>>971529 Here's some indie games I'd recommend you try out if you haven't played them already >Ruiner >Sanabi >Fight N Rage >Devil Blade Reboot >Slave Zero X It's gay, but not overly in your face about it >Penny's BIg Breakaway >Turbo Overkill >Bzzzt >Bomb Rush Cyberfunk >Lethal League >Fight Knight >Devil Engine Ignition >Project Wingman >Katana Zero >Barkley Shut up and Jam: Gaiden >Broforce >Helltakers >Hotline Miami >Castle Crashers >Koumajou Densetsu >Touhou Lunar Nights >Gensou Skydrift >Spark the Electric Jester >Gravity Circuit >Shinobi Non Grata >LunarLux >Vividlope >Huntdown >Protocorgi >Unsighted >Trepang 2 >Assault Spy >Evencile >Fighting EX Layer >Pizza Tower >Infernax >Hollow Knight >EX Zodiac >Rimworld >Gungrave GORE >Idol Showdown >Steel Assault >Onirism >Hellbreaker >Megabyte Punch >Battle Chasers: Nightwar

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>Acquitted I have some other games that come to mind, but I don't know if they're indie.

La Mulana Cave Story

>>971557 Spelunky Classic

>>971547 Id add highfleet and stardew valley to that.

Oniken Infernax Chasm Those are three indie games that I really enjoyed.

TERRARIA But everybody probably knows that one.

Don't Starve Super Fancy Pants Adventure Ultrakill DUSK Lobotomy Corporation Library of Ruina Nuclear throne (with Territorial expansion mod) Darkest Dungeon (with Black Reliquary mod) Risk of Rain 1 (with Starstorm mod) and 2 Slay the Spire Battleblock Theater DEADBOLT Baba is You Shangai.exe Webbed Shovel Knight Black Souls 1 and 2 Pikuniku

Braid is over 15 years old; the Anniversary Edition is finally released a few days ago. There's even commentary from the creator, too.

I also hate indie games for the same reasons you give. Most of the time they're never of the quality of a real game, or at least not a good real game. Maybe if my standards were lowered by modern shit I'd feel differently, but I don't play modern shit. But so many games say they're gonna be the next Mega Man or whatever, but they're never as good as Mega Man. But then I got into ActRaiser, and I couldn't find any other games that really scratched that itch, and someone here told me about Smelter. It's a bit like ActRaiser, with a town building mechanic where you're also playing a top down shooter while you build, and I like that. It's more complex than ActRaiser, given that that was a game from 1991, but it's not super complex here either. I wish it was a bit more complex, but it's good. The platforming sections are like Mega Man X instead of Castlevania. I'm fine with that. I love both those series. The graphics and everything are nice. You play as a scantily-clad lady with big titties, which I like. But then there's the story and all the stuff related to that. Is it extremely explicitly feminist? No. But does it have all the feminist tropes? Yes. First it's just that you have Adam and Eve, then Adam gets captured by demons so Eve has to save him. I'm fine with that. It's not like they make Adam out to be a bitch or Eve out to be butch. He just happened to be the one captured, and she loves him, so she goes out to save him. She's a silent protagonist, which probably helps. Then she meets this demon thing, Smelter, who fuses with her to fight the other demons. Smelter does the talking, like a Jak & Daxter thing, but boy is he a hell of a lot more annoying than Daxter. I normally think it's stupid when people complain about characters not shutting up in games, but Smelter's humor sucks balls, because it's exactly what you'd expect from soyboys making indie games. Very Whedonesque, if you will. Then of course there's all this stuff with female characters turning out to be good and most male characters turning out to be evil, and given it's current year, and given Smelter's dialogue already being of that soyboy nature, it all just rubs me the wrong way. But that said, since you said "at least not explicitly," then I can say that this game doesn't have anything "explicit" like that. It just has a bit of that style going on. But you do see half-naked titties the entire game, so that goes a long way to helping me ignore it. And the gameplay did scratch that ActRaiser itch for me, certainly a lot more than ActRaiser 2 and ActRaiser Renaissance. >tl;dr: Smelter has fun ActRaiser mixed with Mega Man X gameplay. The graphics are nice and you play as a half naked hot chick. But the dialogue and story definitely leans toward that tumblresque feminist crowd. It's not so far that they can't have you play as a half-naked hot chick, but it's quite noticeable, at least if you're the type of person who posts here.

>>971631 To add to this the trials are a bit brutal but you have to go through them to unlock your skills. Most of them are a bit strict when it comes to completing them. Time your movement and attacks thoroughly since you're probably gonna fail at least a few times.

>>971547 >Penny's BIg Breakaway <Tranny characters >Gungrave GORE <Not Indie >>971562 >Spelunky Classic >>971573 >Nuclear throne >Shovel Knight >>971625 >Braid <Developers are insufferable baizuo >>971631 >But then there's the story and all the stuff related to that. Is it extremely explicitly feminist? No. But does it have all the feminist tropes? Yes. So, the game is pozzed. <Can't you disconnect the artist from the artwork, Anon? No because the artist made the artwork for the purposes of pushing their political views. And I'm sick and tired of this shit! Indie developers are no better than AAA. In fact, if you actually look at a lot of the people involved with Indie games, you'll see that they're also the same people involved with AAA or other ventures aimed at turning the game industry into a force for political activism. Just to list of some games listed in this thread that involve these people, there's: >Ruiner >Broforce >Trepang 2 >Chasm >Don't Starve >Stardew Valley Many of these Indie developers care about pushing their politics first and delivering on a good game second. If a good game is ever released by these groups, it's SOLELY by accident.

>>971625 15 year anniversary of Jonathan Blow crying in a dark room about Soulja Boy misunderstanding Braid https://yewtu.be/embed/gWqnz-7iQbY?%3Fv=gWqnz-7iQbY

Did any of those not-16 bit not-JRPGs ever turn out to be anything worthwhile? Most of them just look like RPG maker games with Tumblr art. People were talking a lot about Sea of Stars not too long ago. Is that any good?

>>971664 What's wrong with Spelunky Classic?

>>971672 >>971664 Oh I didn't see how you were formatting. Yeah I seem to remember something about the dev being retarded about something. Here's the thing though, Spelunky Classic is completely freeware so even if you hate him he's not getting any kickback. There's nothing at all in the actual game that's objectionable.

>>971664 Least delirious and mentally ill anon.

I liked Voidspire Tactics. A mix between a JRPG and Final Fantasy Tactics, with a high strong on exploration.

>>971674 A shame the guy who did the music became a tranny and an hero'd himself.

>>971625 >>971668 You never run out of magical rewinding time potion.

>>971664 Hello schizo

>>971672 >>971674 Shovel Knight and Braid aren't woke either, are they? >>971669 Sea of Stars is good. It has black and fat characters but that's it. People screenshoted a trans message but it's from a "pay to add text" part with a million messages, 99.99% of players won't see it.

>>971723 From what I recall with Shovel Knight, some of them are woke, while others just love games, which is fine since most workplaces are gonna have a mix of people. What matters is how they're distributed within the company. That being said the Braid guy is absolutely a fag.

>>971735 >>971723 >Shovel Knight and Braid aren't woke either, are they? Shovel Knight comprimised on it's "NES Color Pallete" gimmick literally just to insert a nigger NPC into the game: https://archive.ph/2FNn7 <The final cheater color was needed to help make the cast of Shovel Knight more diverse. The default NES color palette provides very few tools to create a character with darker skin tones. This was especially problematic when doing the “Pixel My Face” Kickstarter rewards (at a certain pledge tier, backers are immortalized as portraits in the game) since we had backers from all corners of the earth. So our final cheater color is the light brown that gives shade to this fellow’s face!

>>971723 >>971738 Shovel Knight also went out of its way to add pronouns to the game. I don't mean like they have a character that mentions them or something, I mean they let you choose which pronouns to use for the main characters and let you choose which body type to use for them, regardless of pronoun. https://archive.ph/m22Wq

>>971749 >letting me play as a femboy knight Literally cannot be angry

>>971749 In retrospect looking at this image I like how the majority of the characters are canonically male, with only one of them female, and changing pronouns was introduced to please lunatics instead of just, you know, making more female characters or even a canonical crossdresser or something. Just more non-committal commitment just to appease people.

>>971529 Do you know Ross Scott, OP? He covers old and obscure games. He has a website with a massive list of games he's interested in. A lot of the picks are pretty out there and unique. https://www.accursedfarms.com/games/ Well over a thousand games here, you might see some indies that pique your interest, including faux-retro games like you're asking for.

>>971750 >>971751 faggot

>>971723 Nothing woke about braid at all.

>>971754 Fuck you, how am I a faggot?

>>971756 In fact Blow is kind of the opposite, which might surprise some. He seems kind of like a /pol/ user who can barely contain his power level with his ranting about vaccines

>id changed Guess I am a faggot now.

>>971758 >>971760 Congratulations on your transition! Anybody who deadnames you as 2ba90f will personally be eaten alive by Mark

>>971674 >Here's the thing though, Spelunky Classic is completely freeware so even if you hate him he's not getting any kickback. Yes it does because that game gives him attention and clout in the industry. Whenever he's in talks with other groups, he can constantly pull up that he developed this "insanely popular" freeware game called Spelunky, and use that to advance his career/position. Remember the golden rule: "Nothing is ever 'free'." There's always some cost/tradeoff/catch that comes with it. In this particular instance, it's giving the developer the credibility he needs to ascend the ranks of the industry, which he can THEN use to push his agenda.

>>971762 Are you the faggot that kept screeching about how even so much as pirating Nintendo games is badong evil bad bad and nobody should talk about or even look at them because even so much as that is "shilling" for them?

>>971762 Weird mental gymnastics but I find it's pointless to argue with people like you. All I ask is your don't derail with your schizo mindset, thank you. Are there any games you'd actually recommend to OP? None of your posts have really been constructive.

>>971749 Didn't Shovel Knight first go out of its way years ago to violate its original precept of "being playable on an NES" by extending the color palette to allow for nigger, spic, etc. skin tones to show up?

If you like 16 bit games but don't mind playing hentai games, may I recommend you Libra Heart's works? Midnight Castle Succubus, Tower & Sword of Succubus, and Castle in the Clouds are all retro-styled games, with the first and third leaning towards Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest, and Tower & Sword being more like a top-down Zelda. They have excellent gameplay and CitC & MCS have a SFW mode, too, if you're that bothered by the hentai shit, as they stand very well on their own as good games of the genre.

>>971759 Ranting about vaccines is still a /pol/? Didn't it get proven right in the mainstream with the NiggerZeneca scandal? Or is he full on anti any type of vaccine, mRNA or not? Either way, I did see him disagree with Anita Sarkeesian back when she was still relevant, so a long time ago, but I think he did dip his toes into at the very least some light left wing shit a while ago. Maybe he tweeted about diversity or something.

>>971856 He never dove as hard into the woke race as his biddy Phil Fish did. That being said, he's still an insufferable narcissist with his head up his own ass who did in fact cry because Solja Boi made fun of his game and other people laughed at that. The special ending for The Witness is Blow giving a go-pro tour of his mansion. So he's basically just a self-important elitist who didn't go full woke (which is probably why you never hear about him anymore).

>>971858 I see. Did you like The Witness? I played it for a bit didn't find it all that appealing. Talos Principle 1 though, I loved that shit and specially the DLC. I thought it was way better than The Witness.

>>971864 There is a parody game called The Looker which has some clever puzzles while making fun of the original. It's almost like PYST. As for Blow's response, he doesn't like it. The commentary for the Braid Anniversary Edition is longer than the game itself by the way, and seems to have some interesting development notes and interactions (like how the book Invisible Cities was a major influence for the game). At least there is an option to allow for the older graphics and sounds, which is rare for remasters to implement. It can get pretentious at times, but there are some neat gamedev tricks shown.

>>971869 >It can get pretentious at times, but there are some neat gamedev tricks shown. I can respect that. Gamedev is a tough business. Doesn't excuse his narcissism, but I think it's pretty evident by now Blow is on the spectrum. And maybe in a combination of spectrums.

>>971868 Half-chan tier response. Did you delete that post out of shame or was it the jannies?

>>971873 He was doing board wars shit so it got deleted.

>>971765 Not the anon you're talking to, but I get to his conclusion through a different, simpler means. Why play bad games? SJW games are bad. There are lots of games that aren't SJW and are also good. I'd rather spend my time on games that don't go out of their way to be bad. Also, anon also has a point that if you aren't the customer, you're the product. If you aren't paying, then someone is paying for you. >>971735 >ome of them are woke, while others just love games, which is fine since most workplaces are gonna have a mix of people It's fine if they're just some workers among many. When they start inserting their shit into the game, that's a whole other matter.

>>971738 >Shovel Knight comprimised on it's "NES Color Pallete" gimmick literally just to insert a nigger NPC into the game And they didn't even have to as I proved several years ago. That pissed me off way more than the diversity shit.

Bonus brown cuties.

>>971738 So what you're telling me is someone could actually port Shovel Knight to NES, remove all the SJW shit, and then piss SJWs off even harder by blaming technical reasons?

>hear that Omori is getting a manga >search more about it >discover that the game was a hit in Japan >it has had Nendoroids, merch like backpacks and even orchestral concerts >mfw Can IPs with this level of non-vidya content still be called "indie"? FNaF got it's official movie and a bootleg (which came before the official), Shovel Knight and Sans Undertale have appeared in motherfucking Smash Bros, Touhou has it's own annual conventions, etc. At which point something ceases to be "indie"?

>>971844 There's this too, which looks fun.

>>971905 >At which point something ceases to be "indie"? When it ceases to be profitable. Look at the movie industry. You'll see tons of "indie movies" made by famous directors, starring famous actors, and even produced by major studios, but they say they're produced by divisions of the studios which make indie movies, as if that makes any sense. >>971908 Big Ryan fan, btw.

>>971905 When an arbitrary number of people work on the game, probabaly something above ten. So Tohou and FNAF are indie, but Palworld isn't because it was a company of over 100 people and they outsourced worked to several other companies. Now there are cases when you start indie, but hire so many people it stops being indie. Mojang is an example of this, and I think the guys behind Valheim as well.

>>971905 >At which point something ceases to be "indie"? When it gets bought out from the original developer by a larger corporation. >>971900 I've never played Shovel Kniggas but just by looking as some screenshots I don't think it can actually run on original hardware without considerable modification. Even just graphically. NES only has pseudo parallax scrolling and takes advantage of a black (or other solid color) area between"close background" and "distant background". Because it's actually all one single layer. Big boss type enemies are on the BG layer too so that would also cause an attribute clash. That's why most boss on NES fade the BG to black when you fight a big boss, even if it had a background graphic just before the fight started. It's not just an aesthetic choice, it's a hardware limitation. As another example just look at Retro City Rampage. That game looks like it would run fine on an NES but its NES port, ROM City Rampage still needed graphical tweaking to make it work on original hardware.

>>971905 Are the devs getting funding from a big company? If not, they're independent.

>>971547 Thanks for all these, anon. >Slave Zero X It's gay, but not overly in your face about it What's gay about it? That one really caught my attention. >>971664 >Penny's BIg Breakaway <Tranny characters Seriously? That sucks. I liked how that one looked. I found one that looked interesting called Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog. Is that one pozzed too? >>971723 >>971738 I don't mind black characters so long as they aren't visually repulsive. That's rare but Nadia is proof that it can be done.

>>971664 >Ruiner >Broforce >Trepang2 >Stardew Valley <Political activism <Pushing politics What the fuck are you talking about?

>>971943 >What's gay about it? That one really caught my attention. The main character and the rival character were in a sexual relationship, the artist is also a tranny but the lead dev is an oldfag /agdg/ who talks with Mark sometimes. As for Penny's Big Breakway, I think that anon is just being a Schizo, I have not seen any obnoxious tranny messaging in the game.

>>971962 penny's design looks gay, is the game good?

>>972020 It's pretty solid.

>>971767 >Are there any games you'd actually recommend to OP? Including some ones already list: >Adventure <1bitHeart <Aurora Memoria <Azure Juncture <Galatea <The Void <VA-11 HALL-A - Cyberpunk Bartender Action >Beat 'Em Up <Anima: Ark of Sinners <Bunny Must Die! Chelsea and the 7Devils <Crescent Pale Mist <Echidna Wars DX (Hentai) <Fairy Bloom (Freesia) <Mitsurugi Kamui Hikae <Proxy Blade Zero >Fighting <Vanguard Princess >Horror <DreadOut <Saiko No Sutoka >Platformer <Momodora <New Super Hook Girl <Umihara series <Super Fancy Pants Adventure (Mentioned already) >Puzzle <And Yet It Moves <Helltaker (Mentioned already) >Rhythm <Musync (Specifically the PSM version) >RPG <Magic Castle (PS1 exclusive)) <Sword of Rapier <The Sacred Tears TRUE >Shooter <Alltynex Trilogy <Ashes series <Blue Wish Resurrection Plus <Cave Story (Mentioned already) <Chiebura <Deadbolt (Mentioned already) <Exceed series <Galshell (Hentai) <Gundemonium series <GHost9 series

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<Hotline Miami series (Mentioned already) <Metagal <Noiz2sa <Re-Mission <Scram Kitty <Sturmwind <Thing Thing series <Yakouga series (Hentai) Would recommend some more, but I'm trying to avoid games that could be labelled as "AA" (Marlow Briggs) or that I haven't played for myself (Hacker Beat). >>971951 >What the fuck are you talking about? People that worked on those games are also the same people currently ruining the industry. I found this out when beginning to dive into the connections surrounding SBI: >>>/gg/363094 This list is still in development. >>971962 >As for Penny's Big Breakway, I think that anon is just being a Schizo, I have not seen any obnoxious tranny messaging in the game. https://archive.md/nBoDa#239877 <the game has a weird tendency to use "they" when the citizens in each level speak about each other. It's not even like there are any "generic person" NPCs, since each of them is obviously meant to look masculine or feminine with little details like hardhats and ponytails.

>>971529 Is there more Wario Land like games besides Pizza Tower and Anton?

>>972130 Metroid Fusion uses Wario Land 4's engine.

>>972093 >People that worked on those games are also the same people currently ruining the industry. Yet none of those games have any bullshit, what are you smoking? The most i can think its stardew valley's bad end being selling the town out to (not) walmart and giving you the option to play a gay character.

>>972148 >Yet none of those games have any bullshit Refer back to this: >>971762 And how this Anon even "gets it": >>971886 I have heard great things about Trepang 2 and Don't Starve, but that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if the game has "zero bullshit", what's going on is that you have people working on those games and using those "good games" as a way to enter into the industry and push their political activism: https://infogalactic.com/info/The_long_march_through_the_institutions

>>971765 He is that faggot. He picked up indie games are respected here so they're the newest target of his concern trolling as it gets more bites than anything else.

>>971916 You're right. Shovel Knight does use full parallax scrolling. There are also moments where there are way more sprites on screen than the NES/Famicom could handle without flickering. And this is somewhat beside the point, but Shovel Knight actually runs on a fully 3D engine, so any "port" will have to be a full rewrite of the game. https://yewtu.be/watch?v=vjENktnbCaE Really, the only aspect of Shovel Knight that fits the limitations of the NES is the music, which was composed in Famitracker.

>>972093 >>972191 >Poor writing in a video games = TRANNY SHIT REMOVE NOW t. schizo

>>971529 Some recs: >Brigador Isometric real time tactics mech game where you play as a mercenary amidst a political crisis on a colony planet. You earn money from destroying infrastructure and civies to try out different mechs, tanks, or hovercraft. Or you can purchase new missions with varying levels of difficulty, not to mention you get tidbits of lore from each purchasable item. I would also recommend Synthetik as well, but that one is more roguelike with stuff you find per mission, than with Brigador's set loadout per mission >100% Orange Juice It's like Mario Party without the minigames, but you can play as a seagull and punk cute anime girls to steal their coins. >Monolith / Star of Providence Shmup made by an /agdg/ dev. I suck at these games, so I can't really say much. Has roguelike elements >Ymir Isometric city builder where you progress your pig civilization from the prehistoric age to iron. Is more complicated than your typical Banished clone, and you better learn how to defend from barbarians within the first hours of play. Also, the dev is going to release an update soon with 3d models and and a hexagon-titled world map that's also spherical.

>>972130 There is a wario doom mod ehich is really nice but short. >>971547 FTL Into the Breach

>>972207 >but Shovel Knight actually runs on a fully 3D engine This is actually true for a lot of modern 2D platformers. I've heard they're easier to develop like that. If you want a modern retro games that actually runs on original hardware, I know of Micro Mages, Petscii Robots, Planet X3, Running Diet (you might actually know this one, it's a banner) and Retro City Rampage.

>>972377 >Running Diet What a nice and innocent-looking platformer.

>>972386 I don't like how some people here are so quick to ignore, and get mad at others for not ignoring, standard sjw tropes just because the bullshit isn't explicit. it's not just that I hate the propaganda, it's that I hate their style. I hate their "quirky" humor and their ugly art and thier Whedon dialogue. It's the whole style that is off-putting.

>>972466 I didnt mean to reply to you though. That game does not have the style.

>>972386 Even Mike Matei loved it.

>>971951 >>972093 >Stardew Valley The dev is just one guy. I don't think he's doing anything to the industry. SDV isn't perfect. There's no real political activism per se but it does have a few obnoxious things. Like the black scientist and his hafu black super scientist daughter. I don't personally mind the scientist himself, he's easy to make friends with due to liking common produce and he's close to your house. My main objection is that his daughter is annoying and he's married to the most wifable girl in the entire game. So wifable in fact that the game provides a practical younger clone of her for you to date. There's also the thing with every marriage candidate being universally bi for the PC but that's more of a narrative fault than actual political activism. Honestly most of the marriage candidates are a little substandard and the weakest part of the game. There's only 2 or 3 that's even worth looking at. I've always just chosen to to make the shadow gondola my roommate instead. Fortunately the game is east to mod, particularly changing the sprites.

It's really fucking funny though that you can get gay married and everyone in this rural farming community is OK with it, even the 80 year old curmudgeon in the wheelchair accepts it eventually, BUT apparently EVERYONE is racist against the dark folk. Apparently if they find out they would burn a symbol of Yoba on your lawn or something.

>>972716 >he's married to the most wifable girl in the entire game. Thats not Penny.

>>972717 homofascism undefeated

>>972727 That is hot stuff.

>>972377 Most of the popular engines out there like Unity and Unreal are designed for 3D games. Shovel Knight's engine was developed internally, but the developers claimed that the 3D is for debugging purposes as you can rotate the camera and see all the layers. It's kind of like that 3D developer view that Firefox used to have.

>>972718 That's not Jas.

>>972788 The only reason you say Jas its because shes a loli. The shy school teacher that wants to have your babies is superior.

The fact that there are indie devs that don't release a switch physical or DRM free copy puts a damper on the pro-consumer angle that gets discussed with indie games. You'd think a website download without a 30% cut and crypto payments would be an incentive but they just take the lazy way of using steam combined with steamworks DRM.

>>972883 >a website download without a 30% cut and crypto payments would be an incentive A bigger incentive is to release a game on Steam, that while it might take a 30% cut, it has a much, much larger userbase and could give you at least 10 times the amount of sales, rather than if it was just on GoG or itch.io or your own website. See also all the games that were temporarily exclusive to Epic Store. With that said, if the game is somewhat successful, there is no reason not to release it on Steam, as well as other platforms like GoG. >switch physical How about a PS5 physical :^)

Sword of the Vagrant (also know as just The Vagrant on PC) I have been binging this game for the last couple of days and it's pretty good. You play as a cute amazon called Vivian who was searching for her lost father, and ends up stranded on an island where her quest gets tangled up with the ambitions of a witch. It looks a lot like a Vanillaware game, and they even credit Vanillaware as an inspiration in the artbook. The game is a 2D hack & slash with slight touches of Metroidvania. Think of it as Odin Sphere with less cutscenes if it had one playable character only. It does not have the high level of polish that Vanillaware games have, but then again what other games do? I decided to check out the publisher while I was at it. Red Art Games specializes in publishing indie games physically, which is pretty cool. Some of their releases are limited FOMO bait faggotry, but other games (like Sword of the Vagrant) do not have manufatured scarcity. https://www.redartgames.com/

>>972883 >You'd think a website download without a 30% cut and crypto payments would be an incentive but they just take the lazy way of using steam combined with steamworks DRM. When you want to actually sell something rather than offer a free download there is all sort of legal requirements you need to meet. You also need to make sure the download is available to customers years after the sale has been made. Stores like Steam or GOG do take a hefty cut, but they take care of all the legal and technical details for you. Most importantly they provide accountability. If Steam mishandles customer data that's on they and they will have to pay the fine, but if you make a mistake the fines could very well ruin you. It's not impossible to host your own sales, but you need to know very well what you are doing. For most people it's easier to just let someone else handle it. But even if you know how to do it, do your customers trust you? Personally I would feel much more comfortable buying from GOG who I know have the competence to keep their servers operational, whereas I have no idea whether some random Joe know his shit or if his service will be gone in a month.

>>972905 You do not have to ensure the game stays available. There are tons of games that get delisted and people go crazy.

>>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?