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The (Near) Infinite Indie Information Inquiry Index

Assignment: an (assuredly assonance-heavy) assembly that assiduously assimilates all my Indie game assessments, to the assumptive assistance of my Giant Bomb associates.

Yes, I realize that sounds like a lot of ass, but I simply figure that after playing so many of these smaller independent games over the past few years - due to blog features and my own worrisome frugality - I might be able to help folks with purchasing decisions the same way I (sorta?) did with the previous PC game and JRPG lists, should a big Steam sale or bundle happen by. I reckon after you pass a hundred games, you're probably an expert. Or is the rule that you have spend 10,000 hours doing something? I bet I'm close enough to that by now too.

For the time being I'm avoiding freeware and browser stuff, or else this thing really will be infinitely big. Also, since I'm not allowed to order any list with over a hundred items on it, you're on your own trying to find a specific game. Chances are, it won't be on there yet: Gabe only knows I've still got plenty left to see (and recommendations are always welcome).

Eh, I'll throw in some five word summaries and a rudimentary rating system too. I'm full of surprises today:

  • 3 = Get it. S'great.
  • 2 = Fine if you're into the genre. Maybe worth a shot if you aren't.
  • 1 = Pfeh. (NB: Most linguistic studies agree that "pfeh" is not an encouraging noise.)

List items

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  • "Treasure-inspired run and gun." Noitu Love 2 seems like it was directly inspired by Mischief Makers and Gunstar Heroes, with a bit of Metal Slug thrown in for color. The action is frantic, the bosses are huge and the explosions are plentiful. 2.

  • "Ball manipulation puzzle. Heh, 'balls'." Obulis is one of those puzzle games like Escape Goat where you kind of have to experiment a while before the big picture comes into view. Orbs need to be sent flying and rolling in a specific order to reach their required destinations. 2.

  • "Single-button Kung Fu movie." One Finger Death Punch has such an elegantly simple design for what amounts to a pretty fun brawler, albeit one that is entirely based on stick figures (like I can complain). Better than it has any right to be, but still only half as sophisticated as Divekick. 2.

  • "Retro throwback cybernetic ninja action." Oniken takes its inspiration from games like Shatterhand, Strider and Ninja Gaiden, creating a very tongue-in-cheek late 80s video game homage that's a bit too close to the source material in design to really enjoy in this day and age. 2.

  • "Orbital solar system puzzle sim." Osmos requires that you manipulate gravity wells and mass accretion in order to achieve its objectives. It starts easy enough, but gets so precise later on that you can only pray for the random number generator gods to smile on you. 2.

  • "Polarity-switching shmup SpaceWhipper hybrid." I liked Outland for trying something different with the ol' SpaceWhipper model, creating a platformer with a bit of an Ikaruga/bullet hell shmup edge to it. Guacamelee! borrowed its reality-switching light/dark mechanic, so you know it's a keeper. 3.

  • "Spacestation-building, consumer-appealing simulator." Build a spacestation, creating each part of it to maximize profits while also ensuring there's enough power generators to keep the lights on. It's sort of like creating the ideal mall, but in space. Mechanically simple, but challenging. 2.

  • "Trippy corrupted fairytale ambiguity. (Adventure.)" The Path puts you in the shoes of one of seven sisters, each in a different stage of their childhood/adolescence/early adulthood. They can either follow the path to Grandma's house like good little girls, or go off the beaten path to find some adventure and bad romance. 2.

  • "'Ode to Joy' pachinko variant." Peggle's such a big casual game that it probably defies many descriptors one might apply to their idea of an Indie game, but it's a small game from a (once, before it became part of EA) small studio so I figure it counts. Anyway, I shouldn't need to describe Peggle too much. Shoot balls at orange pegs and have a blast. 3.

  • "Storage Wars-inspired hidden object." Pickers is a hidden object game, sure, but there's a mercantile element to it that elevates it above the mere Where's Waldo aspirations of its peers. Name of the game is to buy trendy antiques low and sell it to yuppies who don't know any better. 2.

  • "It's a Picross game. Doy." Picross e2 isn't that exciting, but it is some solid Picross action if you're into those games. And why wouldn't you be? Probably best you buy that bigger Picross e-series compilation though, or maybe that awesome 3D one for the DS. 2.

  • "Procedurally generated strategic squad shooter." Pineapple Smash Crew feels like a cross between Smash TV and Cannon Fodder (it even has references to same), only if all the maps were randomized. As you might expect, going through stage after stage of randomized shooter action gets tiring after a while, but at least it's fun while it lasts. 2.

  • "Playing poker with colorful oddballs." Poker Night has a short shelf life, expiring around the point where you've heard all the conversations at least once or twice or eight times. It's still a fairly solid poker simulator if you're into playing alone with AI and not gambling any real money. 2.

  • "Abstruse masocore platformer. With potatoes." Potatoman Seeks the Troof is deliberately obtuse, which is something that was evident as far back as its bizarre trailer, but it doesn't really do it any favors. You learn the game's various traps and overcome them and hope you don't get sent way the hell back by its awful checkpointing. Maybe worth it if you want to play something that will surprise you, though. 2.

  • "Block-pulling/pushing puzzle platformer." A novel conceit that gets way out of hand with the optional bonus stages, Pushmo's far more diabolical than it initially seems. It's really super clever though, and super satisfying when you beat one of its stages. 3.

  • "Professor Layton meets Twin Peaks." Nelson Tethers is a strait-laced sort, and the town of Scoggins is anything but. It's kind of fun to watch him butt heads with its natives and odd fauna, and the puzzles themselves are fun enough if you're into Mensa tests. 3.

  • "Very like the first one." It's more Puzzle Agent. Feels slightly improved in some respects, and the plot is considerably weirder this time around. Obviously you should buy the first one first. 3.

  • "Team-based puzzle solving adventure." Puzzle Bots is a bit on the slight side, but it's cute and amusing (in a Nicktoons sort of way) and has some interesting Lost Vikings type set-ups that require multiple playable characters working together. 2.

  • "Obtuse cuboid dimension-hopping adventure." The Real Texas is as abstruse as many other 'arty' games on this list, but at least it's self-deprecating. It's intimidatingly surreal, but I'm sure with all the time in the world you could begin to understand its lunacy. 2.

  • "Anime roguelike / item shop simulator." Recettear's a lot of fun. Possibly inspired by the adventures of Torneko Taloon of Dragon Quest IV, it splits its time between RPG dungeoncrawling and a mode where you try to sell recovered goods at as high a price as you can get away with. 3.

  • "Underwater exploration and photography sim." Reef Shot can be likened to those Wii Endless Ocean games, except it's deathly afraid to let you go exploring on your own. Instead, there's a strict itinerary of fish to photo and objects to find and most of its pointed out to you. A pity it's not a bit less stringent, because there aren't many games like this for PC. 2.

  • "Isometric god sim. So... Populous." Reprisal's a deliberate homage to the god sim that really started everything. It adds a few tricks of its own, of course, but it banks on people either being familiar with its source or on people who are ready to get deep into a game where you zap tiny people who disobey you for the first time. 2.

  • "Multiple protagonist science fiction adventure." Resonance, from the Gemini Rue guys Wadjet Eye, is a fairly solid adventure game where you're switching between four main characters and seeing the story pan out through their eyes. Some cool sequences and a few neat twists. 3.

  • "Knock-off colorful Guitar Hero." Rhythm Zone's simply the Guitar Hero flashing lights dynamic (though I suppose that system's been around a lot longer), but with Audiosurf's music library borrowing. It was a safe gamble to think a game that changes based on your music would benefit from that very familiar Guitar Hero set-up, but it doesn't change the fact that it's generic as hell. 1.

  • "Southern run-and-Gravity-gun." A 2D puzzle-platformer-shooter that heavily leans on its gravity manipulation (or very lightly leans, whatever the case may be). It works both as a shooter and as a puzzle game. 3.

  • "Silly boulder siege tower defense." I really like the rolling aspects of Rock of Ages. Like Orborun, it can be quite enjoyably challenging to get an enormous careening boulder to where it needs to be. The tower defense parts I can do without, though. 2.

  • "Challenging randomized dungeon crawl platformer." Rogue Legacy's one of those games where every defeat leads to progress, and because there are so many defeats there's a lot of progression to be made. Achieving a victory, no matter how small, is quite satisfying. 3.

  • "Exploratory platformer on many planets." Saira's one of many Nifflas SpaceWhippers out there, and probably the briefest of all the ones he's charging for. It's got a neat soulful story though, and having multiple planets instead of one big map gives it some variation. 2.

  • "Rhythm-based RPG." Sequence uses a DDR type approach to its RPG battles, and the player is ranked on how well they rhythmically beat down the monsters they face. It's fine if you like DDR and wanted a bit more of a framing device around it. 2.

  • "Cyberpunk isometric RPG." Shadowrun's got a fairly mixed history with regards to video game adaptations. This one hearkens back to the Genesis/SNES versions, and is true to its source material too. The built-in adventure's a bit lightweight, but there's potential in spades. 3.

  • "Breakout clone with kickass soundtrack." Excellent music aside, Shatter's a take on the old bat and ball genre with a few tricks regarding magnetic repulsing/attracting. It feels way more arcade-y than most games of its ilk, even compared to something like Arkanoid, which was literally an arcade game. 3.

  • "Badger and kids survival sim." Shelter's one of those dialogue-free adventures that's filled with drama and emotion, framed as a mother badger's struggle to keep her children safe and fed. The game doesn't pull its punches, if you're the type who openly weeps when Bambi's mother gets killed (that's not a spoiler. At least I don't think. I never got too far in this game.) 2.

  • "Air hockey with magic powers." An enhanced remake of one of my beloved Amiga games, Shufflepuck Cafe, a human astronaut takes on a series of increasingly formidable alien air hockey players. This one has a level/collectible progression mechanic that really stretches the game thin, but at least it gives you reasons to keep playing. 2.

  • "A slidey Tetris puzzle variant." Slydris didn't seem particularly offensive, as yet another puzzle game to unsuccessfully challenge the Tetris throne. If you're into Tetris variants, it might be for you. But then so might Dr Mario or Puyo Puyo or a dozen other things. 2.

  • "Magical camera object summoning platformer." Snapshot begins as a fun little platformer that has a puzzle-solving mechanic involving taking pictures of objects and summoning them where needed, but gets really obnoxiously precise and difficult before you even leave the first world. Disappointing. 1.

  • "Real-time hero summoning strategy." Soulcaster has you summoning instances of several types of hero, one for tanking, one for ranged, etc. in order to fight hordes of monsters. It can get pretty hairy, but it wisely manages to end at the point where it was becoming too much to handle. 3.

  • "Chemical reaction construction chain sim." That sounds a bit technical, but really SpaceChem is all about setting up a factory assembly line that combines elements in the right places at the right frequency. It's easy enough to pick up, though it gets super hard later on. 2.

  • "Arbitarily unfair procedurally generated platformer." Spelunky's been making a lot of waves of late due to its daily feature on Giant Bomb, but there's an equally likely chance you'll fall deeply in love with its many clever mechanics or utterly repulsed by its many cheap deaths. Possibly both. 3.

  • "Manic, absurd platformer for masochists." 'Splosion Man may seem like an insane, anything goes type of platformer, but like Hotline Miami actually requires some careful consideration before you go rushing into the next big set piece. 3.

  • "Gesture-based strategic aquatic battles." Squids reminded me a lot of Rocket Slime, that superlative Zelda-ish RPG for the DS, due to how you fight enemies by flicking your selected sea creature towards enemies by employing their innate elasticity. It's built like a strategy RPG, but the flicking makes it way more fun and interesting. 3.

  • "Matroyska mayhem, multiple solutions adventure." Stacking's most prominent feature, beyond that everyone looks like a Russian stacking doll, is that each puzzle has multiple solutions and the player can body hijack one of many colorful characters to solve its puzzles. Real puzzle fans try to find all the solutions, of course. 3.

  • "Gothic glass-breaking broken platformer." Stained has a neat concept at the core of it - that by shattering stain glass windows in the background of a dilapidated fortress, monsters, items and platforms come into being from the shards. Unfortunately the game's a bit of a mess. 1.

  • "Satirical sneering first-person exploration." Stanley Parable rubbed me the wrong way, throwing into dispute everything I enjoy about video games. Then again, it's probably best we take a step back once and a while to acknowledge the flaws of our beloved hobby. It's at the very least well-written and sharply clever in its execution. 2.

  • "Early indie space-trader sim." Starscape's definitely feeling its age these days, but it's an interesting early take on a Star Control 2 type game long past the point where a worthy sequel in that series was on the cards. There's better space trader games now (I hear SPAZ is good), but Starscape is certainly not terrible. 2.

  • "Experimental-heavy saccharine puzzle-platformer." I've mentioned a few games on this list that are puzzle platformers only in the sense that you need to test the waters a bit before forming a plan of action. Sugar Cube's landscape changes on the fly, so you might need a few trial runs before you understand what's required of you. It's short but, well, sweet. 2.

  • "Music-enhanced trippy pixel adventure." Superbrothers is an odd duck, and a bit too arty and obtuse for its own good at times, but it's got a really cool world and style that you feel compelled to explore. 2.

  • "Endless runner ninja tower carnage." A game in which you try to descend a tower filled with traps and enemies as humanly possible, this Adult Swim game is fast, frantic-ass fun. Once you get to grips with its quirks and the tools available to you, and can effortlessly run through the early parts of the game, it really starts to click. 3.

  • "Concise and brutal fleshy platformer." SMB probably requires no talking up at this point, but it's the benchmark for sharp 2D platformer controls at this point. And I mean ever. Some 2D platformers are more enjoyable, due to SMB's crushing level of difficulty, but I don't think any play this well or seem this "fair". 3.

  • "Asteroids as a space trader." Super Space Rubbish humorously (at least I imagine this was the case, due to its Hitchhiker's Guide-esque lore) takes the old Atari arcade game Asteroids and adds a lot of bloom and upgrade mechanics to its rudimentary formula. It'd work a lot better if the upgrades didn't take so long to save up for. 2.

  • "Open-world construction exploration adventure." Terraria has a reputation as a "2D Minecraft", but it's actually a lot more focused and better looking than its inspiration. There's bosses to fight, weapon and armor progression to be made, numerous secrets to discover and a heck of a lot of customization with what you can build. 3.

  • "Gloomy aquatic action/sinking sim." They Breathe sadly wears out its welcome too fast with its repetition, but it can really lay on the spooky tension as you sink towards the bottom of the world. 1.

  • "Jovially pleasant quadrilateral puzzle-platformer." Thomas Was Alone is a bit twee in parts, but it's got some well-designed puzzles and excellent voice-over narration. It's easy to beat in one sitting, not necessarily because it's short, but because you want to see what the game throws at you next. 3.

  • "Amusing time-travel adventure nonsense." Time Gentlemen, Please! is the sequel to Ben There, Dan That!, and is pretty much the reason why you would want to play both games. The humor's a bit random, but it's also well-written and the puzzles don't require huge leaps of logic. 3.

  • "Self-destruct sequence-inspired platformer." Tobe's is a platformer in which you easily descend to the bottom of a stage, collect a McGuffin, and then make the far more difficult ascent to the entrance while the stage falls apart in unpredictable ways. A great idea, marred by some lackluster platforming. 2.

  • "Terribly precise avian puzzle-platformer." Toki Tori's handily demonstrates the type of puzzle game it'll become by how the eponymous bird adventurer will only move in discrete half-block units. The game requires a lot of precision for its later stages. It's fair but quite challenging. 2.

  • "Diablo hack-and-slash looter." Torchlight's a very deliberate attempt to tap into the Diablo field of randomized dungeons and loot acquisition. The eventual appearance of Diablo 3 kind of rendered both it and its sequel moot, but before then it was the best "Diablo clone" available. 2.

  • "Thoughtful 16-bit visual novel." To The Moon looks like one of those RPGMaker games that rarely makes waves, but it's actually nothing of the sort. It's a visual novel that borrows that aesthetic to tell an affecting story about a dying man and his final dream. 3.

  • "Incredibly precise, bananas dirtbike sim." The Trials games seem like some manner of extreme motor sports business, but it's way more accessible and tongue in cheek. Though by "accessible" I certainly do not mean "easy". 3.

  • "Immense SpaceWhipper RPG." Unepic's got an incredible sense of scale, as each screen is practically a dungeon in and of itself. It's full of treasures, monsters, traps and secrets, but the writing's unfortunately kind of appalling. 2.

  • "Minimalist arty first-person puzzler." Unfinished Swan's a great little piece on the futility of artistic genius if it never lets you finish your projects. Each stage is a self-contained chapter that introduces new abilities. Very clever and cool, if far too short. 3.

  • "Physics-based flying puzzle-adventure." Unmechnical's got a sweetly measured pace and while its block and rock shifting physics-based puzzles are enjoyable enough, the weird atmosphere and background details hold one's interest more. 3.

  • "Real-time computer hacker simulator." Uplink's one of those games I wish I was good at, but the world of hacking is meticulous and precise, which are generally things that I'm not. Seems like a solid hacking game, albeit one that won't ever let you stop and rest. 2.

  • "Flawed but enjoyable ambitious SpaceWhipper." As Indie SpaceWhippers go, it's certainly got a lot of content and a fairly well conceived combat engine, but numerous small imperfections stop it from being one of the genre's bests. 2.

  • "Strange procedurally generated exploratory platformer." AVWW has a bizarre premise, but at its core it's a 2D platformer RPG with a huge amount of randomly generated world to explore. You'll likely burn out on it long before you figure out how to beat it. 2.

  • "Sequel that focuses on strategy." I really didn't like the big switch to more strategy-focused mechanics, even if that sort of game is more in the developers' wheelhouse. At least it helps you stay focused on immediate goals. 1.

  • "Fluid-based physics puzzle-platformer." I liked the game's steampunk aesthetic, but its fluid-sheparding puzzle mechanics always seemed a bit too imprecise for my liking. 2.

  • "Tough, wonderful gravity-switching SpaceWhipper." VVVVVV's singular mechanic of switching the gravity from downwards to upwards is simple to get to grips with, but the game itself is quite challenging. The old-school nostalgic music and graphics are the highlight. 3.

  • "Post-apocalyptic vehicular combat game." Seems like Renegade Ops would be the better choice, but this arena-based vehicle shooter is all right if a bit repetitive. 2.

  • "Exceedingly ephemeral exploration puzzle game." Windosill's a point and click in the sense that you simply click on things on the screen and stuff happens. Finding the right series of items to click is the key to progressing. Some interesting art design, but it's far too brief. 2.

  • "Pixelly Breakout RPG." Wizorb supplements its classic "bat and ball" gameplay with some RPG elements and a town you can help restore between levels. It's a bit slight, but it's got a lot of charm. 2.

  • "Puzzle construction game. With goo." World of Goo was one of those early Indie successes and created a hopeful (if unfortunately short-lived) feeling that Nintendo would be hopping on the burgeoning indie scene by releasing it on WiiWare. It's very reminiscent of being a kid and seeing how large a structure you can make with Meccano or some other such engineer vocation-inspiring toys. 2.

  • "Lemmings, but assisted by sketches." A strategy game that depended on unpredictable AI far too early and often. You're meant to draw paths for these little hopping bug things to follow to the exit, but it was inexplicably difficult to herd those things. 1.

  • "Heavy bondage rope-binding puzzle." Zen Bound 2 tasks you with wrapping a rope around a wooden 3D object in a way where the rope touches as much of it as possible. Sounds simple, but gets challenging fast. 2.

  • "Creepy, weird first-person brawler." Zeno Clash looks like it was directly inspired by a Jim Henson fantasy movie from the 80s, but its first-person brawling combat is fierce and compelling. Reminds me a lot of Die By The Sword, but with thankfully more polished controls. 3.
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