So, over the last two months I've been playing a bunch of indie games I've been meaning to play for a while now. I thought I'd just go ahead and write up my thoughts on each of them here.
! Celeste – Honestly, it’s a little surprising to me that this game has such a wide appeal, because…holy shit this game is nuts. In terms of difficulty, of course. Story-wise, it’s very charming and has a good message about overcoming difficulties in life. But…my god this game is excruciatingly hard. Especially if you want to 100% it. Early on the game tells you to be proud of your failures because you’re learning from each one. And yeah, that’s a good message, but after a while I started to think I’m not really learning anything from each of these hundreds of deaths I’m taking. I’m just playing these levels until I get the muscle memory down or if I get lucky. Oh well, guess I’m not supposed to take it literally. But, in spite of its difficulty, I persevered, and I did finish all the B and C sides and Farewell. 7C was by far the toughest for me. I spend about two hours trying to finish one screen. Overall, it is a mostly fun and certainly challenging game, but it can be pretty stressful, so my memories of it aren’t entirely positive, especially since I was going through a fairly stressful period in my life at the time.
! Mutant Mudds – Originally, I wasn’t planning to include this game in my indie games playthrough, but one day I saw it on sale for like $2.00 so I pretty much had to get. And yeah, I bet a lot of you are wandering what the hell even is this game? And yeah, not exactly the most popular indie game, but I had heard good things about it from some sources, so I figured I’d check it out. It’s a fairly standard platformer shooting game, that does get pretty challenging at times, but still nothing you can’t 100% in a few days. Also, the controls do feel a bit stiff, but maybe that’s part of the challenge? Well, in any case, it’s a perfectly serviceable game, which is about what I was expecting, and for $2.00, I’d say I got my money’s worth.
! Freedom Planet – Yep. This is definitely a Sonic clone. And I do mean that in the best way possible. Well…mostly. The thing is, this game has three playable characters, but I feel the game was mostly designed with Lilac in mind. The other two are…fine, I guess, but feel rather constrictive after Lilac. Carol has a good combat moveset, but suffers from a lack of vertical movement. And Milla has good movement, but….man her combat sucks. The whole reflecting shield thing is a nice concept, but it doesn’t feel fully realized. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure what to make of her route. Her battles ranged anywhere from unbelievably easy to balls-to-the-wall, aggravatingly difficult. And one more thing I will say about the gameplay is I don’t like the card-collecting aspect. Like…when are people going to realize that Sonic levels are really not designed for exploration. They’re very big levels that you’re meant to speed pass through with several points of no return. So expecting us to explore every nook and cranny for these collectibles is kinda ridiculous. One thing I will say I surprised about though was that this game had voice-acting. Like…I legit just was not expecting that and it kinda startled when I first heard the characters talk. And the voice-acting is good, though the story feels a little rushed, like they expect to figure out or assume a lot of things on our own (or they’re planning to expand on it later games maybe). Has some issues, but still a good time for a classic Sonic experience.
! Child of Light – Ubisoft produced this, so I guess it’s not really an indie game at all, but…fuck it, it’s my list. I really didn’t know what to expect with this game, whether it was going to be another Metroidvania or maybe a platformer. As it turns out, it’s an action-puzzle platformer with an RPG battle system. ‘Kay, that’s cool. The game is generally pretty fun, although the battle system could have used some reworking. Ultimately, you have a team of about 7 or 8 people, but you’re only ever allowed to use two of them in battle. Generally, RPG’s let you use about half your team in battle so you have a chance to experiment, mix them up a bit, and see how they work with each other, but this game doesn’t really afford many opportunities for that. Honestly, I really only used Aurora, Finn, and Oengus. Rubella, Robert, and Golem I used sometimes, and Tristis and Gen were totally useless. And yeah, you can switch party members in battle, but there’s not really much reason to do that either unless you’re fighting a tough boss. Aside from that, the rhyming schtick does get pretty old and dumb at times, but it didn’t bother me that much. And the aesthetic of the game isn’t totally to my taste, but that’s just me. Not a great game, but an enjoyably pleasant one that I’d say is worth the ten or so hours you’ll put into it.
! Dead Cells – Like Child of Light, I didn’t know what to expect with this game. I’d heard it being compared to Metroidvanias and I thought it was going to be just that, another Metroidvania. But no, it’s actually “roguelike”, a term I’d not heard before I played this game, with some Metroidvania elements. So with it being my first roguelike I’ll say, yes this game is good, but I don’t think it’s for me. To get the most out of this time, I feel like you really need to be into the gameplay and have a willingness to play it over and over and…yeah, I just don’t. I played it for about a week to get my money’s worth and I think that’s all I really need. I beat the final boss (no, not the “real” final boss), played and beat every level (again, except for the “real” final level), and made one attempt at a 1BC run, but died on the final boss because I couldn’t get a chance to heal. Sorry, but for me it feels like there’s just too many random elements in this game, particularly with the weapons and upgrades. It feels like it’s just a matter of whether you get lucky in getting a strong enough weapon to handle the final boss. And yeah, not exactly a fan of the philosophy of “you messed up once in this one-hour run, so you have to start over and that’s completely on you.” Actually, the one thing that could have used more randomness is the levels since, although they are procedurally generated, they still have the same basic structure, so it does get tiring playing them over and over. But, all that said, I did mostly have fun while I was playing it. I guess I could go back to it and fiddle around with collecting more items and upgrades, but for now I think I’ve reached my limit.
! Return of the Obra Dinn – I had really high hopes for this game since I’d heard really good things and Yahtzee called it the best game of 2018. And, for the most part, yeah I’d say my expectations were met. I’ve never played Papers Please, but I can see that this Lucas Pope guy has some real talent. The first half of the game is phenomenal when you’re exploring this ghost and steadily discovering all the bodies and learning (more or less) what happened during the course of the voyage. The whole experience as a very eerie and mysterious feel to it. The second half though, when you’ve seen all the death scenes and just have to parse everything together, while good, just…didn’t feel quite as satisfying for me. While I was able to complete the book, I felt like I was just guessing half the time. Educated guesses, but still. Like, there are some crewman whose identifies feel completely up to chance. Like there’s four Chinese men, so you just have to take the four Chinese names on the manifesto and hope you assign them correctly. Same with the three Russians and the four Indians. And then there’s that one guy with the turban who you have to assume is Persian, or one of the dark-skinned guys must be from Sierra Leone, or the guy with the tattoos is from Guinea (so yeah, the game sort of rewards you for being racist). And then there isn’t much point to the “true” ending since it’s easy to do and doesn’t have any major revelations about the plot. It just fills in that one missing piece of the story. But regardless, this is still an incredibly innovative that really sucks you in. In his review, Yahtzee said to savor the game and spread your session out, which, in my experience, is a lot easier said than done. Once you get going with this game, you just want to keep playing and figure out what happened to everyone. I beat this game in two days, so I wouldn’t say I “savored” it, but I definitely enjoyed it.
! Metroidvania Corner
So yeah, seems there are a lot of Metroidvania indie games out there. Or at least a lot that are worth playing. It kinda makes me wonder if someone should give a new name for them since there are so many of them now. Oh well, since I did play a lot of them, I figured I’d give them their own section.
! Ori and the Blind Forest – This was actually the first game I played in my little indie game journey and, yeah, it was a good one to start with. The artwork is utterly beautiful, and it has a really emotional opening scene that, unfortunately, I don’t think the rest of the game quite lives up to (so it’s kind of like Up in that way). But still, it is a good game and executes the Metroidvania formula well. My only complaints are 1) it can be hard to tell what’s going on in the game sometimes since the camera is so far away and a lot of the glowy blob stuff looks similar to each other, and 2) the ending feels kind of sudden. Like, really could have used a final dungeon or something. But these are relatively minor complaints for what is otherwise a very well-made game, and I’m looking forward to playing Will of the Wisps when I get around to it.
! Axiom Verge – Definitely more “Metroid” inspired than “vania”. Aside from being a science fiction story, it definitely has the 16-bit blocky Super Metroid graphic style down, but it also has a unique style all its down. I love how the “glitchy” the game feels (and that’s by design), like you’re playing in some kind of computer program that’s being corrupted. One of my favorite power ups is the ability to phase and shift through walls, which I’m not sure I’ve seen in any other game before. The plot, for me, it is utterly indecipherable, but that doesn’t matter too much since the gameplay itself is still a lot of fun. The only other issue I might have is that there are one or two parts where the game is pretty unintuitive about how you need to proceed, and I did have to end up having to look up what to do at one point, but that could just totally be a me thing.
! Cave Story – Yeah. Wow. This game came out in 2004. Can you believe it took me this long to play this game? For those who don’t recall it was a pretty big deal when it came out. It was basically the Undertale of its day. And, yeah, I can see why. The gameplay isn’t exceptionally innovative, but it’s still fun. But what really holds this game together is the story, which, despite not being very pervasive, still really sucks you in (hope you’re taking notes, RPG designers). One thing I do have to say though is that, Toroko’s death pissed me off. It happened just so suddenly and cruelly, and no one even really acknowledges it afterwards. Which…I guess all that is by design, to make it more tragic, but…this game can be a bit much is all I’m saying. I mean, even King’s death had more meaning in that he “lives on” through the sword you inherit from him. But getting back to the positive, the music in this game is phenomenal. I don’t know if the music 8-bit or 16-bit, or possibly both since there’s an original and remastered version of this game (I played the latter). But whatever it is, it’s just great. And so is this game. Even if I will always feel reluctant to replay it because I’ll always have to go through Toroko’s death again (Dammit! Just why?)
! Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom – I’m not 100% sure this counts as an indie game since it’s based on an established franchise, but it did start off as a Kickstarter, so…whatever. Anyway, I utterly adored this game. This is kind of what I was hoping from the most recent Shantae game. I bright colorful adventure that’s decently challenging, has a decent length, and lets you stay transformed into other creatures as long as you want. On the down side of things, I will admit the game feels pretty glitchy at times (and not in the good Axiom Verge way) and there are a few sections in the middle I think they could have play-tested better (at times I felt like I was brute forcing my way through the stages). Also, once you get the dragon, there’s really no reason to use anything else, except to solve puzzles as needed. But I can easily overlook those and say that this is an exceptionally fun game that more people should check out.
! Iconoclasts – Originally, I wanted to plan this game because I really like the colorful aesthetic of it, and I thought the game would be a nice lighthearted. Boy, don’t you just love it when a game pisses all over the expectations? Well, I’m happy to report the game is good, but yeah, the story can be pretty bleak and depressing. Even more so than Cave Story. But the funny thing is, much like Axiom Verge, I had a lot of trouble understanding what was even going on half the time. Just felt like there was too much jargon being thrown around and character motivations and relationships were…a bit on the unclear side (I didn’t realize till a lot a later than I feel I should have, that Elro was Robin’s brother). Well, I’ve said a lot of negative things here, but I still had fun with the game. Glad I played it. One word of warning though, if want to 100% this game, find a guide. Some of the hidden items are just stupid and no sensible person could figure them out on their own.