Most games that come out receive little to no coverage because they are obscure, low production titles that go unmarketed. This blog series is an attempt to open the curtains on that underserved corner of the medium. Each time, I'll look at six different pint-sized indie games and report on what they are and where they excel. So let's get into it.

Friday Night Funkin'

First off, perfect name. Second, Friday Night Funkin' is pulling from the hip hop attitude you saw in certain alternative games of the 90s; think Toejam & Earl or Jet Set Radio. In this example, you're using Beatmania gameplay to realise the rap soundtrack. Narratively, this is a quest for love. The protagonist is crushing on a girl, but that girl's stern father will only let the main character date her if he can prove his talent in a battle of rhymes. It's an unusual twist on the win-the-game-win-the-girl scheme. You're not so much defeating a boss to unite with your love as much as impressing them to do so.

Resting on the floors of each track are beats that pierce through the rest of the mix and compel you to move in your chair. This percussive motif weaves a consistent thread through the songs, even when those songs hail from many different boroughs of the music scene. Despite its assertive drums, the game's synthesised vocals are surprisingly sugary and pleasant, creating a flavourful J-pop/hip hop blend. The songs take a call and response form, allowing you to get a preview of upcoming inputs instead of jumping towards them blindly.

If you're the sort of player that laments that these free indie games don't have more meat on their bones, FNF might be right up your street. Its levels are surprisingly long, with multiple songs in each. The program tracks your score and gets difficult real fast. So, you can spend hours in this pay-what-you-want itch.io game.

Friday Night Funkin' on itch.io

Anger Foot

If you've sampled cocaine-laced twitch action games like High Hell or Ape Out, you'll know exactly the kind of pandemonium you're letting loose when you crack open Anger Foot. You're a scraggly badass kicking and shooting your way through homes with one mission: to make it to an exit. This game is pure, unadulterated violence. Not just in the bit where fountains of blood spray out the back of gangsters' heads, but also in the breakneck speed at which the levels whizz by, in how you knock props around the environment, and in the brutality of the music.

You don't so much snake your way through Anger Foot's environments as you tear through them with your bare hands, or if you like, your mighty foot, because you have a one-hit melee kill at the end of your leg. You can even use that kick to propel doors into enemies or enemies into other enemies, killing them Bulletstorm style. Anger Foot gives you neither the pauses to be slow nor the aim correction to be inaccurate, and the settings you're pockmarking with gunfire are about as grotty as they come: slimy sewers and graffiti-daubed apartments. These are places that didn't start out nice enough to be worth keeping clean.

The whole time, the soundtrack is banging you over the head with these punchy electronic drums and grimy synths. It makes Hotline Miami sound mellow. As with Friday Night Funkin', the difficulty, scoring, and volume of Anger Foot mean that you can while away hours with it. I'm surprised this item isn't for sale for a few bucks on Steam because the game is polished and substantial enough to justify it.

Anger Foot on itch.io

Pigeon Ascent

If you've ever seen two pigeons fighting over a piece of bread, it's easy to believe that there's some sort of underground pigeon fighting league. And there is, here in Pigeon Ascent. Through a humble shop and upgrade system, you heighten your bird's edge at feathered fisticuffs. Then you pick your opponent, and the game crunches some numbers to see who comes out on top. Should you be on the losing side, you'll need to start coaching a new student from level one.

Pigeon Ascent is splitting the difference between the sense of ownership and productivity that comes with RPG character customisation and the ease of play and steady satisfaction generated by an idler. It also supplements the numbers flying out of avian critters with a battle log that announces the results of every clash, complete with critical hits. It's another way to objectively and overtly display the fruits of your success. Pidgeon Ascent finds the humour in what it doesn't animate: the empty-eyed characters bumping against each other like ducks in the bathtub. But don't underestimate the quality of the static art: its kitsch and clean. The game impresses in screenshots and builds to a surprising comic ending. Puff up your pigeon.

Pigeon Ascent on itch.io

MIX UP

MIX UP is a match-three game in which you place coloured blocks on an empty grid. Create a vertical or horizontal line of three or more pieces of the same colour, and they'll disappear. When you clear blocks, you also pick up some points. But Match Up puts the screws on you by preventing you from choosing what colour block you're laying each turn. The game decides the colour for you and gives you a time limit to make each placement. And there's more this title is doing to subvert expectations.

In most block puzzle games, the graphics on the blocks themselves are purely part of the visual aesthetics. In MIX UP, you can overlay any coloured block on any other. Blocks of the same type stack to a maximum of four, at which they explode and take a square on the grid with them. Blocks of different colours combine into new ones: Yellow and cyan mix to make green, magenta and yellow combine to produce red, and so on. But add two secondary colours, and you'll get black, making a space unusable. As you clear pieces, new tiles open up at the edge of the board. It's game over when you run out of room.

MIX UP is design at its most elegant. Simple, additive components click into each other to engineer a wide variety of possible game states. And the game convincingly pressures you into choices that could hurt you further down the line. Overlaying colours now could buy you more room, but it will mean having to make more complicated matches on future turns. MIX UP is breaking ground in a field where it can feel like all the discoveries have already been made. It's got so much potential, and all its star qualities are so abstract, it's easy to imagine its bright ideas living their best life in a full game.

MIX UP on itch.io

The Lighthouse

Note: This section contains major spoilers for the 2019 film The Lighthouse.

The setting of the Egger Brothers' The Lighthouse left an indelible impression on many viewers. Its far-flung New England purgatory was the site of intolerable tension between colleagues; a place that turns men mad. And Giacomo Giunti's The Lighthouse is your chance to take a one-way trip to that god-forsaken isle. There is an objective to the game, one as single-track as Winslow's mindset by the end of the film: reach the top of the lighthouse and bask in the glow of the lantern. However, the real point of The Lighthouse is to be present at the movie's time and place.

You can witness the crash of the waves against the rocks, and the shadows in the cabin stretch into grotesqueries under the lamplight. The blaring foghorn is absolutely apocalyptic, and there are even a couple of nasty surprises you won't find in the film. All of the game's sights are presented through this dithered filter which oddly enhances my perception of the rough 3D underneath. It creates a low-fidelity point of comparison for its graphics and then surpasses it, as if your Gameboy had gained the sudden ability to render models like the PS1 can. The Lighthouse isn't just rekindling a retro art style, but bridging two looks to, alchemy-like, create something original.

The Lighthouse on itch.io

Assessment Examination

The found-footage format is all the rage in indie horror games, and I couldn't be happier. Under this cinematic lens, the camera is not just a window on the action but makes itself known as a device that affects the appearance of everything we see. Still, given that video games are an interactive medium, there's a lot of room for glitchy, distortive tech that we don't just peer into but also act through. Assessment Examination has us playing both viewer and participant on an old CRT computer.

The titular test is a job interview. For what, exactly, is left up to your imagination after the game has primed you with lurid suggestions of threats on your life and local disturbances that will make your hair stand on end. Like most affecting horror, Assessment Examination evokes interest and discomfort through what it does not show as much as what it does. But where most horrors playing coy do so by limiting jumpscares, or sightings of villains and viscera, Assessment Examination is concealing conceptual realities. The identity of the subjects in its photographs are unknown, and the origin of local incidents is ambiguous. The bulk of horror is garrulous when describing its universe. But Assessment Examination leaves a lot of open questions, and that's probably more interesting than any firm answer the game could give you. This is a tragedy told in the darkness.

Assessment Examination on itch.io

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That's the end of another list. If any of the games I mentioned sound like your type, I'd encourage you to check them out and throw a couple of bucks to the devs. Thanks for reading.