Outer Wilds and Hollow Knight share the spotlight for greatest games of all time. Both are as close to perfect as it gets.
Bastion gets an honorable mention. Not sure if SuperGiant Games is considered indie anymore, especially now that Hades hit big, but I love their early work.
I highly recommend Amid Evil. I wasn’t even a big Hexen/Heretic fan, but it’s fantastic. It has the record for highest screenshots->playtime of any game I’ve played on steam.
I refuse to spoil anything, but I think I took a screenshot every 30 seconds on the last map. It helps you manage to traverse every single square foot of space in the map over the course of completing it.
This is the way. Why would I hoard 5 more games just because there is a sale? The next one will come shortly. Only buy games you plan to play in the next 2 weeks.
Outer Wilds certainly was. It was started as a college project and the devs stayed together to finish it after they graduated.
Journey I’m not so sure. I don’t think it’s indie? If it is indie, then I’d put The Pathless up for consideration. That game finished what Journey and Abzu started, and it has some of the best feeling overworld movement of any open world exploration game I’ve ever played. Flawless.
Abzu fell kinda flat for me after Journey, but The Pathless more than makes up for it. It seems to be set in the same world as both prior games and has several references to each, so playing the first two does make it more rewarding to play.
I definitely recommend it since you liked Journey. The movement and combat feels great. It’s refreshingly short and focused for an open world exploration game, so it respects your time, and it also has some excellent storytelling with plenty of nice emotional highs and lows. It’s a worthy successor.
Yeah I was let down by Abzu. It was beautiful but didn’t have substance. You speak very highly of The Pathless, I’m excited to try it out. Thanks for the rec!
The art is phenomenal, but the writing is cringeworthy. I loved it as a teenager but I have a hard time taking it seriously now. I wish I never replayed it so I could have kept my nostalgia.
The combat mechanics are fun and feel amazing when played as intended, but they’re massively unbalanced. IIRC with two exceptions (enemies that require a parry to enter a vulnerable state) every single fight can be won flawlessly by spamming Dust Storm even on the highest difficulty.
It’s a remarkable game, all the more so since it was only one dev. I 100%'ed it, and it sits in a place of honor in my collection, but it’s not one I’ll ever return to.
From memory I do remember things getting ludicrously easy if you levelled Fidget right up. And I don’t recall the writing at all. Likely just nonsense to move the plot along while opening up new areas.
But as a one man effort, it’s incredible. Especially the art style, which normally falls into the pixel art or just plain ugly when it comes to the 1-2 man indie games.
Agreed. The art looks straight out of an anime, and Dust’s combat animations are really smooth and satisfying. I think the cutscenes looked really good, too, but it’s been long enough that I don’t remember.
I had a quick look on YouTube and they’re not bad at all. It’s hardly Baldur’s Gate 3, but it doesn’t look out of place next to most of the AA Ubisoft 2D games that had dozens of people working on them.
Fight N Rage was my favorite beat’em up before Streets of Rage 4 released, made by mexicans I think, very stylish and manga influenced, tons of juggling and branching paths.
Valdis Story was the hollow knight of it’s generation, awesome metroidvania with great bosses and combat with good combos, but it didn’t get tiresome like castlevania mirror of fate because regular enemies weren’t health sponges, bosses were where you let loose.
I got the Vampire Survivors DLC. I try not to buy Steam stuff anymore unless it’s either a deep discount on something I kind of am interested in, or it’s something I badly wanted.
Tunic. The shortcuts are so cleverly hidden that allows you to easily break the sequence in your next playthrough. The manual translation felt just like back when I tried to understand japanese game manuals that come with game boy cartridges.
Chain of Echoes. A one man RPG game with a unique combat system that has great quality of life.
I was kinda frustrated by Tunic. Not gonna lie. It’s clearly a masterpiece but you have to play old school and write every single little thing down. Go back and forth for days.
Chains of Echoes is tied with Chrono Trigger for best JRPG of all time and my mind won’t be changed. Now if only anything else could soothe that itch. I love that you absolutely never 'Just click Attack’s over and over to save MaNa.
Tied with Chrono Trigger? That’s some insanely high praise. Why do you say that, exactly? I’ve never played Chained Echoes, so just curious. Chrono Trigger is my favorite game of all time.
The battle system for starters is constantly asking you to think smart. You’ve a gauge that you have to keep centered to be “in the flow” such that you can’t blindly use the best attack every time. You always start every battle with full health and mana - so you never have to ration between fights. Which adds up that every fight can be difficult. There is no cannon fodder.
You level up as the story progresses so you can’t simply grind to a higher level. There is a level system but it’s more a skill mastery one It respects your time in that you will never need to grind for anything.
The puzzles are difficult enough to be challenging but not so much that you will ever need a strategy guide.
The story is relatable without being convoluted. Each character has realistic goals, and interests. There is no clear “I’m evil because fuck you I’m evil”. There is no clear good guy either, and you will see what I mean if you finish the story.
The world makes sense and has no suspension or disbelief moments. Speaking of it’s a world in which both Dragons and Giant frickin robots are both natural, and they make sense.
I absolutely loathe when a JRPG Battle System demands that I either save everything so that I have MaNa for the boss fight, or makes it so that you should just click ‘Attack’ every time with no reason. I also loathe random battles. This has none - you choose which monsters to fight, and they don’t come right back.
I literally could not put it down for any length of time until I had hit 100% of everything. A tall order for a game that took me almost 100 hours when I’m a full time adult with kids.
Terraria is the easy pick for me. I believe the only game that comes even close to the amount of hours I have in it would be Minecraft. I doubt I need to say much about this game, so I’ll leave it at 3 words: near infinite replayability.
Melvor Idle is an amazing game if you like the “idle” in idle games. And if you like the idea of leveling up a multitude of different skills like in RuneScape but don’t like the idea of walking back to a town every time you’ve chopped down 12 trees, Melvor Idle has you covered. It’s a long grind but I had fun the whole way. I’ve 100%'d it and all the DLCs and still love playing it.
Cassette Beasts… I’m genuinely surprised I haven’t seen this game mentioned here. An absolutely amazing creature collector with a very unique twist on things, a great story, beautiful pixel art, and hands down the best game soundtrack I’ve ever heard.
Melvor Idle is a great call. The base game is a solid idle game and there’s a load of mods too.
I did a HCCO12B (Hardcore combat only, 12 bank slots only) run when the game first released.
Reinstalled the game yesterday and started another HCCO run using the new mod, it adds some QoL and tweaks.
My only negative about it is that when playing normally, I always feel like there’s a perfect/optimal strategy and I should figure it out before playing.
I’m replaying subnautica after a few years since my first playthrough. I thought that it was more of a one-time experience than a replayable game but enough time has passed that my memory is more of a general feeling than remembering specifically where everything is, so it’s been surprisingly engaging. Without even trying, I’m pretty sure the way I’m going through everything is different from my last playthrough, too.
i finished the game without hatching eggs so that’s something I’d do on my next play, i also missed the large strider crab creatures on my first play. going into the spinoff game, I’m taking advantage of all the new tech before progressing the story because i managed to get halfway through the first one without crafting a proper base
Yeah, the one achievement I’m missing is hatching a certain egg so I’ve been collecting eggs this time around. Just got the alien containment, so I guess it’s time to start at that.
I’ve just built my second base. I only had one in my first playthrough, but I built more for sub zero and realized there’s nothing really stopping me from building a ton of them other than how much time I want to spend gathering the resources for it.
I’m considering trying to go to the end without a Cyclops sub since I’ve already got the max depth for the seamoth, though I need to find those deep mushrooms again for the defense shock that would be essential for that. Though now that I think of it, the Cyclops was probably why I didn’t build a second base and the lack of Cyclops was probably why I ended up building more bases in sub zero.
Oh wow, are there any non-fish foods other than the nutrient blocks and those trees on the surface? Can you fabricate the blocks at any point? I can’t remember if the first one has the indoor grow plots for surface plants like sub zero does.
I guess the main question I’m getting at is if you can do this without having to travel to the surface to stuff your face with trees or being very strategic with the nutrient blocks you find?
So, the first 30 minutes go like this. Find the stuff to make and craft the knife, scanner, fins, air tanks, and building tool.
You can eat kelp and make bleach>water w salt and coral to stay alive, though it’s a LOT of kelp.
Then head straight to southern island to scan the multipurpose room, indoor and outdoor grow beds, and grab lantern fruit and marble mellons.
You can then build a base and grow all the food you will ever need. I stock up on a ton of bleach and make water as needed, though the food also restores some hydration.
I usually have this done before the Aurora explodes.
Once you have the cyclops you can plant in there as well. Three lantern fruit trees per base is all the food you will need in the game, and marble melons have a lot of water.
The only thing you miss out on really is the emergency air bladder, as that requires a fish. To make up for it I carry a second air tank when diving deep or exploring wrecks. I also build outdoor grow beds w brain corals in strategic places as emergency air supplies.
Honestly, I started it as a lark, and found it so enjoyable because I never get distracted chasing down and catching fish.
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