So, I usually talk about pretty depressing or fatalistic points of view that I have of the gaming industry, or general things like that. You know, just trying to make it clear to people that capitalism is ruining our fun, but that there are still a lot of cool things going on, always trying  to throw in some fun stories or facts here and there. For today’s entry I wanted to do something a bit different. I’ll write something fun.

A few months ago I thought my summer was going to be filled with sky island exploration in Zelda, nostalgia gaming Metroid Prime, stress clicking demons in Diablo 4 or bear romancing in Baldur’s Gate 3, but since my actual job is cosplaying as a responsible adult and graphic designer, once again my gaming plans were corrupted by work and freelancing projects. 

Nevertheless, I didn’t just learn how to use big words like nevertheless to use at the office. I learnt them so I could write articles and blog entries about games and have people sort of respect it because I used nevertheless at least 3 times in a single paragraph. And so, after long hours of crunch working and mild headaches from staring at my computer for 10+ hours every day, I was still able to sneak in some gaming time here and there.

Since I had a lot of work to do throughout the day, I still couldn’t play as much as I wanted. Picking up a game like Tears of the Kingdom seemed too risky. Such a massive game implies more of a time investment, those are the kinds of games that you can’t just pick up and play for 30 minutes or an hour to get some stress relief. No, if you sit down to play an open world game like Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom you know damn well that you WILL lose track of time and spend AT LEAST 3 hours just wandering and building dumb Korok torture devices.

So instead of being all sad and mopey about it, I saw this as an opportunity to tackle some of the indie titles in my Steam library that had been sitting there for years. You know, those games that you wishlisted and then bought on a winter sale or something, with the idea of playing them once you got some “free time”, but they just kept piling on each other, so you end up just playing the same game you’ve played a thousand times. 

It’s like that bookshelf filled with books that you “plan on reading” that keeps getting bigger and bigger because you love books, but at the same time you’ve been stuck on your re-read of The Lord of the Rings for months because you forgot how dense and slow the first chapters truly are.

God I really hope this is relatable to someone.

But well, I thought the little free moments at night before going to bed would be perfect to play some of those indie titles that have been collecting dust for some time. You know, some light gaming that still allowed me to watch a movie with my partner in the background or something like that. And after finishing a couple of awesome indie titles this past few months, I’m glad I did it, because it reminded me of the beauty of the “small”, but masterful design behind indie games.

LET’S TALK INDIES

If you’re reading this article or blog entry or whatever you want to call it, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that you are into gaming. If so, then it may also be pretty safe to assume that you are at least informed about the world of indie games. If not, then wow… I don’t know how you got here, but it’s awesome. Thanks for reading. I’ll give you a very dense and small semi-historically accurate summary of the history of indie games.

At the turn of the century, you know, that beautiful era of late 90s and early 2Ks, gaming was truly booming in all aspects. The 80s and 90s saw a whole lot of growth in popularity for the world of gaming, in part thanks to the leap from arcades to home consoles in full force, and the early 2000s sealed the deal. 

People were starting to play more games at home than at arcades. Maybe not because it was super cheap or accessible, but it sure as hell was extremely convenient. As a 12 year old it was easier to get permission to go to your friend’s house and play on his Super Nintendo, than arranging an expedition with the crew of National Geographic to an arcade, only to find out that the Street Fighter machine was out of service.

Making games in this era took a lot of time – you know, in the context of the world at that time – and they were usually only made by big gaming companies. Nintendo, Capcom, Sega, you know, the big boys of the arcades. But in the 90s there was a need for more game making, companies needed to make games faster and in bigger quantities, but also couldn’t afford to make them all by themselves. Thankfully, with the help of the internet, game making tools were now available for anyone who wanted to try their hand at game making.

Some people try to argue that the first indie game was Spacewar!, one of the first games ever created, done by a group of MIT programmers in 1962 just for fun. But I feel like that’s more of an origin story. I think indie games – the way we know indie games now – really started in the 90s with this void that needed to be filled in the game development world.

Companies needed new games and fast. Think of it this way: Sony needed to have a ton of games in their catalog so that when someone finished their current game, they thought about what new game to buy for their PlayStation instead of buying a Nintendo 64 because they already played all the games they could on their  PlayStation.

And so small groups of game developers started to be picked up by the big boy companies. Studios like Naughty Dog or Bethesda started developing games as small indie devs that got picked up by Sony or Microsoft. The deal was that these small studios would get to work on the game that they were already working on out of love, the big company would pay them and then take care of distributing and selling the game. Because you know, back then games were still a physical thing that you had to buy in an actual store. 

Everybody was happy. Companies got to sell more games for their consoles and make a lot of money without having to hire and train a game development team, and the small group of developers got to make their dream game project. With the added bonus of not having to worry about the business part of it.

And here ends the “small” and dense story to try and explain the beginning of indie game development.

BACK TO THE ROOTS

Now let’s jump to the year 2010, Flo Rida was telling us about how the club couldn’t handle him at the moment and game making is now more available than ever before. Tools like Unity and GameMaker are just a few clicks away for anyone who wants to make a game. Indie games are so much bigger now, with stories like Super Meat Boy, Fez, Limbo and so many others being a beacon of light and inspiration for upcoming developers.

Graphics are… getting there, but that’s not the point. There are a lot of indie games out there that proved that an awesome game can be made by even 1 person who is dedicated enough. And you know… who is willing to give up 4 years of their life in the hopes that Xbox will let them put their game in the Xbox Live Arcade. But hey, also Steam is starting to be very big and now anyone can basically self publish a game digitally. Maybe no one will see it, play it or even hear about it, but hey, it can be done.

Jump a bit forward to the present day after that big boom of gaming, now the world of the indie games has become more and more amazing. You can find an indie game of any style you want, from pixel-art platformer masterpieces like Celeste, to hyper realistic 3D adventure games like Hellblade, there is truly something for everyone.

But I feel like I’ve started to see this trend where the bigger and more “modern” the triple A titles get, the more retro or back to the roots indie games get. For every hyper realistic Starfield or Baldur’s Gate 3, we get a cell shaded Bomb Rush Cyberfunk or a beautiful 16-bit Sea of Stars.

I think we’re starting to see this happen more not because new games are boring and only try to sell their cool 4K graphics, although… yeah… maybe that’s part of it sometimes, but I think it’s more like scratching an itch that more modern games can’t quite get to.

New titles like the before mentioned Starfield or Baldur’s Gate 3 sure are impressive pieces of game development, and I’m extremely excited to be able to get my hands on them hopefully sometime soon. But like I mentioned in the beginning, in a current world situation where sometimes people don’t have the time to sit down for long gaming hours or hell, even to buy all of the new games because triple A titles are getting expensive, indie games scratch a lot of itches that the big titles aren’t able to.

Going back to my indie summer inspiration for this blog entry, playing all the way through games like The Messenger and the new Bomb Rush Cyberfunk was some of the most fun I’ve had gaming in a while. Tears of the Kingdom is truly amazing, but after 100+ hours into the game and only being halfway through with it, it’s hard to compare to the 10 hours of absolute bliss that it took to complete TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge.

Okay look, I feel like I should say a disclaimer. I am one of those insane people that like completing games to 100% by getting all the collectibles and extra secrets. Not for every game, I’m not THAT crazy, but if I like a game, I like seeing everything that it has to offer and there’s nothing like the feeling you get when mastering a game and finding all the secrets hidden by the developers. And then seeing the “100%” next to your save file.

Now, in massive games like Tears of the Kingdom or Elden Ring, getting to that point is well… It’s a bit masochistic. At some point it stops being fun and it just becomes a list of to-do things filled with boring side quests and endless collectibles. 

You have to be in a specific state of mind when you sit down to play those types of games. You know that it won’t be just a chill 30 minute game session to relieve some stress in the middle of the day. No. If you sit down to play Dark Souls, you know that the game session will end at 3 in the morning when you realize that you’ve been trying to beat the same boss for almost 3 hours… And you started playing at 10 pm before “going to bed”. Pft, yeah right pal.

That’s the reason why I have 100+ hours in Tears of the Kingdom and feel like I haven’t done anything other than have 4 hour detours that lead me away from the main quests. They are fun. But you know, it’s a different kind of gaming experience. It doesn’t scratch the itch of finishing a game.

On the other hand, these last couple of months I’ve been going through my dusty bookshelf of indie games with light gaming sessions. Completing games left and right at 100% without having to lose my sanity over a dumb hidden collectible. In about a third of the time that it took me to get halfway through the new Zelda, I was able to play all the way through 5 amazing indie titles. Scratching an itch that I didn’t notice that I had.

JUST SIT BACK AND ENJOY THE PIXELS

It seems truly crazy to me how far games have come in the past years. Games like Diablo IV, Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 seem like gaming wet dreams I had as a teenager. Hyper realistic fantasy worlds filled with endless possibilities and hundreds of hours of content. But at the same time, it’s nice to just have a crunchy 8-bit platformer from time to time. You know?

It’s like having a drink at a bar. We all feel fancy and cool drinking our whiskey in the rocks or ordering an Old Fashioned, because that’s what sophisticated grown ups drink, but at the same time nothing beats drinking a cheap ice-cold beer in the backyard of your friends house.

And that’s what I found out this summer. Just like a nice gin & tonic, I like to drink them from time to time, but eventually I always want to go back to drinking a nice beer. And indie games are my cold beers. Simple, yet effective.

In the coming days I’ll also write about how indie games seem to be more fond of remembering gaming history and embracing it, while triple A games seem to want to forget about it. Or at least that they treat it as that, the past. Meanwhile, indie games like Sea of Stars or Bomb Rush Cyberfunk take those games from the past and breathe new life into their formulas.

But for now, in honor of my beautiful indie summer I want to offer you a cold beer in between your Margaritas and Martinis. Put down those shaken not stirred 4K graphics and enjoy an IPA cold pixel. This year has been a big one for gaming, a lot of big awesome titles came out and a whole lot more are still to come, but let’s give a breather to our wallets. 

I don’t intend to leave you floating in the void without direction, looking for something to scratch your indie itch, so, here’s a list of awesome new and old indie titles I think you should check out. I’ll try to suggest something for every taste, but also you know, feel free to leave any suggestion of your own, I would love to hear about new indie games that I should check out as well.

And remember, if you can give 80 bucks to a big boy company on a pre-sale, you can give 20 dollars to the cool indie devs. Be a nice gamer and try buying indie games even when they’re not on sale. So grab a beer and come sit down.

FOR YE OL’ RPG IPA LOVER WE HAVE…

• Sea of Stars. An awesome fresh take on classic RPG games like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy or Paper Mario with some light hearted fun writing. You’ll get a good chuckle and grind-free satisfying turn-based combat. It’s basically on every console, Xbox, PS5, Switch, PC, toaster. If it plays games, it’s got it. 
• The Banner Saga. Do you want a more realistic viking-like Fire Emblem experience? Are you looking for strategic warfare without having to worry about the relationship levels of your companions? Then this might be for you. This is a top down grid based strategy RPG in the style of the Fire Emblem games. It has beautiful music and a simple but thrilling story. No monologuing. Just sad vikings and silent giants. Also on every console plus mobile phones. So you have no excuse

FOR THE ROMANCE NOVEL READER WE’VE GOT…

• Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator. Have you ever dreamt about being a single dad who romances other dads with the help of your daughter? No? Well here you go. Dream Daddy is an extremely fun and goofy dating sim about single – and confusingly straight – dads. I myself don’t play many dating sims or visual novels, but the smart writing of dream daddy makes it feel like watching a sitcom. Play it alone, with your partner or with some friends. This one is sure to get a lot of laughs and some tears out of you. Steam, PS4, Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android. Sorry Xbox gamers. No daddys for you.

FOR THE HARDCORE JUMP MAN ENTHUSIASTS…

• The Messenger. An amazing homage to the era of 8-bit and 16-bit platformers like Ninja Gaiden, but with a spice of meta commentary dialogue on games and metroid-vania elements. The Messenger is an incredibly fun and simple platformer game that tests your skills but never feels unfair. If you like games like Celeste or Shovel Knight, you’ll like this. Also on pretty much every console.
• Wings of Vi. This one is a bit more of a hidden gem. If I was a lesser man I would call this a “dark souls of platformers”. This game brings more of a challenge in your platforming and 2D combat skills with tight jumps and tricky trap placement. Forget thinking about backtracking and map checking, this dark souls of platformers might just do the trick for you. Again, this one is a bit of a hidden favorite of mine, sadly it’s only on PC.

FOR THE ROUGH POLYGON ACTION LOVER WE’VE GOT…

• Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. Look, the best way to explain this one is that if you like cell shading, skating, BMX, parkour, street art or break dancing to sick beats, you’ll like this one. It’s the spiritual successor of Jet Set Radio that fans of the series have been waiting for, but again, if any of the topics mentioned before interest you, this game will bring you tons of fun just by running around in the beautiful cell-shaded world of BRC. You can also find it on every console and on Steam.

FOR THE TOP-DOWN SOMMELIERS THERE IS…

• Moon Hunters. A rogue-like hero based experience where every playthrough you’ll uncover more about the different heroes, their tribes and the time-traveling shenanigans going on. This tickles the mindless lizard brain fun in the same way that Hades does, with beautiful pixel art and cool character design, this game is a good example of the easy to understand hard to master category. Find it on pretty much any console and on Steam.

THE SECRET MENU ITEM…

• Inscryption. If you are looking for something a bit… different, just ask for the secret menu item. Inscryption is the weird child of tabletop games and escape rooms. Hidden behind an incredibly fun and simple, yet surprisingly complex card game, there is a point-and-click escape room puzzle inside a spooky and weirdly bloody cabin in the woods. This game is easier to understand by playing it. If you’re the type of person that likes halloween but hates haunted houses, this one’s for you. Find it on every console and on Steam.

FOR THE GROUP PLAYERS AT THE BACK…

• TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge. If you miss the arcade era of randomly mashing buttons to punch generic evil henchmen, going through stages and getting mad at your friend for dying to the same attack in the middle of a boss fight. Well this is for you. Allowing up to 6 players in local multiplayer. This game is tons of fun if you like classic beat-em-ups like The Simpsons arcade game, Turtles in Time or Double Dragon. Also on pretty much every console and Steam.
• Lethal League Blaze. If you’re more into group fighting games or 1v1 shenanigans, this deadly-baseball fighting game might be it. Created by the same people that made Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, this cell shaded fighting game brings some new dumb spice to the genre by asking the question “What if instead of hitting each other, we hit a baseball until it’s moving at the speed of light and kills someone?”. There’s only two buttons, jump and hit, so don’t worry about doing combos and just hit a ball until it goes fast enough to kill your friends. This one is on Steam, Nintendo Switch, PS4 & Xbox One.
• Pikuniku. This one is for the casual partner players. Want to play something simple to understand but still challenging with your non-gamer partner? Pick this one up and solve puzzles together while screaming orders at each other. You know, in a caring way. The simple and lovely art style will make it even more fun when you’re trying to coordinate the long legged little dots while screaming at eachother. Find it pretty much everywhere, you know the drill.