Tag: indie games

A still image of the game Unpacking showing a dorm style room with a bed, wardrobe and desk and several open cardboard boxes.

Unpacking Vulnerability, Empathy and Player Agency

By Ruth Cassidy • December 17th, 2021

It’s that moment when you walk down the street and realise that every single stranger, whose presence is fleeting in your life, has lived an entire history up until that moment.

Friction Burns

A still image of Frostpunk showing a bunch of container like houses around a central generator, surrounded in snow

Authoritarianism (In Frostpunk) Is Not Inevitable

By Ruth Cassidy • December 10th, 2021

In that optimisation-first mindset, it’s easy to do – violence will make this problem go away’. But then, so would meeting your citizens’ material needs.

Friction Burns

in a screenshot from Umurangi Generation, a disposable camera sits on top of a concrete block next to some cans of spray paint.

Urgency and Mastery in Umurangi Generation

By Ruth Cassidy • October 29th, 2021

While I followed advice to turn off the timer, I kept chewing on its presence. Was it at odds with the game’s purpose, or was I acting in conflict with it?

Friction Burns

The Disco Elysium detective standing shirtless with his hand to his head in pain, in a crowded and gross room.

How Disco Elysium’s Centrist Path Observes the Player

By Ruth Cassidy • October 1st, 2021

“It isn’t about diplomacy, or pacifying all sides, but about absolute control.”

Casting Deep Meteo

two characters fighting a skeleton monster on a lit ledge.

Greak and the Deft Power of Short Stories

By Levi Rubeck • September 21st, 2021

Greak doesn’t overstay its welcome, and is clearsighted in its goals from the beginning.

Casting Deep Meteo

Two images - one of a character running into a forest, from the game Below, merged with an image of ASCII art from the game Caves of Qud.

The Mental Umami of Risk and Reward

By Levi Rubeck • September 14th, 2021

Though Below has killed me almost as often as Caves of Qud, each defeat similarly instructs enough to encourage another descent.

A piano with two small children looking at it. This is a still from Little Nightmares II.

Little Nightmares II and the Case of Weak Imagery

By Amanda Hudgins • February 15th, 2021

Not every game has to say something with its imagery, but it’s clear that Little Nightmares II wants desperately to be saying something.

Gliding by the Light of The Red Lantern

By Levi Rubeck • March 26th, 2020

This upcoming rogue-lite adventure novel has been two years in development, a bit before the annual Alaska race crashed through puppy Twitter, but happy to ride some of those waves nonetheless.

Pox Free at PAX East 2020, Part 1

By Levi Rubeck • March 12th, 2020

Three mini essays for the price of one!

A crew of people in a purple lit arcade.

The Beautiful Lies of 198X

By Jeremy Signor • January 29th, 2020

Video games let us escape our lives and give us fake victories that have no bearing on reality. But there’s power in the lie.

A screenshot from Baba is You, showing simplistic graphics in the form of colorful block puzzles.

Baba Is You Rules

By Jeremy Signor • April 3rd, 2019

By letting you manipulate the implicit rules of its world, Baba Is You reveals how underlying assumed rules shape how you play games.

Artificial Interpersonal Relationships

By Levi Rubeck • January 24th, 2019

CrossCode tingles with succulent friction and the loops carry me along on a raft that feels like home, even if I’m unsure where I’m going.

The Message

By Jeremy Signor • October 3rd, 2018

Level design never stands alone. It’s all in how you look at it.

Minimalism and Collage in Minit

By Andrew Bailey • August 6th, 2018

With each successive loop Minit prompts its player to consider what other seemingly standardized game mechanics would benefit from this same kind of microscopic lens.

a pale illustrated woman with a short bob facing a darker skinned man with strong sideburns and a white shirt.

Florence and Collaborative Play

By Daniel Schindel • July 13th, 2018

This was a deeper connection; the two of us were actively involved in an act of creation, the kind of authorship of a story that only a video game can provide.

Gingy's Corner

Don’t Use Cultural Emblems as Cheap Set Pieces

By Gingy Gibson • July 6th, 2018

Woodstock 1969, in contrast, treats the entire festival as a backdrop for a lackluster lesbian love story, ignoring the social, political, and especially artistic aspects of the time that allowed Woodstock to come about and be so memorable in the first place.

A beautiful woman with a large black hat pulling the skin off of her face to reveal a glowing pink slight beneath.

Descending Into Madness with Cultist Simulator

By Rosh Kelly • June 18th, 2018

Cultist Simulator is not just a game, but a thought exercise. Before playing it might seem impossible to lose everything in the pursuit of knowledge, but there is something inside us all, something old and self-destructive that can be activated under the right, or wrong circumstances.

a cute little town with the words "Fantastic Factories" in banners dragged by zeppelins across the background

Joseph Chen on the Minimalist Design of Fantastic Factories

By Sam Desatoff • June 14th, 2018

“We gathered some of our favorite mechanics from our favorite games and made that our design goal,” Chen said when I asked about his inspirations. “We wanted to combine the engine building of Race for the Galaxy, the dice manipulation of Alien Frontiers, and the simultaneous action selection of 7 Wonders.”

stretching green and red lines that dot like train lines across a grey scale background. Hubs are in bright blue with text that reads "GOP." This is a still from the game Democracy 3

Democracy 3 and the Absurdity of Government

By Daniel Schindel • May 25th, 2018

No matter how much players derive pleasure from a challenge, the inherent appeal of sims is the illusion of control that they grant us.

The Loss Levels

By Daniel Fries • May 23rd, 2018

The name, The Loss Levels, is a pun on the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2, called The Lost Levels when it finally released in the United States. It’s hard to know whether you’re supposed to laugh or cry.

E-soterica

Exploring Spaces in These Indie Platformers

By Khee Hoon Chan • May 15th, 2018

In most platformers, we waffle a little, and then take a leap of faith from one scaffolding to the next, and perhaps over a deadly pit of lava and spikes.

E-soterica

Fans Have Spoken, and They Want a Knuckle Sandwich

By Alyse Stanley • May 4th, 2018

When the frenetic gameplay of WarioWare, the dark humor of Fargo, and the aesthetic of Dragon Ball and Pokémon combine, Knuckle Sandwich emerges unscathed from the explosion, sunglasses lowered.

E-soterica

Umiro Is The Relief of Recovering Lost Memories

By Khee Hoon Chan • May 3rd, 2018

In Umiro, seeing the hues of color seep back into the city is more than just the exhilarating thrill of completing another level in a game. It’s the bittersweet relief of recovering a missing memento, of finding something you thought was lost for good.

E -soterica

Rythm is Lava

By Alyse Stanley • April 25th, 2018

Egor Dorichev’s entry Rythm is Lava (typo intentional) stitches together RPG, puzzle, platformer, and rhythm game elements Frankenstein style into an experience as elegant as it is frustratingly complex.

Embody An Unspeakable Horror in Sea Salt

By Khee Hoon Chan • April 10th, 2018

To Lovecraft fans, the unspeakable horror of the Old Gods is already common knowledge, their motives so unknowable and unthinkable that any attempts to understand them would surely lead to insanity