>>972361 >Mario Party without the minigames Why?

>>973010 Being delisted from stores is not the same thing as being unavailable to people who already purchased it to download, they usually still have the ability to do so.

>>974618 The point of 100% Orange Juice is that it's… 100% R N G (errnngee…uice). That is, no skill whatsoever, just luck (and proper deckbuilding). I'm actually VACbanned from it because I accidentally had a trainer turned on while clicking into the multiplayer lobby. Which is complete fucking bullshit.

>>974643 Orange Jews has strategy, shut up slut, also there are minigames. FISHING counts, and all the other stupid minigames that do barely anything.

>autism incoming I really don't like the idea of an "indie game". Firstly it doesn't necessarily refer to actually independent games; Baldur's Gate 3 is independent while Hotline Miami was funded and published by a third-party, but the former is considered AAA while the latter - indie. It's an arbitrary term. indie Secondly, it inherently "others" games not made by bloated big budget studios. It's not just a game, it's an indie game. A prefix. There's this unspoken implication of lesser quality and polish (when compared to "real" games, by AAA studios of course) whenever it's is used. If a so-called indie actually is impressive in the its presentation its often given the nebulous "AA" title. With it also comes a set of negative stereotypes, there's this idea that the people who make and play "indie games" are the 2010 stereotype of a hipster with their handlebar mustaches and lumberjack shirts. How many times have you heard some variant of the joke "Earthbound-style JRPG that's a metaphor for mental illness", now ask yourself how many of those you've actually seen? It's an almost nonexistent genre. There's a wide breadth of games in the indie category, ironically much more so than you'd see in the GaaS and Ubisoft-style open world-filled AAA industry. I understand it's a useful term to refer to a certain style of game, when somebody says indie you immediately know what they mean, but I think it's reductive and limits the discussion around games.

>>974858 I mean, most of those stereotypes were real back in the late 2010s, but indie as an insulting prefix has waned on most other corners of the net (this place is the exception more for culture war reasons than any other anti-indie bias). Lesser quality and polish is to be expected of smaller and underbudgeted teams, in spite of big name indies like Cocoon, Hades, Stray, or It Takes Two blowing the average AAA out of the water. A lot of trends they had then (pixel art, quirky dialogue, genre choices of rougelite and rpg) are still seen today, the same way that AAA as a derogatory prefix still follows a lot of their trends from that time period (GaaS, MTX, Ultra HD, Open World, "CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE"). Anons here mostly hate them because a lot of them being california liberal hipsters made them more cliquish, encourage each other to push diversity, keep the industry regressed, but otherwise they can provide an outlet that AAA can't or won't and for that I partially respect them. >How many times have you heard some variant of the joke "Earthbound-style JRPG that's a metaphor for mental illness", now ask yourself how many of those you've actually seen I posted half of this list on /vb/ months ago: Undertale, Omori, YIIK, Hylics, LISA the Painful, Oddventure, Yume Nikki, She Dreams Elsewhere, and those are just the most mainstream ones. Reason I hate that trend is due to how big a wave of support it got while I didn't care for Earthbound to begin with.

So speaking of indie games, I finally finished Crystal Project. The game's outright incredible for one made by a single guy out of free sprites and music. Well-designed Final Fantasy style combat, 3D platforming world exploration (which I guess not everyone likes), little to no plot, and great archive of tracking stuff for obsessive-compulsive completionists. The only infuriating part is the not-Chocobo racing and breeding. >I would post some pics but them's the breaks of torposting

An indie horror game came out recently called Indigo Park. It's one of those mascot horror games, but people seem to really genuinely like it. The twist is instead of being "subversive" like most in its genre, it's played straight as a horror game. The major mascot character Rambley the Racoon is genuinely just a cheery cartoon racoon, he glitches out but that's not really played as a horror thing, he's just glitched. He cares about the MC's safety, allowing you into the staff rooms even though he's not supposed to so you can hide. He also lies about what day it is so you can get a discount on his toys He just wants you to have fun at the park, even if it is run down and corrupted Most anons here wouldn't like it, but I do like it bucking the the main trend that defines mascot horror.

>>988327 Oh my god it's FNAF but even more furry He looks like a boykisser

>>972904 Wait, they changed the name? I have that game on Steam and it's just called The Vagrant.

>>988327 Yeah I saw footage of this game and it's nice to just have a good ol' played straight horror like this. It's just a shame it's yet another game releasing in an episodic format that'll probably never be finished or take way too long to get done. I hope the dev just puts it all out at once and gets it done that way instead of releasing episodically. Same hope for another game I found during NextFest called "Illusion Carnival" that didn't get much coverage by anyone. Dev's a faggot and was going on about pronoun shit in the steam discussions regarding characters, but it doesn't show in the game and such has a good story and cute characters, with a neat "alice in wonderland" type of premise mixed with glitch horror and more psychological horror ideas, so it got my attention and I'd say it was pretty good. I think the demo is still available, actually, if any anons here want to give it a try. I just hope it isn't going to be another one of those "all in the head" kind of stories. >>974837 >Tsihposting Nice. But yeah, there is quite a bit of strategy in 100% OJ, a lot of it dealing with RNG mitigation or working with what you can get and adapting it to that character's kit and changing conditions in the game. People saying it's "All RNG" are just taking the piss or people who haven't sat down and tried to play the game mildly seriously.

>>988327 I really liked it from what I saw. It's very refreshing to see just a plain horror game but I'm curious how good it'll actually turn out since the developer is so new. The guy making it originally started off by remaking Garten of Ban Ban in a single week, then decided to just go ahead and make an original game since it was way easier than he thought.

>>988629 I thought he was reaching out to a dangling cock in the bottom right. haha

>>971529 Has anyone played the CD-i parody game? The one with a black princess and animated by WalrusGuy?

>>989597 I haven't since it doesn't really interest me.

>>989615 Never understood why they thought it was a good idea on the first place, what made the CD-i games so fucking hilarious is because of Phillips desperately trying to stay relevant by leeching on popular franchises only to dick slap their braindead consumers. As expected the game's cutscenes fall flat or don't have any memorable scenes because it was done on purpose and added some subtle poz like making the princess being a dyke and pushing for democracy (wtf it's like the Al Gore law where you must propagate liberalism into your art or else), unlike the struggling slavs unintentionally trying their hardest and coming out with the most heinous, disastrous animation traumatizing or leaving a bad taste to any devoted sucker who blew more than $1000 USD.

>>989965 Anon, they brought in a Youtube Poop artist to work on the game, this was targeted at the late millennial/early Zoomers born 1996-2001 who grew up watching the old Zelda CDI Squadallah Dinner PINGAS era YTPs in the late 2000's and are now old enough to be nostalgia pandered to.

>>989973 Shouldn't they have just tried to make something funny then instead? But then again it already looks lower effort than a lot of other YoutubePoops I've seen.

>>990646 They could've made it like pibby, where it's meta and has lots of ytp refefences. It could've been the next ebin tumblrtale

>>990675 >file is not named "niggertonguedmyanus"

>>990675 I'm not really sure what would haven been worse, it's like comparing similar looking turds.

>>990646 >No parodies >No absurd violence <Not even a sex joke besides the librarian being teased over her gay sex books Even a surviving ytp from a decade ago is a lot funnier than whatever they came up with. >>990675 Fucking Pibby is just another of the many preschooler spooky shows/games that have been done to death, they had to throw in other franchises so it could stay relevant.

You lads like turn based tactics? I got rec'd Reverse Collapse the other day and it was pretty dope. Story's quite long but the gameplay is quite challenging for what it is since you cant just brute force it in the year of CY+8, and there's barely any stat padding in this game so you have to use your shit and think your way out. There are mandatory stealth missions but thankfully they're not timed missions which are the worst, and the stealth missions are glorified puzzles anyways. The gameplay seems to be about 30 -40 hours along and from the looks of it i'm at the halfway point. There's also a challenge+ mode that fucks your shit up by adding elite enemies more often. Funny how the Chinese managed to do actual games for once and NOT another fucking gacha game.

>>971529 Pokerogue, it's do-able in a version where the main dev hasn't left, not like current <Cyrus challenged you to battle with Darkrai, Mesprite, Mega Houndoom and Howling Moon <Viable pokemons are nerfed because reasons

>>988327 Rambley has such an sincerity you just don't see a lot in vidya, let alone horror. Even though the game is free I would not be surprised if the dev becomes wealthy off of merchandise.

Saw this and it looks like it could be fun. It's a shitposting rhythm game where you play as a terminally online creepy girl who's goal is to spread her conspiratorial brain rot to as many followers as possible while overdosing on denpa tunes.

>>993712 Reminds me I need to get a Steam Next Fest thread going.

>>988327 Rambley unironically sounds like a faggot, not suprising that VA's username is OtterBoy.

UFO 50 is nice.

Now that 2024's over, what were its best indies? Looking for new releases to play that aren't AAAss and will run on my bad laptop.

>>1053279 A lot of people really loved Pacific Drive, though I personally found it to be rather repetitive and not well designed. A huge portion of the game's upgrades are locked behind the Deep-Zone, a region of the game you spend maybe 3 missions in 90 minutes from the end credits. If you like Morrowind, there's Dread Delusion. I should correct myself - if you like the concept of Morrowind, there's Dread Delusion. Do not expect the same level of game design and writing, it's also braindead easy. UFO 50 is possibly my favorite of the year, I'd need to sit with it a big longer to decide for sure. I'd recommend you go into it with as little info as possible, it's such an interesting and unique idea for a game. Without spoiling too much, do you know the idea of a concept album? Well, UFO 50 is a "concept game". You're playing through 50 games of the fictional developer UFO Soft. That's the premise, if it at all interests you then check it out without looking into it. Easily one of the best games of the decade. Mouthwashing is a game you've probably already heard of by now, but if you somehow haven't, it's another game you should look into as little as possible before playing. It's a very short, 2-3 hour psychological horror game set inside a tiny cargo spacecraft. There's no supernatural monsters or ayylums attacking you, the tension entirely comes from the crew and their interactions. Worth watching a playthrough at the least. Every motherfucker I know is going crazy about Balatro, it's a roguelike deckbuilder, but this one's gimmick is that it's based on poker. If you like those you'll love it, if you don't you won't. The Taiwanese Metroidvania Nine Sols is being hailed by some as the "real" Hollow Knight: Silksong, as Team Cherry seemingly can't fucking finish that game. One of the big breakouts this year was Animal Well, another Metroidvania and the only game that contends for my GOTY against UFO 50. Unlike most Metroidvanias, this one is based around puzzle-solving, having no combat. It's very open-ended and respects player intelligence, it also had some big ARG puzzles if you're into that. I'm not remotely smart enough for that kind of thing.

>>1053279 Theres also atlyss, unrailed 2, psychopomp, quest master, emberward, and a handful of gameboy studio games or lookalikes, although the other anon's list has more general appeal and play-value.

>>971547 all of these are trash. dont waste your fucking money. especially the shit called "touhou" based on indie poor ero novel.

>>1053311 From the handful of studio games what's worth playing?