Soundtracks significantly contribute to the immersive experiences indie games provide. This post highlights 10 indie games with exceptional scores, from Celeste’s emotional melodies to Hollow Knight’s haunting themes. Accompanying vinyl collections are available at iam8bit and Fangamer. These games exemplify indie titles’ ability to deliver soundscapes rivaling AAA productions.
Cat Palette Merging Colorful Kittens is a strategic and creative puzzle game where players merge kittens to create vibrant new ones. It’s engaging with deep gameplay, albeit slightly repetitive. At $3.99, it’s recommended for casual gamers and cat lovers, offering enough levels to justify its cost.
ABRISS is a beautiful puzzle game that is engaging both visually and auditorily. It’s a thrill to work level by level and engage various Rube Goldberg-esq contraptions to destroy the level. It’s even more thrilling to replay each level to perfect your build and get a higher completion rate. Ultimately, for the price, ABRISS is a must buy if you love puzzle games, demolition and kickin’ rad audio. Destruction & Controlled Mayhem ABRISS has you place various items in the game to fall, move or be controlled to destroy various red targets. Each level has a more or less ideal solution to it but there’s some room to be creative past the tutorial levels. There’s definitely room to tighten up your build to destroy more and get a higher score or better shots in the photo mode / gif creator. The game doesn’t have a story or depth or tricks…
Inkulinati is imaginative, playful and strategic as it builds on colorful ancient memes to provide a strategy puzzler that has the most artistic vibe of any game we’ve seen in awhile. While the art isn’t uniquely rendered, gorgeously deep or unique in any way beyond its ability to While in early access, Inkulinati has impressed us since launch with how beautiful the art is brought to life and the artistic style of how the game plays out. There’s a lot to like here and the early access game is on PC Game Pass (as of this early review) so definitely worth a look there if anything in this review interests you. This review is of the early access version, update 3 (late August 2023). Art to Life The fun of the game is the art style. The characters are all drawn beautifully with rich color and really respect the roots…
You should play Mondealy if you have the chance to. That’s our review. If you want to know why we say that, read on, but ultimately, we’re going to tell you to play Mondealy. If you don’t like visual novels, that’s fine. If you don’t like pixel art, that’s fine. If you don’t like indie games, that’s fine. Go play it. That’s as high of an honor as a game can get from us and we’ll gladly hand it to this year’s best visual novel adventure game. Mondealy is a journey of friendship in a weird world that exists slightly below our own. The best way to describe is what happens in Undertale if the barrier went down but no one left and classism is at the top of the discussion list. Modern culture weaves through with love and affection as Michael journeys through a world that evokes both nostalgia…
SIGNALIS only allows for six inventory spaces and many players do not like the concept at all. So much so the developers have responded noting that they’re working on iterating on some kind of change that doesn’t remove the spirit of the gameplay but alleviates some of the player concerns. For me, I find the entire debate fascinating. The issue stems from the way that the game presents the inventory as sort of a puzzle challenge, akin to games likes Resident Evil. It forces the player into a set playstyle, something modern gamers aren’t very appreciative of, where you will always optimize your run by not bringing ammo and only carrying one weapon. That gives you five inventory slots for all other items. Yet, players who play the game on Easy or Normal will likely want to play aggressively and in doing so will want different weapon options, lots of…
SIGNALIS is sort of an enigma of a game. It’s a great recapture of the feeling of the “5th generation” era of gaming and is actually a lot of fun. While its considered a survival-horror game, its more akin to an action-stealth game like Metal Gear Solid and less like Resident Evil per se. However, it has a very interesting, wild and convoluted story that needs a bit of explanation. Another thing to note is a three person team worked on this game. I touch a bit on this in my article about meetings at video game studios, but a lot of the game is clearly intentional from a development standpoint. Which is why SIGNALIS feels so buttoned up. SIGNALIS Is an Analog Horror Simulator That’s it, that’s as simple as it is. Everything in the game is built around a dream like experience of that 5th generation era of…
Supraland is super fun, at least in my opinion. You have a game that basically has all the components you need – dark souls level combat, Metroid for the NES complexity to advance and Zelda like puzzles. Well, maybe it’s not as hard as a souls game and maybe Metroid for the NES is probably way more confusing, but I’ve had a blast with it. We’ll start off with some general tips that’ll get you through 80% of the puzzles and then I’ll provide a very brief spoiler free walkthrough to get through the main story. The real point of the game is solving the puzzles, but there are a few areas where it can be a bit challenging. At the end we give some more direct answers to common issues in the game to help you get past some of the more challenging parts. Most of the same advice…
High on Life released to massive success on Game Pass and is a really fun, but rather short fourth wall breaking adventure. We’ve got a one page sheet on which weapons are best and what’s the best part about them, some top tips and wisdom on missables, a list of confusing parts during each of the bounties and finally we wrap-up with a spoiler free secret ending guide. That’s a lot, but for a simple game it’s the best way to get everything you need in one place to make this is a far-out space adventure. Weapon Tier List A+: Creature Creature’s ability is just really good because it’s offensive and defensive. Their trick shot is almost worthless, absolutely worthless. The mind control just sucks on lower difficulties, on the harder one it gets some heat off of you but ultimately the ability to just non-stop have enemies staggered with…
FAITH is a homage to retro gaming and The Exorcist with a deep story, diverse gameplay, and rich lore. The trilogy follows John Ward’s battle against demonic possession and eldritch horrors. In the final installment, he confronts the cult’s activities and faces pivotal choices. The game combines horror tropes, offering a nostalgic and immersive experience.