though it did take me a while to get comfortable with a gamepad on PC for the first time in a long time.

The feeling of playing was like when FTL was new: tension, trying to make fast smart moves, and using pause to think about what you should do or browse the upgrades and options available to you once you return to the action. The demo has one type of miner, one type of base, and three types of starter base defense tools, while it looks like there will be at least three of each of those later, and you mix-and-match them at the start as you wish once unlocked. There's also additional upgradeable tools you find in the middle of each game, so it took me a while to find and get comfortable with all of them.

Definitely will pick this up when it's ready for purchase.

Keithustus wrote:

I rarely wander into indie games and fall in love with something but somehow I just played the Dome Keeper alpha demo for 6 hours!

Tried it out on Deck today. Didn’t want to stop playing. Definitely wishlisting. Caution: the demo doesn’t support saving….

This is not upcoming as it came out in Oct 2021 but I took a chance on it during the current Steam sale and it's pretty fun. Was completely off my radar until I stumbled onto it browsing the roguelike category of Steam. Just giving it a small boost here if you happen to be in the mood for a Hexen-ish FPS roguelike!

Just came out. Not like me to purchase a new game based on an IGN review but that's what happened. Started off kind of laughing at it (hilariously bad voice acting and questionable writing overall). Now I'm really digging it. It's like Dead Cells but done in a cyberpunky asian metropolis and in the Unreal 4 engine.

That looks fun. Wishlisted it for a later purchase.

Steam version of Vacuum Pilot on sale, $1.49. I’m in!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1...

Latest trailer is for mobile

Vacuum Pilot is great. I'm terrible at it, but it's great.