Indies Did This: Season of Releases
Wondering what the indies have been up to last week? Releasing games, that's what. Lots o'em.
This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team.
Fall is coming. The air is growing crisper and the leaves have begun to blush. All around the video game industry, a kind of hush is falling. Release season is coming and there will be no escape when the big-budget titles come knocking on the fortifications in search of reviews. Naturally, the indie scene kind of scooted ahead of the whole advance and have been cheerily making their rounds last week. Curious as to what exactly you've missed out? Don't fear. We've got your back.
While the answer might differ depending on whom you're interrogating, the biggest thing that happened for me last week was the release of Papers, Please. With its muted presentation and its quiet brutality, Lucas Pope's Papers, Please feels deeply reminiscent of the award-winning Cart Life. Both deal with uncomfortable facets of our reality. One explores what life is like for the plebeian street cart vendor, the other dissects the world through the lens of an immigration inspector. Both will weigh heavily on your psyche. There is never enough money for you and your family in either of these games, never enough to satiate both desire and need. As an added bonus, Papers, Please will even toy with your morality compass and make you feel like a louse for wanting to keep your own kids alive.
The developer calls it a Dystopian Document Thriller and, honestly, that's probably the best description of the game there is. Go buy it. If you need more convincing, there's a beta available over here. Check it out then go buy Papers, Please. Please.
On a slightly lighter note, the gorgeously remastered Spelunky is now available on Steam. It's strangely wonderful to see Derek Yu's action-adventure title go full circle. Spelunky began life as a freeware download on the PC. Then, it went on to swallow accolades, spawn merchandise and various commercial incarnations before finally returning to the PC. On the off-chance that you've yet to check out the alarmingly vicious original, here's a link to the freeware version. Once you're done beating your head against that, well, you can figure out if you want to flagellate yourself even further.
Still not enough ports in your life? Try Guacamelee! Gold Edition on for size; it's so awesome it even has an exclamation mark in its title. Drinkbox Studios' beat-em-up is positively dripping with style, shrewd humor and no small amount of memes. As the brave Luchador, you must figure out how to get El Presidente's Daughter back from the game's resident antagonist. Pedestrian as all that may sound, the whole experience's actually rather divine. For various reasons, I'm not going to go into explicit detail about exactly how stellar Guacamelee! Gold Edition this but trust me, it's good. And frustrating. My only beef with the game is that it will make you ululate in frothing rage if you're a) already terrible at platformers and b) without a controller.
Have I mentioned Steamworld Dig? Because you should be getting excited about Steamworld Dig. It hates you far less than any of the previous games I've mentioned do.
To go back to the dirge-like tones that fueled the beginning of this week's column, indie RPG Inquisitor looks almost terrifyingly in-depth and, well, rather terrifying. As the name implicates, one of the big things here appears to the ability to utilize a kaleidoscope of tortures - all in the name of extracting the truth from the corrupt heretics. Isn't it cheerful? Yeah, I thought so too. Developed over the course of 10 years, Inquisitor boasts of almost 5000 pages of text. Fortunately, if the reviews littering the Internet are any indication of things, much of Inquisitor's strength lies in its narrative. The rest of it, however, isn't quite as awesome. Best described as an 'acquired flavor', Inquisitor could be good for those with tensile skin or are in need of a dose of nostalgia.
The march continues. Guncraft, the hybrid child of Minecraft and Halo, can now be acquired on Steam. There's Dream as well, a sojourn into the dream-obsessed mind of one Howard Phillips. I haven't seen too much of Dream but a visit into someone else's nightmares is something that can seldom go wr - wait. Keeping to our dark and dungeon-y undertones, we've got Hammerwatch. A hack-and-slash action adventure that lets up to four people mess around together, it looks brutal and fun. But, mostly brutal.
Last but certainly not least, there's BeatBuddy: Tale of the Guardians. (Full disclaimer: I have a soft spot for the company's affinity for plushies). Threak's musical extravaganza has been quietly winging under the radar for a while now in spite of the big names (Rhianna Prachett? Sabrepulse? Austin Wintory? Yup.) attached to its person. I managed to check out the game sometime back in PAX East and I loved it. For all intents and purposes, it's a lot like DDR for the fingers, with a dose of Metroid and a hint of Disney for good measure.
"Where's all my indie stuff-in-progress?" Here. There. Everywhere. Indies Did This' programming will be back to normal next week. In the meantime, if you've got a lead on any cool games or have one of your own that we should totally be talking about, don't hesitate to drop us a line. E-mails, comments and tweets work best. Smoke signals and carrier pigeons are more hit and miss.