Indie Game Roundup 2022

LBoG: Editorials

Well, it’s that time of the year. Those weird few days between Christmas and New Year where nothing happens, you’re not sure what day of the week it is and you’ve been living off leftover turkey and chocolate for the last three days. It’s also when I like to do my (newly) annual indie game roundup. My second Indie Game Roundup after last year. Now, not all of these games were released in 2022 but they are all titles that I played and reviewed in 2022 and I’m presenting them in the order that I played/reviewed them, no best to worst or anything. I’ll also be including links to my original reviews should you care to give them a read.

Lacuna – A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure

Dark, gloomy and utterly drenched in atmosphere. Lacuna – A Sci-Fi Noir Adventure was a very stylish adventure title with a really detailed 16-bit art style. Choices that you made had a major impact on how the story panned out and the replay value was high with multiple different endings to discover. The short 3-4 hour playtime really was a plus here too as it made going through the game more than once feel less of a chore and more of a pleasure. 12 months after first playing this and I’ve still not found all of the endings. Writing this quick roundup has got me wanting to get back into it now too.

RPGolf Legends

This was a game that my pal Badger at Stoffel Presents got me into. He kept talking about it through most of 2021 and I just had to check it out. RPGolf Legends was a sequel too, so my review covered both the first game and the sequel. Both games are great and well worth purchasing. A retro-styled RPG that felt very SNES-era, but with the interesting twist of throwing in some golf. I also said that perhaps RPGolf Legends could be my indie game of the year, even as early as January when I reviewed it. Now, looking back, it’s certainly a strong contender and I would definitely put it in my top 5. You can get both of the games pretty cheap now and I recommended that you do.

Ravenous Devils

I still remember when the awesome Troglobytes Games told me about this a couple of months before it was released. Just from the brief description and one single screenshot, I knew this was a game that I wanted to play. A Sweeny Todd-inspired title where you kill and cook people, to serve to customers and use the profits to help build your business. The gameplay was simple but engrossing and even though it was a very short title, the amazing low price made this a must-buy. I did say in my original review that it was very much a ‘one and done’ type game though. However, the devs added some free DLC and extra content that actually drew me back in. In fact, I reviewed that too. Now, I do find myself delving back into Ravenous Devils for a play now and then. The whole ‘one and done’ thing is no longer relevant. It’s cheap and packed with gameplay, buy it.

CHANGE: A Homeless Survival Experience

This was another game recommendation from my friend Badger and it is, without a doubt, the most emotionally draining game that I have ever played. As simple to understand that CHANGE: A Homeless Survival Experience was, it was just as difficult to play properly. A survival game that is harsh and bleak and one that you will see the ‘Game Over’ screen dozens of times before you ever see a real ending. A very sobering title with a real and worthy message behind it.

Arise: A Simple Story

I don’t think that I’ve played a game with a better implemented and told narrative this year than I did with Arise: A Simple Story. The basics of the game are nothing to shout about and what you get is a casual platforming experience with all the gameplay mechanics that you come to expect. But then it throws in a time manipulation thing and a story told with zero dialogue but bucketloads of gravitas and emotion. Playing as a recently deceased old man, you find yourself in the afterlife and reliving important moments from your life. From childhood to parenthood and eventual death. Wonderfully poignant and a title that still plays on my mind, several months after experiencing it.

DYSMANTLE

From a brilliantly told tale of the fragility of human life to a game about smashing shit up. Starting out with nothing more than a crowbar, you destroy your environment and earn experience points to level up. Learn new skills, upgrade your weapons and kill a load of zombies along the way. Crammed with tons of missions and sub-missions, a varied and decently sized map. DYSMANTLE boasts that 99% of the objects and scenery in the game can be destroyed, it’s great fun too. A survival/crafting game with a ‘destroy everything’ mentality that works as a great way to relieve some stress and tension.

House Flipper

I detest decorating, DIY or anything connected to home improvement. I’m just really shit at it and have zero interest. Still, I seriously got sucked into the whole House Flipper phenomenon as it became massively popular when it was on Game Pass a few months back. It was just such a great ‘chill-out’ game, relaxing and calming. Hugely repetitive and redundant and yet, the game just had this power to make you lose many hours when playing it. You can quite easily waste several hours just decorating a single room, converting an entire house can take so much longer. I just found House Flipper an utterly fantastic way to unwind at the end of a rough day. I’m really looking forwards to the sequel next year.

Arcade Paradise

I spend over a year pestering the publisher and developer of Arcade Paradise for a review code. Exchanged quite a few (often) amusing Tweets and messages and so on. I’m pretty sure the only reason that they did send me a review code was to just get me to shut the fuck up. I fell in love with this game the moment that I saw the teaser trailer in early 2021, it just ticked all the right nostalgic boxes for me. An 80s and 90s vibe with over 30 playable games, with you managing a launderette that you slowly turn into a full-blown arcade. Since its launch, Arcade Paradise has had several updates to fix bugs, etc. As well as having some new arcade cabinets added via DLC. The game just keeps getting better and it was already pretty damn amazing anyway. For a while, this was my game of the year… for a while.

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe

I did play the original The Stanley Parable when it was released on PC and I loved it. It got a ‘sequel’ update/special edition this year though and for more platforms too. The trouble with The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is that is simply impossible to review, unless you really want to delve into spoilers. I even freely admit in my review that I did a bad job of reviewing the game. This is a walking simulator, a genre I’m really not much a fan of, but with one of the most refreshing and unique narratives in a game. That narrative is key here and this most certainly would not be anywhere near as great a title if it didn’t have it. A narrative that looks at and even (pretty much) breaks what it means to be a video game. In fact, The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe is less a game and more an experience, a great one too.

Blind Fate: Edo no Yami

I’ve been a fan of developer/publisher Troglobytes Games for a few years now. Their utterly awesome HyperParasite is coming up to being 3 years old in a few months and I still have it installed on both my Xbox and PC, to have a little cheeky play now and then. They are the only team to have two games on this very list too, Ravenous Devils (as publisher) and Blind Fate: Edo no Yami (as developer). Essentially, what Blind Fate: Edo no Yami is, is a scrolling beat ’em up. But there is so much more going on that elevates it over other games in the genre. The fact that you play as a blind character being one of them and how the game’s mechanics use senors (senses) to convey your surroundings is really quite unique. A tough game, but one that offers a fair challenge with a great and rewarding combat mechanic too. The fact that my name is in the credits is completely inconsequential, this is a top (but hard) game regardless.

Brewmaster: Beer Brewing Simulator

I’ve really been getting into these sim-type games recently. When they are good, they can be relaxing, rewarding and really interesting. Brewmaster: Beer Brewing Simulator is one of those relaxing, rewarding and interesting titles. I have been known to have drunk my fair share of beers over the years and yet, I’ve never really put much thought into how they are made. This game does a great job of teaching you about home brewing, without making you feel overwhelmed with all that there is to take in and do. As I said in my review, this may not be a 100% accurate simulation of brewing beer, but it makes for a far more interesting game than I was expecting.

Vampire Survivors

This is my favourite indie game of 2022 because it encapsulates everything that I love about indie gaming. Simple, addictive and hugely playable. I had heard a few whispers of this game before I played it, but I didn’t pay it much mind at the time and did manage to avoid pretty much everything to do with it. I played it for the first time when it was on Game Pass and I was not really sure what to expect. As I mentioned in my review, just from the way the game initially came across, I thought I was playing a twin-stick shooter. It took me a while to realise this was not the case. I died in about 1 minute and really thought that the game was shit. But, I was intrigued and started again. Long story short and I played Vampire Survivors, off and on, for about 2 weeks and finished it 100%. Then I bought it on Steam and finished it 100%. Then, it was released on mobile (for free too) and I downloaded it for my phone… and finished it 100%. The game just keeps throwing new content and more unlocks at you. It has a really low price point too. By far, the most generous game for your money and for me, the most playable of 2022. It’s also had some DLC recently… and I’ve been pulled back into it once more.

Swordship

One of the last games that I reviewed this year and a wonderful surprise it was too. A shoot ’em up without the shooting. The devs call this a dodge ’em up as you have to risk putting yourself in danger, to then quickly dodge out of the way and cause the enemies to destroy themselves with their own weapons. The gameplay is simple as you whizz around the stages, dodging enemy fire and trying to nab containers that can be used for upgrades and such. Tough, very tough but with a difficulty curve that feels quite rewarding.

There you go folks, my top indie games of 2022. It’s been a great year for indies and even though some of the games I played and reviewed didn’t make this list, that doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy them. For me, these here are just the best of the best of the best. I already have a handful of games on my radar for 2023, I even have a review for a new game coming in January that I have half-written already. Though, that’s not going to be my first post of 2023. As I write this, it is just after Christmas and just a few days ago, a legend of the gaming industry sadly died. So, I’ll be opening 2023 with an article of remembrance.

Anyway, that’s it from me for this year. I’ll be back in a few days for the start of 2023 and plenty of more articles through the year.

(Co-Op) Game Review: We Were Here Forever

LBoG: Game Overviews

I’ve got something a little different for review today. We Were Here Forever, from developer and publisher Total Mayhem Games, is a new co-op puzzle game. As this is a co-op title, I teamed up with my friend Lord Badger from Stoffel Presents to do a co-op review. Over a beer or two and the internet, we got to grips with exactly what this game was all about. But is it any good? Well, let’s find out.

Just as a quick aside, Badger does not know what I’m putting in my review and I have no idea what he’s going to say in his. Even though we have spent a good few hours playing this together, we’ve not really said much about it to each other as we wanted our reviews to do the talking for both of us. I’ll be linking to Lord Badger’s review at the end of this one.

“You and your fellow prisoner are trapped in the realm of Castle Rock – were you betrayed, or simply not that clever? To escape, you must explore the sinister castle for puzzles and plot your escape together. Secrets and riddles are hidden in the shadows. Just be aware that nothing is what it seems in this mysterious Antarctic adventure. Can you two escape together, or will you be trapped… forever?”

As already covered, We Were Here Forever is a co-op puzzle game. There is no single-player option, so you and a friend have to team up. You find yourself trapped in Castle Rock a mysterious realm and have to escape from an equally mysterious castle and a rather sinister jester. This is actually my first experience with one of these games, as We Were Here is a franchise. Starting with the first game, We Were Here from 2017, We Were Here Forever is the fourth game in the series. I went into this one completely blind after Lord Badger kindly offered me a review code and a chance to review this game with him.

So, how does this game work? Well, your two characters are separate for large sections of the game and you have to communicate with each other via in-game walkie-talkies. Yes, you’ll need to have access to a microphone/headset to play. The in-game walkie-talkies work like real-life ones too. So you can’t talk over each other and have to press a button before speaking. Communication is key here as you’ll often be the eyes and ears for the other player and them for you. You’ll be spending huge chunks of this game explaining things to the other player, as they can not see what you can. Puzzles will need clear and concise communication between the two of you to be solved. Think of this as a digital version of putting an Ikea shelving unit together with your partner, if one of you was blindfolded and the other had their hands tied behind their back, with you being in different rooms… and with no instructions. You need to keep your wits about you as well as your cool, as you talk each other through what is going on.

Then there are several parts of the game where you do meet up and both have to face the same puzzle together and can both see the same thing. Even then, it may not be entirely clear to either of you and you’ll need to combine both of your noggins to solve whatever puzzle the game throws at you. I really want to go into details with some of the puzzles here but at the same time, I don’t want to spoil anything and have you be surprised by what you need to do.

I have an issue with a lot of puzzle games and that issue is that the puzzles get very ‘samey’ very quickly. You get games that offer basic push square block into square hole type puzzles and have to repeat them ad nauseam, with a few very slight variations. With We Were Here Forever every puzzle felt unique and as if you have to engage a different part of your brain to solve it. With some puzzles, you’ll know the solution from the second you see it, but actually solving it may require more work than you first realise. Then there are puzzles that can leave you utterly bewildered with the solution, even when you can clearly see what needs to be done.

I’m sure this is something that Lord Badger will mention in his review too, but anyway. We both became completely flummoxed quite early in the game. I’m not going to say what the puzzle was exactly, but it involved seashell images on a fruit machine-type thing, where the reels spun after a set amount of time. We knew what we had to do but we just could not see how to do it. We tried any and everything that we could think of. We scoured the environment, just in case we missed a clue. We re-tried any and everything that we could think of again. Around 2 hours is what we spent on this one puzzle… 2 ‘effing hours. It was getting late and we were both tired, both physically and mentally. So we called it a night and went to bed… separately, I must add.

Anyway, the next morning and the first thing we did was send messages to each other trying to work out the puzzle. Badger told me that he had to sleep on the sofa because he kept tossing and turning, annoying his missus, because he was trying to work it out. We both played it over in our minds and just could not see the solution. Then, Badger had a ‘eureka moment’ and sent me a message saying that he’d just worked it out. Within minutes, we were both back and playing We Were Here Forever and yes, he was right. It was stupidly simple too. But that is just how the puzzles can work here, yes you can get completely stumped but not through bad game design. The puzzles can all be solved if you use the old noodle and even if the solution may not be clear at first, there is always a logical resolve, even if you are overlooking the most simple of ideas.

I do just want to quickly go over how We Were Here Forever looks. It may not be a graphical powerhouse but it does really create a mood and atmosphere that is pretty damn impressive. From dark and gothic scenery that looks like something from a Tim Burton nightmare. To weirdly bizarre, twisted-jester, bright neon light areas that are oddly calming and unnerving at the same time. You even get to explore the depth of the sea. Plus, you can play rock paper scissors with each other via animated avatar emotes.

I did have a few niggles with We Were Here Forever. As Badger and I were playing a pre-release version, there were a few bugs that need ironing out. We had a part of the game where I became trapped in a small corridor with a locked door at either end. Nothing to interact with and no way to open the doors, I was well and truly stuck. At the same time, Badger had fallen into a pit with no way out of it, we were both stuck. So we restarted the game and we think that we missed something because when we restarted, a cutscene played and we were moved on to the next part. There was also an instance when our in-game walkie-talkies stopped working. Badger couldn’t hear me and I couldn’t hear him… which was a major flaw in a game where communication is key. Still, I know there has been an update to work on some of the issues, so you probably won’t experience them yourself.

Some puzzles can take way too long to describe the scenario that you are in, to the other person. To the point where you can spend more time describing them than solving the puzzle itself. There was this one puzzle with a huge wheel that could be turned and tiny symbols that needed matching. It would take ages to explain to the other person which tiny symbol was where, etc. Still, if you are so inclined, you can just take a picture of what you are looking at and send it to your partner instead… not that we did that… honest. Is it ‘cheating’? Possibly but it really is a timesaver.

So then, is We Were Here Forever worth the coin? £15 is what this will cost you, bearing in mind that will be £15 per person, you can’t both play from the same copy. As I write this review, we have not yet finished the game (it’s been a bit tricky to find the time when we have both been free to play) but we have got pretty far into it. I do like to know how long a game takes to reach the end credits of, before I pass judgement. So I did take a quick look at a few other reviews and it seems that you are looking at around 10-12 hours of playtime… maybe 15 hours if you get stuck on a single puzzle with a stupidly simple solution for a few hours *cough*. That is a decent length for the money and I really have enjoyed the game so far.

I really am looking forward to playing more with Badger and getting to the end. The puzzles have been great, well-thought-out and wonderfully conceived. Every single puzzle we have come across feels different to the last and every single one of them had us working together in a variety of different ways. Testing both of our logical thinking minds and pushing us to use the grey matter more and more. We Were Here Forever is a fantastic game to test the strength of a friendship.

As I said earlier, this is the fourth game in the franchise but my first time playing one of these titles. I am very impressed, Were Here Forever has subverted my preconceptions of the puzzle game genre that I often find a bit tedious. It won’t be a game that you will come back to time and time again because well… you’ve already solved the puzzles. But the 10 hours or so of game that you do get and the enjoyment of teaming up with a friend or family member… or even a complete stranger, is a thorough joy. We Were Here Forever is available on Steam right now, the console versions are coming very soon. A big recommendation from me.

As for what Lord Badger thought? I honestly don’t know as I write and publish this. So here’s a direct link to his review that I’m about to read myself.

Game Review: Wildcat Gun Machine

LBoG: Game Overviews

Developer Chunkybox Games and publisher Daedalic Entertainment have a new game out. Do you like guns, do you like shooting things with those guns, do you like kittens? If you answered ‘yes’ to all three of those questions, then Wildcat Gun Machine could just be up your alley.

“Wildcat Gun Machine is an explosion roller coaster ride! Enter a bullet hell dungeon crawler where you take on hordes of disgusting flesh beasts with a wide variety of guns, giant mech robots, and cute kittens.”

What you get here with Wildcat Gun Machine is a real mish-mash of game ideas. Maze-like dungeons to explore. Plenty of guns to find and upgrade. Ugly bastard monsters to kill. Giant mechs to use. Upgradeable skills. Wonderful 2D art… and cute kittens. This is a bullet hell shooter that starts out tricky and just gets increasingly more difficult the more you play. The game’s basics are stupidly easy to follow and understand. You run around the maps, shoot enemies, earn bones (coins), use those bones (coins) to buy upgrades for both your (many) guns and skills, kill the boss and move on to the next level. Rinse and repeat.

If you are looking for depth of gameplay and story, then you won’t find it here with Wildcat Gun Machine. This is pure, balls-to-the-wall action with simple controls. Using a twin-stick shooter control method, you’ll be dodging bullets and shooting monsters in the face over and over. Think something along the lines of the classic shooter Doom, only not as appealing. You’ll be running around the map, which consists of large rooms connected via corridors. Enter a room and the doors will lock and you’ll have enemies spawn. Kill the enemies, the doors unlock and you move on. Along the way, you’ll find coloured coded doors and areas that you’ll need a corresponding key to access. Need to get to the red coloured area, then you’ll need a red key… again, very basic, very Doom-like.

That really is all there is to the gameplay. Enter a room, kill all the monsters and move on. There is no real story to speak of, it’s all about having bullets shot at you and you shooting bullets at enemies. The numerous guns have various attributes. From your standard and unlimited ammo pistol, to more impressive weapons such as lasers, rockets, pulse rifles and such, which do have an ammo limit that you need to keep an eye on. Kill a lot of monsters and you’ll fill up your special meter and you can unleash a bullet orgy of an attack, of which you have several to choose from, once you unlock them. Oh, and as for the cat theme that features in the game and marketing, cats are basically extra lives/checkpoints. That’s about it.

Available to buy now on PC and all the consoles, Wildcat Gun Machine will set you back £13. This is a tricky game for me to pass judgement on. If I really like a game, I can very easily put into words why you should buy it. Same with if a game is terrible, I can convey why you should avoid it. With a title like Wildcat Gun Machine, it’s okay. This is far away from being a terrible game but it is just as far away from being a great game too. It’s just a game that exists, it’s perfectly fine and very standard. It’s alright. Is it worth the £13 asking price? To be honest, it’s a fair-ish price point but I would’ve felt disappointed if I had paid for it at that price. Perhaps if you can get it on sale for sub £10, this may be worth looking into.

If you are a hardcore shooter fan, you may get more enjoyment out of this than I did. This is the first game from the small indie developer Chunkybox Games. In that regard, it does show some promise. They know how a shooter works and understand all the staples. But Wildcat Gun Machine is just a bit too shallow, a bit too cookie-cutter and all too safe. The indie scene is full of shooters, ones that are better than this one. A studio really needs to be a bit more creative. But as I said, this is a first title from a small team and I would like to see what they can do with this genre in the future.

Indie Game Review Roundup 2021

LBoG: Editorials

Well, this looks like it’ll be my final article of 2021.

This year, I made a conscious decision to concentrate more on the indie game scene. Something I’m planning on doing a even more of in the future too. I mean, it’s not even 2022 yet and I already have four indie games to review. I just prefer indie games to big-budget AAA titles. I did explain why right here. The short version is that I find indie games far more interesting as the devs are willing to take chances and can show a lot of originality or breathe new life into some brilliant retro game concepts. Whereas AAA games are slowly becoming tired and nothing but sequels to franchises that continually repeat the same old gameplay and mechanics over and over.

As we reach the end of 2021, I thought I’d just take a quick look back on some of the indie games I have played and reviewed this year and offer my personal favourites. So here it is, my indie game review roundup 2021. Kicking things off with not only my favourite indie game of 2021 but my favourite game of 2021 in its entirety, indie or otherwise. Just give the titles a click for my full reviews.

UnMetal

UNMETAL MAIN

A Metal Gear parody with some of the finest and funniest writing I have ever witnessed in any game. Chock-full of game and movie references, in-jokes, fourth-wall-breaking and just outright clever storytelling. The gameplay in UnMetal was old school, 8-bit fare but with a few modern twists and features one of my all-time favourite game characters with Jesse Fox. I really was super impressed with just how well this all came together. I only put a review request in on a whim as I had nothing going on at the time and I thought the trailer looked okay, my expectations were zero. Then when I played it, I was blown away by just how ‘effing amazing UnMetal is, to the point where I ended up writing one of my longest reviews ever (one that the dev of the game called a ‘love letter’). I eventually played through the game five times and I might even sneak in another cheeky playthrough before I publish this article too. In short, UnMetal is amazing, buy it!

HyperParasite

HYPERPARASITE TITLE

Okay, so I am cheating a little bit here. Technically, I first played this game in 2020 and not 2021. However, HyperParasite was the first game I reviewed this year… so I’m counting it as a 2021 review… cos it was. A top-down, twin-stick shooter that uses a brilliant roguelite gameplay mechanic and keeps you coming back for more. Even now, over a year after first playing HyperParasite, I’m still playing it. Every now and then, I just feel like having a quick game… which usually turns into several hours. I’ve still not finished it yet either. I have got to the last area and all, but I’m working on unlocking every single character… which is tough and does take quite a while to do. Still, I do adore this game and it is a big recommendation from me.

R-Type Final 2

R-TYPE FINAL 2 MAIN

One of the greatest ever side-scrolling shoot ’em ups was reborn this year with R-Type Final 2. I have a big passion for the R-Type games, as you will see if you read my review of this one. The game kept what made those classic shooters so damn good… and bloody difficult, whilst throwing in plenty of unlocks and surprises. Alternate paths to take that lead to branching levels. Different endings, tons of cosmetics to discover. You could even design your own level layouts and even re-title the game itself. R-Type Final 2 had a lot crammed into it and the more you found, the more you wanted to find. All while never straying too far from the awesome gameplay that made these titles so playable in the first place. Old school shoot ’em up action, given a smashing modern update.

Horizon Chase Turbo: Senna Forever

HORIZON CHASE TURBO SENNA FOREVER MAIN

As a massive Ayrton Senna fan, I knew I had to give this one a go. The base game of Horizon Chase Turbo is great. Simple 16-bit arcade racing action done very well indeed. So when the devs announced they were doing a Senna add-on, I sent off my review request ASAFP. The main part of this add-on took you through (most of) Senna’s F1 career from his first drive with the Toleman team up to his third World Champion title win. Even though I am a die hard Senna fan, I find I can be very critical of when a game uses his name as they never really do it justice. Horizon Chase Turbo: Senna Forever absolutely nailed it though. A brilliant blending of arcade racing action and respecting the greatest F1 driver of all time.

Song Of Horror

SONG OF HORROR

I played quite a few survival horror games this year, none of them really stood out to me… except for Song of Horror. A loving throwback to similar games of the nineties. Titles like Resident Evil and Silent Hill were definite influences here, as well as the overlooked Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem. Song of Horror had a few rough edges but nothing that ruined the game. It also featured a permadeath mechanic that really made you care about the characters. And about those characters, they were all different and not just character model swaps. Each character had their own personality and even acted and reacted differently to events in the game, this made paying as the various characters really interesting. It also featured some genuinely scary themes and ideas, something severely lacking in modern horror games.

Lake

LAKE MAIN

This really was a very interesting little title. I mean, you deliver post in a sleepy small town in 1986… that’s it really. A little rough around the edges and I did find one or two (easy to fix) issues (there have been a few updates since). But overall, I really did enjoy my time with Lake. I guess the best way to describe Lake is as an interactive soap opera. You take the main character, Meredith Weiss, through various ups and downs as you talk to and get to know the town’s residents. As you deliver the mail, you’ll also take part in side-quests that reveal more about the people you meet. As I described the game in my review, Lake is a fantastically relaxing and tranquil game, a delightful change of pace if you ever feel like just unwinding and chilling out. I still stand by that too, a great chillout game.

Deadly Days

DEADLY DAYS MAIN

This was another one of those games that I knew nothing about but was damn happy I discovered it. A top-down roguelite that played a lot like the classic Cannon Fodder. You control several survivors during a zombie apocalypse following the introduction of a new burger on the market. Deadly Days was tough, hard as nails difficulty that was quite frustrating at first. After a while, it became really damn rewarding the more you played. There’s a surprising amount of depth here once you scratch the surface and Deadly Days throws a lot of gameplay your way. Hard yes but really damn enjoyable and a game I poured plenty of hours into.

Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles

YONDER MAIN

I think I may have had my gaming snob head on when I first played this. I remember playing the opening hour or so and already forming my review in my head where I wanted to rip into it. But a couple more hours later and Yonder’s charm and personality had entrapped me. There’s no violence here of any kind, you just run around the land helping folk. It is one of those gather resources and craft items kind of things set in a wonderfully striking and beautiful world. A bit too easy and hand-holdy at times, but the game really does have a lot of charm that kept me entertained and put a smile on my face.

Chorus

CHORUS MAIN

One of the most recent games I looked at this year as it was only released at the start of December. It’s also a bit of a wildcard as it’s not quite indie but it’s not exactly AAA either. Chorus comfortably sits in that in-between area, that AA zone of a smaller game studio knocking out a pretty impressive game that feels like a big-budget release. Chorus is a really great 3D shooter with some utterly fantastic space battles and dog fights. An upgrade system, very responsive controls, stunning visuals and more. There’s a lot to do here and you do get your money’s worth. It is just let down slightly by a ham-fisted story and one that continually breaks up the top-notch gameplay way too many times. A very pleasant surprise to end the year on though.

Anna’s Quest

ANNA'S QUEST MAIN

Sometimes you just need to take your foot off the accelerator and enjoy a slow-paced adventure game. Anna’s Quest is that and so much more. Think of this as a more grown-up take on a child’s fairy tale. With wonderfully hand-drawn art that looks like something from an animated movie. A story that has a dark and twisted edge and game simple mechanics that just work. I’ve played a few adventure games this year and Anna’s Quest is far and away the best of the lot. A very endearing and utterly charming title that kept me entertained from start to end.

Speed Limit

This one was in and out of my list a few times, I just couldn’t decide how much liked or loathed it. After a bit more thought and another playthrough recently, I decided to keep it in. Speed Limit is an incredibly short title and you can get to the end credits in just a few minutes. However, the shortness of the game is offset by a low price point, brilliant gameplay and the fact it has had a free update and new features since I reviewed it too, a review I now think that perhaps I was a bit too harsh with originally. Speed Limit is a multi-genre game that throws five different game styles at you… at a breakneck speed too. As I said in my review, this game is a haven for speedrunners and even though that style of game really doesn’t suit me at all, I’ve still to got to admire Speed Limit for what it does and how it does it. In its purest form, this game is a fantastic example of what makes indie gaming so damn great.

Lawn Mowing Simulator

LAWN MOWER SIM TITLE

I’m going to finish this round up with the most surprising game of the year for me. I will repeat what I wrote in my review about my ulterior motives for wanting to review this. I just wanted to write a very sarcastic and snippy article about the pointlessness of these simulation games. Why do you want to drive a train, etc when gaming offers such a wide spectrum of far more interesting vocations to partake in? I really wanted to rip into the whole simulation sub-genre and just be a complete dick about the whole thing. However, I actually fell in love with Lawn Mowing Simulator and what was going to be a bitchy review turned into one full of praise. The game is brilliant and the career mode is what really made it for me. I just loved mowing the lawns of the English countryside while building my own business.

I really have enjoyed the last twelve months of indie gaming, 2021 was a fantastic year for the smaller game developers and publishers. those titles up there are only a small snippet of some great games I have played and reviewed in 2021. I already have a few top indie games on my radar for 2022 such as…

RPGolf Legends from Articnet. A blending of classic 16-bit RPG gaming and golf, coming very soon in 2022. The first game is on Steam for an incredibly low price, so well worth checking out. I am hoping to get a review code for this one and get a review done early in the year.

Blind Fate: Edo no Yami from Troglobytes Games. The same dev team that made the awesome HyperParasite, my favourite game of 2020 (and some of 2021). A title where you play as a blind cyber-samurai… and that premise sounds pretty awesome. Just how you do depict playing a blind character in a game, a medium that is a very visual experience? I’m really interested to see how this pans out. A free to play prologue is on Steam.

Brewmaster: Beer Brewing Simulator from Auroch Digital. Start your own brewery and make loads of beer. Looks like this could be another sim game that really surprises. Plus beer and gaming is always a good mix. I do have a weakness for these business-sim games and making beer is as good a (digital) business to run as any other. I was given a Beta code for this last month, I just never got around to playing it though.

Arcade Paradise from Nosebleed Interactive. A game I have had my eye on for many, many months now. Work in a rundown launderette and convert it into a top arcade. With over thirty playable and original arcade games too. Again, a business-sim that sounds right up my street as a gamer who grew up in the arcades of the eighties and nineties… plus, you get to clean the toilet.

Last but not least, Beyond the Long Night from Noisy Head Games. A twin-stick, roguelike title that I’ll be doing a special preview of early in the year when the game launches on Kickstarter soon. So stay tuned for more info on this one folks.

There are some cracking titles being released in the first couple of months alone and many more surprises to discover later, many of which I’m looking forward to covering in the New Year. Here’s to another top indie gaming year.

RASIE GLASS

How And Why I Became An Indie Gamer

LBoG: Editorials

I’ve been playing games, or video games as we used to call them… or game programs if you really want to go way, way back. Anyway, I’ve been playing games for as long as I can remember. From when we as a family had an Atari 2600 in the late seventies, right up to today with modern gaming. It was a hobby that turned into a passion that turned into a semi-career with me not only writing this blog but also gaming books.

Over the years I have seen the best and worst of gaming. I have been right there and witnessed the evolution of gaming from those early days of Space Invaders to the likes of Red Dead Redemption II today. When I look back on just how far gaming has come over the last forty-odd years, I can’t help but be massively impressed. Single screen games turned into multi-flick-screen ones. Those gave way to full-on side and multi-scrolling games and eventually, 3D maps. Gameplay has evolved from shooting slowing descending aliens or running around mazes eating little dots to massive, gargantuan open-worlds that give us gamers huge amounts of freedom and Hollywood-like production values. In a great many ways, modern gaming has actually gotten too big.

I’m not a youngster anymore, I don’t have endless free time to play games like I used to. I can no longer sit in front of my TV, controller in hand, putting in fifty-plus hours into a game these days. I now have bigger and more important responsibilities that take precedence over gaming. My two kids for starters, this blog, my book writing and more. These massive games of today don’t hold my interest like they used to. As an example, as a fan of the Assassin’s Creed franchise, I bought both AC Origins and Odyssey as I got them in a great deal. I played Origins for around twenty hours or so, looked at the in-game map and realised just how big the map is and that I was not even halfway through the main story. Twenty hours and not even halfway through the game… twenty hours!

I think it’s great if you have the time to invest in a game like that, but I don’t. These games are still getting bigger and bigger too. I didn’t even bother with AC Odyssey, even though I paid for it. As for the new game, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla… I can’t even think about it.

Just looking at the new Saints Row coming early next year. One of the first things the devs are boasting about is that the map is bigger than any of the previous SR games. Not the gameplay or storytelling, the size of the game’s map. Where does this end? Games are just getting bigger and bigger and bigger year after year. Not necessarily better, just bigger. Why are AAA game developers so obsessed with making ‘the biggest game ever’ instead of the ‘best game ever’?

See this, all this ‘bigger is better’ (it’s not) mentality is exactly why I have been getting more and more into indie games over the last few years. I have always loved the indie game scene, but the last few years have just proven to me that smaller, low budget games are far superior to bigger AAA titles. But before I get into modern-day indies, I need to look at just how I got into smaller games ‘back in the day’.

Truth be told, we didn’t have much choice but to play smaller games back then, all games were small relatively speaking. Being from England, I was there at the heart of the British gaming revolution of the early-mid eighties. While the infamous video game crash of 1983 was doing its thing in North America, here in the UK, we just didn’t care. We didn’t care because we already had our own gaming industry slowly bubbling away. Most of those games came from the bedroom programmers of the day. The indie devs before the term ‘indie gaming’ existed. These bedroom programmers were often one-man (or woman) teams, if one person could be considered a ‘team’ that is.

The likes of Matt Smith, Jonathan ‘Joffa’ Smith (no relation) and Jeff Minter. Real pioneers of the early UK gaming boom creating games, quite literally, alone in their bedrooms. This, this was the era of gaming where I grew up. Not the massive, worldwide gaming corporations and studios of today, but with the indie game developers of the early eighties. I have always been into indie/smaller games, they were my lifeblood as a gamer back then.

Obviously, as the industry grew, so did the teams. The bedroom programmer was a very rare breed by the time the late eighties kicked in as the gaming studio began to rise. One developer/coder became two or six or several dozen. Games got bigger, more expansive and hugely popular. To meet demands, developer teams had to grow and grow. Sega and Nintendo began to rule the roost and the modern gaming industry was born. The bedroom programmer was long dead as no one wanted smaller games, they wanted huge worlds to explore and play around in. Bigger and more open games like The Legend of Zelda paved the way for a bigger and more immersive gameplay experience. That’s not to say we Brits still couldn’t amaze, it was a couple of Brits (David Braben and Ian Bell) who created the mighty Elite and pretty much birthed the entire open-world genre.

Still, those simpler, smaller indie games were long gone as eighties ingenuity gave way to nineties excess and decadence. The simple 2D gaming eventually made way for 3D worlds. Games just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Even though I very much enjoyed playing the likes of Grand Theft Auto III and so on… I still missed those early days of the bedroom programmer and smaller more creative titles. Still, those days were long gone by then and the industry was all about the ‘bigger is better’ mantra.

It was when I got myself an Xbox 360 and Microsoft began the whole Xbox Live Arcade thing when the indie game began to rise once more. Okay yes, XBLA launched before the 360 on the original Xbox, but it was the service’s relaunch on the 360 when it really took off big time. Before the 360 days, XBLA was really a service where gamers could play old arcade games. On the 360 though, Microsoft began to push for smaller/indie developers to make games for the service. It was the summer of 2008 when XBLA Summer of Arcade launched and a little platform game called Braid caught my eye. Just watching the trailer for Braid, I was taken back to those early days of the bedroom programmer.

It was such a massive change from the endless open-world games that were everywhere back then. Braid was small, simple but very unique too. On the surface, it was a simple puzzle-platformer but it threw in time manipulation and gameplay mechanics that nobody else was doing at the time. While the big studios were trying to one-up each other, trying to make ‘bigger’ games with even bigger teams, here was a small team (one man actually) making a highly original game that harked back to the good old days of gaming. I bought Braid, played it, loved it and I was suddenly into indie gaming once more, just like back in the early eighties.

It was buying and playing Braid, thanks to Microsoft’s XBLA service, that really got me back into smaller games once more. I still enjoyed the bigger AAA games sure. But every now and then, I would dip into XBLA and download a cheeky little game. My game’s library began to fill up with smaller/indie games. ‘Splosion Man, Shadow Complex, Limbo, Trials HD, Fez and more. Smaller games with some very interesting and unique gameplay features began to take over my gaming. My love for Indie gaming was reborn. Microsoft discontinued their XBLA service, but the indie game scene had already exploded by then and instead of having indie games be in their own, separate service, they just became games.

If you look at my reviews from this year, pretty much all of them have been indie games… I think all of them have, in fact. I do get AAA titles up for review now and then, but more often than not, I’m just not interested in them. I really don’t think I could ever review the latest Call of Duty title or the next GTA (not that there will ever be one) because they are all too ‘samey’ now. Yet, with indie games, you often find something rather unique about them, even if they are using some old school gameplay, they give it a new twist. The likes of the absolutely awesome HyperParasite (my favourite game of 2020 buy it!) is a very simple top-down, twin-stick shooter. At first, it all looks very ‘meh’, but it is the use of the brilliant rogue-lite gameplay mechanic that comes from 1980’s Rogue that really makes the game pop and stand out.

I’m currently reviewing an indie game called Lake (coming soon) where you deliver post… and that’s about it. It’s devilishly simple and very twee… but it also feels very different and refreshing compared to other big AAA games on the market right now. I firmly believe that indie gaming is the future of gaming. Indie games have the freedom to push new and exciting ideas, they don’t have the pressure of publishers forcing ideas onto the developers. Indie games can be far more creative than the next Assassin’s Creed will ever be.

It is almost as if there is a big video gaming reset on the horizon, a video game crash on 1983 part II if you will. The ever-increasing cost of AAA games can not be sustained in the industry without pushing that cost onto the consumer. When a game is costing over $200 million to make and increasing… how much further can developers go, how much would you be willing to pay for a game that’s nothing more than a slight update from the previous title?

The big-name studios are becoming stagnant and oversaturating the market with the same old content over and over. Never really improving the game itself outside of the visuals, never experimenting with new and exciting gameplay features because they can’t risk messing it up when the budget is so high. So we get ‘safe’ games with the same old mechanics and gameplay. The bubble has to burst sometime, just as it did back in 1983. But the indie game scene is where the fresh and unique ideas are coming from.

Indie games are cheaper to make and cheaper to buy in comparison to AAA titles. Yes, there is an awful lot of crap out there in terms of indie games… but let’s not be coy here… there’s an awful lot of crap AAA titles too. Indie games can be played through in a few hours and be massively entertaining (some even offer months of inventive gameplay), instead of boring the player with fifty+ hour campaigns and endless grinding. You can buy and play several good quality indie games for the price of one AAA title these days. Even more so, indie devs are FAR more grateful for your support over AAA studios that only care about money.

Let me put it this way, I’d rather spend £10-£20 on a 7 hour indie game that I’ve really enjoyed, than £60 on a AAA game that bored me long before I saw the end credits.

Indie games are a serious business right now and for me, a far superior alternative to the bigger AAA games released today. I’ll continue to champion the indie game scene and review indie games on my blog because they actually deserve the support and give me so much entertainment. Keep them indie games coming guys and gals, cos I’m lapping them up.

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