Given the big swathe of posts about bad behavior from big companies, I figure we could counterbalance that with some positivity about stuff the smaller guys made that often costs us less too.
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Skullgirls - Still the best damn fighting game ever made. I’ve been grinding for a full decade now, and I’ll be entering Combo Breaker 2025 once again this year.
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Slay the Spire - The game that ruined all other roguelikes for me. What I love about StS is that it never lets you get complacent, never lets you lean on just one good synergy that will carry you the entire run. You always have to keep adapting, and you have to have a well-rounded deck to deal with enemies that are designed to counter players who try to rely on only one thing. And when I eventually got to the point where I’d had my fill of vanilla, there’s so much fun stuff from the modding community to play around with. Packmaster is incredible.
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CrossCode - It’s been years since I finished this RPG and its colorful cast still lives rent-free in my head. This is a game that is perfect in every way and adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Fantastic combat, tons of side content, endearing characters, emotionally powerful story, beautiful visuals, amazing soundtrack.
CrossCode is all about how it plays! That’s why there is a free Steam demo! Go give it a try! Take the best out of two popular genres, find a good balance between them and make a great game. That’s what CrossCode does. You get the puzzles of Zelda-esque dungeons and are rewarded with the great variety of equipment you know and love from RPGs. During the fast-paced battles you will use the tools you find on your journey to reveal and exploit the enemies’ weaknesses and at the same time will be able to choose equipment and skills for a more in-depth approach in fighting your enemies.
Yeah, I took a look because of your comment. Sounds like something I should try. The art is certainly appealing to me. Appreciative that more games are putting out demos lately.
More people need to know about (and play) CrossCode.
I just beat StS Ascension 20 for the first time this week 💀
Man, I struggle with A3. I can’t imagine A20.
Congrats! It is brutal, isn’t it?
I loved cross code…except the puzzles. Im just not s puzzle person.
I’m so glad someone’s mentioned CrossCode! Such a wonderful experience from beginning to end. The world really feels alive with every inch of a mal being used to either enhance the story or hide a puzzle! I loved seeing chests and figuring out how to get to them across several maps.
I’m really looking forward to their next project, Alabaster Dawn. I hope it’s just as good!
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First :
- Outer Wilds
- Disco Elysium
Then :
- Inscryption
- Carto
- Spiritfarer
- Pyre
Hollow Knight
I love it so much that I can’t finish it, I always stop when I’m about to fight the final boss. I just don’t want it to end.
Maybe when Silksong came out I finish it once and for all.
Hollow Knight isn’t exactly over when you finish the story. There are more fights, especially Godhome. If you can beat all that you’re an incredible player.
You probably know this but just wanted to make sure you’re not unintentionally missing out.
For me, FTL: Faster than Light still hasn’t been topped. Hades II might get there, though. Disco Elysium, Ikaruga, and Papers, Please are also high on the list.
FTL!!! And yeah, PP is awesome and so unique!
Stardew
FTL: Faster Than Light
such a great non traditional roguelike with sooo much replayability.
It’s the game that made me like these kinds of games. 1,300 hours :)
Dwarf Fortress. Not even just my favorite indie game, but favorite game ever.
I’m such a sucker for world simulation! It made me hate games where events happen just because they’re programmed to do so.
Balatro
Obra Dinn
I loved Obra Dinn. If you like that you will probably also like “Case of the Golden Idol” and it’s successor.
I tired it and it didn’t hit the same way for me
Pushing the definition but I started when it was still in beta… Minecraft has gotten hundreds and hundreds of hours put into it.
Terarria and Starbound are both really good and scratch that same itch as Minecraft. Core Keeper is another one that has some of that feel and I ended up really enjoying.
Surprised I haven’t seen it mentioned but Cave Story was made by one guy doing everything… and everything in it is immaculate. It’s still free for the original version as well.
Stardew Valley is awesome and restarted a genre.
Crypt of the Necrodancer is awesome, and well worth checking out… also goes on sale really cheap.
Pacific Drive is a fun one to check out. If you’re from the PNW, it will hit even more.
Really enjoyed Stray. Worth grabbing on a sale.
OwlBoy was a delightful game with a lot of character.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night was a really nice return to form if you like IgaVanias.
If you like roguelites then you owe it to yourself to check out Enter the Gungeon (isometric) as well as RoboQuest (fps).
If you want a game that’s beautiful, with emergent story and is hard af… definitely check out Rain World.
Is Black Mesa still considered indie? It’s how I would recommend anyone play Half-Life 1 these days.
Rusty’s Retirement… isn’t so much a game… sorta… but yeah… check that out.
+1 for Pacific Drive. Nothing else like it out there. And you get to form a relationship with a station wagon, which is peak passenger vehicle design.
And the soundtrack is outstanding!
Nothing else like it out there.
I keep meaning to check this one out but haven’t yet. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1290170/Titan_Chaser/
I enjoyed Rusty’s Retirement, glad to see someone else has played it. (I do count idlers as games.) Cute little desktop idle/incremental game.
Factorio.
Honourable mentions:
- Chants of Sennaar
- Blue Prince
- Animal Well
- Raft
- Citizen Sleeper
You might like !factorio@lemmy.world
subscribed, thanks!
You might enjoy Heaven’s Vault since you’ve played Chants of Sennaar! It’s languagerific.
Janky though at times, movement wise
thanks, I’ll check it out!
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Same but with spelunky 2
In my thirst for difficult games, I 100%'d it. Took more than a 100 hours but still the most fun I’ve had mastering a game to that level of expertise
One game I love that hasn’t been mentioned yet is Subnautica. The only survival crafting game I ever finished. The story telling and athmosphere are unmatched.
One of the few games I’ve played through too!
Lethal Company. It was developed by one person, yet it outsold Call of Duty. It trended from 2023 to 2024, but I still play it at least weekly. A couple Lethal Company clones have since come out and some say one (R.E.P.O) is better, and graphically I would say yes, but nothing quite matches Lethal Company’s charm.
It’s a scrap-collecting + space horror survival + comedy game. The comedy feels very unintended and that’s why it’s so fucking funny. You encounter very horrifying creatures, then see your friends die the funniest death. Then you hope to collect enough scrap to survive another day.
Bro yes. That game is so good. Wish I could get my friends to play more often lol.
The monsters in REPO are worse somehow.
Not sure if its because its relatively easier to stun/kill/hide from them or if its because their mechanics are lacking in some way compared to lethal company’s, but I feel as if they don’t have the same sauce.
I urge anyone who has not played CrossCode to give it a try. I randomly played it during the pandemic, and I’ve since not been able to enjoy gaming the way I did it before. For me, it was very close to being a 10/10.
Not just my favorite indie game, Skullgirls is my favorite game. That game is 13 years old, and there are still killer strategies that no one has even found yet, due to how flexible defense and team synergies are.
Vagante is probably my favorite roguelike, trailed closely by Streets of Rogue. As a bonus, both are playable in online and local co-op.
Sadly, the team behind Cannon Brawl never got to make another game together after making one of the best RTS games I’ve ever played, but to be fair, it wasn’t exactly super similar to the likes of C&C and StarCraft. Tooth and Tail is another great indie RTS game that I felt could be a future for the genre, but it didn’t really take off either.
There are also a handful of indie games that I’ve played that very few have. The Masterplan is just shy of being the perfect heist game, including a bunch of mechanics built around holding people at gunpoint. Magnetic By Nature is a clever magnetic platformer that deserved more attention. And most recently, I finally gave up hope that Cloak and Dasher, a fast paced platformer like Super Meat Boy or N++, will ever get another update and leave early access, but what’s there, while kind of thin, is pretty great.
EDIT: I mistakenly listed Mind Over Magnet, Game Maker’s Toolkit’s game, instead of Magnetic By Nature. They’re very different games. Magnetic By Nature is the one that I liked that so few people played that it may as well have been a secret.
Vagante’s negative reviews criticize its too-numerous insta-death traps. What would your reply be to that?
I think you might love Noita!
I would say it’s a game that requires you to play tactically rather than rushing through it. Especially early game, the traps are very reminiscent of Spelunky, and it’s clear where a lot of their inspiration came from, but Vagante gives you even more mechanics to deal with traps, like magic rings that let you go through walls and floors, for instance, but you won’t necessarily find them every run. Noita has caught my attention here and there, but I just never made time to try it.
Hmm… May I watch you stream Vagante sometime? I’ve been iffy over it for a year or more now because of those reviews. Let me see how you die LOL jk. This is also coming from a SoR fan, too!
I’m not really a streaming kind of guy. Early on in the game, you’re mostly looking out for floor switches and spikes. You can hold the walk modifier to make sure you always climb down a ledge, which helps to make sure you don’t accidentally land in a spike pit, and you can throw just about anything on floor switches to trigger them before you get there so that they’re no longer a threat. You could check out a YouTube let’s play and see how they deal with them, or you could just accept that the game is pretty cheap, so worst case, you’re not out much money if you don’t like it.
If you want to see someone play Vagante, check out Pakratt13 on the tubes. He did a daily show of roguelikes for a bit and vagante was in the rotation. That’s how I heard about it.
