Indie game thread. Let's discuss the gems of the last bastion of originality and fresh ideas in the video games

no, indie devs are just unoriginal as sin.

A minimalist design isn't inherently lazy or uninspired either. A lot of effort can go into a very simple design. Slugcat and Ori for example are both really well-designed and well-animated characters and being monochramatic works perfectly for the kind of game worlds they inhabit.

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I don't get why it flew so under the radar

Wait, really?

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Sometimes that just kinda happens

I am playing it right now. Just got to the fnakkers.
The game had me smiling most of the time, I love it.

From what I noticed, lack of advertising. I only knew it existed because some user mentioned it on here when it first came out, and even then I only ever see it talked about on here, and very rarely at that.

It's okay to be white.

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Redpill me on rain world

>indie games get chewed out for making similar looking characters
>meanwhile australia is fucking festooned with a hundred million identical-looking rat things yet people still praise god
Pathetic, fat hypocrites.

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Wait 5 weeks to find out more :~)

Don't do this to me, you fuck

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Objective: survive

It's gonna come out on steam and the switch on day one too, by the way ;)

>Yea Forums complains about games not having enough white characters
>now Yea Forums complains about games having TOO MANY white characters

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do you mean to say "too many games having white characters"?
esl?

It's not even the fact that they are just white, they are all small, white creatures, plus it's clearly not a race discussion. Even if your game have literally only one kind of race and human character it will be boring as fuck anyway and people won't feel interested in playing as other characters as they look too similar.

16/f/cali

I do, thanks for correcting.

Can we get some Obra Dinn discussion going?
I envy people who still haven't experienced.

>and people won't feel interested in playing as other characters as they look too similar.
Wrong

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I really would play but the b&w filter kills my eyes

It's a unique survival platformer where you explore a hostile alien world populated by various creatures that are all going about doing their own thing to survive, in a sense it's simulating an ecosystem. It doesn't hold your hand beyond teaching you some basic fundamentals, you're left on your own to figure things out. All the creature animations are done procedurally with physics, and that includes the player character, which might look/feel janky as hell at first but I found it pretty fantastic.
Yeah.

Make a thread then

She looks nothing alike the mc. She's taller, different clothes and horns, and even weapon. If you put similar characters in a game with a huge cast, people wont simply feel interested to play with most of them, you need to have a good variety of designs in some way.

I just though this thread would be appropiate being that it's dedicated to indies, but aight then

You get used to it pretty quickly, you can just pirate to try it out. I recommend playing on crisp, it makes the window smaller but otherwise you get this shitty blur effect.

Who is the little miner?

What game is he from?

>Unoriginal
That implies they're ripping each other off, it's more like that's the most simplistic thing you can do with a character.

This is the first time I'm hearing about it so there's that. I only heard of Baba Is You because of Yea Forums as well.

Forager

Whoever updates this might as well add the guy from Downwell.

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the movement is bad
that said, the advanced movement is fucking awesome

I didn't get that. Lucas Pope actually went through a lot of trouble to make the dithering effect as smooth as possible so that it didn't become annoying.

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There's even various monitor options you can go with to make it more tolerable. I personally had no issue with it, but my God, everything outside of it is top notch, especially the sound design.

Anyone else worth adding?

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only teh OG

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The blandest, laziest one of all.

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Doesn't really work. All the other characters barely have any other color.

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any games like the witness only in the sense that you walk around this open environment kind of just looking for things? doesn't have to be a puzzle game at all

It's not much more than the guy from Hollow Knight.

gone home

Shut the fuck up you stupid faggot

Now I want there to be a big crossover game between all the pure white, round and black-eyed indie game protagonists

We need to get on this

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is there a big list of actually good video games?
ive only played the few 'big' ones like Fez, Hotline Miami, Super Meat Boy, etc.

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Baba is You, Rainworld, Ori, and Hollow Knight are all good games.

thoughts on stuff like inside where people complain that they're barely games?

Hollow Knight is near monochromatic, with only the dark blue cape for a bit of color. Quote has several colors.

>plain white character lives in a world of wonder and magic full of colorful and unique characters
I love this trope.

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guy from HK
>black body & eyes, white helmet, dark blue cape
>total 2.5~3 colors
guy from cave story
>white body, black hair & shirt, medium red pants & cap, medium green headset thing
>total 4 colors
the difference is large

Every walking simulator.

things like that are where the definition of "game" is pretty tough to nail down, but games are already pretty ambiguous anyway so I think I'd still call them "games"

>the difference between 3 and 4 is large

ok, I just wonder why interactive experiences like that necessarily have to be video games in the traditional sense if they bring entertainment anyway

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25% difference is large, way outside the usual margins of error

It can be very scripted but you do need to actually accomplish things, you can fail if you mess up, the difficulty does increase, but most of all, it's arguably one of the better ways to tell a story in game. In other words, it tells a story through its gameplay, not by just showing you a video or having you read a text.

do you have the other ones from the last thread?

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Does the Limbo kid count? Kind of an inverse. Black silhouette with white eyes. But pretty much the same concept.

Maybe Isaac, from The Binding Of? He's skin-white, not #FFFFFF white, but he has the "blob with eyes" aesthetic.

It's not like we're dismissing Cave Story, the guy just doesn't work as well with the point of the image, which is characters which are fully white with black eyes with nearly no other elements.

What is this from?

what is with this trend of plain white characters
the only one it makes sens for is the minute one and maybe hollow knight and baba but the rest don't need to be pure plain white

Honestly it's really weird to see ToeJam and Earl go indie. It's like if Kirby went indie.

Anyway, I've played Back in the Groove and it's a really good reboot of the series and I hope it'll continue on. The game hasn't made back all of it's investment money so I don't know if that'll be the case honestly. It's only at like 40% rn according to the sales stuff they've published. I hope it does continue though because they've shown they're dedicated to the game. They've been doing bug fixes and balance changes since launch and are even adding free shit like an endless mode.

Anybody else play this game? Maybe we could organize a play session together because I don't have any friends who have this game.

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My original indie game, blainworld.

Only the few I did.
Here's a reaction image of Gun Lad.

MS Paint and my own hand

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Here's a snek mage.

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And here's some demon paladin dude

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I fucking adored it. It's exactly the kind of game I wanted all along.
Thinking back to all of the gigantic faggots who said that games like The Walking Dead were the natural evolution of the adventure game fills me with rage. THIS is a natural evolution of adventure games.

Was there a previous thread for this? Anyway I can find it?

>just got to depths in Baba
It’s been a wild ride

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It should be in the archive, 'twas a "Yea Forums makes an indie game character" thing.

It's funny, it was meant to make fun of the whole black and white indie game character thing but we actually got some genuinely good doodles in there.

ITT: Nitpicking retards

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The Batter

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Can't find it but I'll keep looking. For whatever reason this actually made me believe it was a character.

Not that user but thats a good thing. Fuck exclusivity, Ori should be enjoyed by everyone.

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Fucking stooooop!

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wait until you get into the meta levels

I really hope this is bait, although in any case I recommend necking yourself.

This was the first thread

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Noice. Thanks.

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>Black & White
>Indie game
>Protagonist
You are retarded?????

>WER AR DA COLORZ? I CANT PLAY BIDEO GAYM IF MY CHARACTUR DOZNT LOOK LIEK A DEEVIUNTART SPARKULDOG REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

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boards.fireden.net/v/thread/460945527/#q460945527

Here it is, I think.
Fun fact: The gun was made by just copying an image of a gun off Google Images and shrinking it to make it reeeeeally crusty because I thought it would be funnier than just drawing a shitty gun

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Söyboy developers make söyboy games.

More news at 11.

YOU'RE A WHITE MALE

Remember how people bemoaned about the combat in the first game being bad? Well this time there's a bunch of different weapons, each with a unique moveset, and they can all combo off of one another and your movement skills (dash for instance now functions like a dodge roll and you can cancel it into an attack). Besides that there's a dozen different spells ranging for utility or just straight-up blasting shit. On top of all this there's the spirit shard upgrade system to augment all those elements. It's basically a 2D character action game now, and that's not even getting into the platforming side of things, which meshes together. ;-)

>games created years apart by developers from all over the world
>"muh originality and fresh ideas in the video games are threatened"
I understand you spergs want to create an evil boogeyman just like Yea Forums's CalArts, but right now you're just nitpicking 10-15 games out of a shitload of all indies ever created and calling it a "trend" while completely ignoring everything else that's actually being released right now.
You see, Cartoon Network is a monolite corporate entity, so it using the same extremely simplistic designs is obviously an intentional jew measure to save on budget. Indie devs on the other hand aren't a rich hivemind and do whatever the fuck each of them wants. The main characters indeed are "white blobs", but the reason they're even mentioned in this thread is that it didn't affect the game in any negative way for it to not gain popularity. In fact, you're focusing on such a niche thing in game design it's almost laughable.
If you want a witchhunt go after some actual cancer like lootboxes or AAAs, although you probably enjoy getting dicked by the big bad corporations being the onions-chugging fags you are.

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I wish we had more comfy threads like these

Nice rant but I doubt most people here use that image as some sort of negative, considering, at least the first 4, are pretty good.

20 years imprisoned, escape the next dimension before the E̢̢ן͘͝p̵pń͘ɔ̨ gets you.

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Based Indie Games?
Based Indie Games...

>Hollow Knight
>Salt and Sanctuary
>Death's Gambit
>Dark Devotion
>Dead Cells
>Hellsign
>Risk Of Rain 2
>Outward
>Seven
>Dusk Elysium Tale
>40k Mechanicus
>This War of Mine
>Deadlight

Is Ashen any good?

>>Dusk Elysium Tale

I'm going to presume you meant Dust, and that game is far from based, if anything it's shit, SHIT

How curious it is that all of these white blob games are far more known than all other indie games combined. It's as if the minimalism aspect is attractive to the public.

>dust
>shit
what's so shit about it?

I only recognize the ones in the upper line and the fez guy. Who are the others?

the combat was great

Game was made in the Netherlands, so I’d say a lack of advertising.

Moar

Well the story certainly is, the rest manages to be mediocre at best

>all of these white blob games are far more known than all other indie games combined
Do you have a single fact ot back that up? I personally have never even heard of half of the games in OP.
Even if what you just said was true it would only prove that simplistic design is superior to any other since these games aren't being pushed by any large industries and thrive through actual public recognition.

Baba is You isn't american, right? I think some of these games were just lucky to catch the internet's attention, without any actual advertising.

Baba is Finnish

>All characters are white
I don't see the problem

I'm currently replaying the first game for second time since its launch and I just got the Bash skill.
Now the game starts to finally feel good again. I really hope that this skill will be available in the next game. It feels incredible to use.

By the way - from what team are you? QA? I was looking for a job in MoonStudios as a tester but I missed the offer when it was still available.

Typical furfag in disguise.

Not my fault you're living under a rock. Also it proves nothing, only that people don't care about characters having actual personality in their designs. Laziness is encouraged.

>I really hope that this skill will be available in the next game.

Pretty much every ability from the first game is actually, barring the lame basic attack of course. Bash is still obviously a mainstay ability.

> from what team are you?

Just pretend for my sake that I'm LARPing.

Why don't you google "most popular indie games of 2012-2019" and look at the ratio between the ones with completely white protagonist and others?
>Also it proves nothing, only that people don't care about characters having actual personality in their designs
Maybe that's because not every main character needs to have a personality or a flashy design, ever thought about that?
>Laziness is encouraged
>"So you made a whole game with enjoyable original setting, mechanics and story, but didn't color the main character? Woah dude can't believe how much of a lazy hack you are."

I thought furfags were the ones who liked that game

There are a lot of known indie games and a significant number of those well-known games have white blob simplistic protagonists. This phenomenon shouldn't even exist. Most games's character designs should be unique and original. If the games are good in every other area, why not put effort in the art design department as well? Because they're following the minimalism meme that many indie games follow. Its easy and hipsters fall for it.

AAAA, I want it now!

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I've come up with my own indie protagonist.
His name is Hilbert.

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I think it's part ripping each other off. They're seeing these lazy designs are succeeding and copying.

Best ones coming through.

undertale dog

What are 5 6 and 8?

>Most games's character designs should be unique and original
Which they are. The simple fact that anyone mildly familiar with current game releases can identify each of these speaks volumes.
>why not put effort in the art design department as well?
Which they also do. They didn't just design entire worlds and then got lazy when it came to the main character. It's their stylistic choice.

>select your girl

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Wuppo, Forager and Minit, respectively.

Their stylistic choice is boring. It's clashing to make a world full of life and colors and make your protagonist a bland featureless blob.

>he simple fact that anyone mildly familiar with current game releases can identify each of these speaks volumes.

Personally I thought Ori was a reworking of the slugcat one until I realise they were two different games. The more of these samey characters that get created the harder it will be to distinguish and there will be more.

Is Moon Studios able to be considered Indie?

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Why not?

You should play Gonner. Add the MC to the list of white indie MCs

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>significant number
15 is a significant number to you? Can you at least count to one hundred?
Your opinion is juvenile and you can't express it through anything but saying "IT'S EASY SO IT MUST BE BAD" over and over again.
Your "facts" are either farfetched or simply pulled out of your ass. Almost every top chart has barely one game from OP, saying white protagonist games are a majority is completely obscene.
You're either intentionally ignoring the timeframes these games were released in while stating it's a new trend or you're just this ignorant when it comes to doing research before arguing.
This thread is just furfaggotry and pointless hatred towards thing you don't understand due to your limited knowledge on the subject of character design.

>Their stylistic choice is boring.
To you, sure. The fact that these characters are beloved speaks otherwise though.

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Well, then i guess Ori is definitely something for this thread.

Ori might have been short but, specially for the first game of an indie dev team, its pretty damn good. Only if it wasnt so damn short with nearly no side content, except for the extra area in DE... Which is indeed an extremely great thing. I cant imagine myself playing Ori without Dash, or Double air dash " tech ", or the absolute broken range of charged dashing at enemies, or light bursts ( only if they didnt do like 0 damage )

Fpbp

I played it for like an hour and got bored, that game has way too little content to work as a roguelite

Superior list coming through.

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It kinda loses steam after the tree segment, which is a phenomenal moment. But it is still a great game. The bash ability is one of the few times a metroidvania actually felt like it was setting itself apart from the rest instead of just doing the typical metroid set of skills.

I'm not the only one who finds it boring though, see this thread and the previous ones. Either way if your only criteria for establishing if something is good is how many people fall for it then I guess most AAA games are the best games in the world.

Any games coming out that seem promising? Really hope this doesn't get some shit police brutality message slapped onto it and stays as a silly game about wizard cops.

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White humans are acceptable

>Really hope this doesn't get some shit police brutality message slapped onto it and stays as a silly game about wizard cops.
What game? Also, you know that's gonna happen, it's current year after all.

>it loses steam

Nah, i dont feel like it. There are still just as great areas like the section with the Completing The Circle track ( right after charge jump ), Horu, both other escape sequences, the puzzley parts in the black root burrows & lost grove, the Horu fields, etc

Listen, I'm not trying to say these are god tier designs but to say they're bad just because it's black and white is nonsense. Would adding random splashes of color really add anything? For me a good design comes from when you can't take anything else away.

>Only if it wasnt so damn short with nearly no side content

Well Ori 2 on the other hand has sidequests, time trials and other optional shit. The whole map in general is way more open and oriented for exploration than the first game's. Look forward to it. :-)

Will of the Wisps and Silksong will probably be GREAT titles for fans of modern Metroidvanias.

damn that looks cool
a bit of googling gave me "Tactical Breach Wizards" and a steam store page.

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bump

They're good but they don't seem to capture the sheer intensity of that segment.

Ikr, and even if it lacks in side content, the new moveset you can mess around is enough for me to play with even after i 100% ( hopefully ). I just want that sword combo we see in the gameplay trailer to make it into the game

> I think
Stopped reading right there.

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I mean, i dont find the water escape that intense. At least i found the fire escape sequence more in my first playthrough, specially because of the colors.

You are ignoring the other part of Ori : that relaxing or simply satisfying section with a good soundtrack. Nothing like the sensation of charge jumping from wall to wall as you listen to Completing The Circle

World of Horror seems like it'll be fun. I think it's made by someone at /agdc/

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15 is a lot considering how specific "white featureless blob" is and how many of these games have them. It's not like there are many well-known indie games, at most 100 (being really generous) are. That's 15% of famous indie games having minimalist blob characters, which is pretty significant.

Adding colour wouldn't work for those designs precisely because they lack detail. Their 'design' is basically a silhouette. Which is lame.

Like I said, it's not bad by any means, it's great even but the fire escape for example mostly feels like a repeat of the tree but without the same proper build up, mostly because after the bash is introduced, no other unique abilities are introduced. The tree segment is great because you were just introduced to some new mechanics and the game made you test your skills. With the fire escape, you've already been practicing all of that so, at least for me, it didn't quite capture it.
It's a bit like Dark Souls. The first part is perfect in my eyes but after the New Londo Brothers fight, the game opens back up again and it can feel like it suddenly lost all its energy. Even though I agree that part of what's great in Ori and Dark Souls can be the game relaxing after such an intense moment, but when you get so seemingly perfect moments, it can be difficult to recapture that.

It's tactical breach wizards

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This setting really activates the fuck out of my almonds, wish it was being used in something with more potential for fleshing it out than an XCOM-alike

>that pole dance
Slugcats are NOT sexy.

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Anyone played Momodora? How is it?

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Watch out, Indie world. True MC is coming.

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That mentality leads to shit like the Sonic movie. More detail doesn't mean better. If anything, more often than not, it means worse.

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WHERE MY TUNICBROS AT?!

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here's your indie protagonist bro

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>tfw I thought Ori 2 was already released
there are two editions on the Xbox store.

Good game breh

It's free on the Game Pass. I got to play the game for just 1 buck

Be atomic!

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Any good top down Zelda "inspired" indies on Switch or PS4? I've played Blossom Tales, Ittle Dew and Ocean Horn

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Look forward to

>white graphics = lazy and uninspired
you may as well have thrown a DF dorf into your little image btw

I thought that was an XBOX game

OK how would you folks make a typical Bullet Hell interesting?

Here's my take: Every gun has an "AWAKEN" ability that temporarily does something really cool to a gun like making you the bullet hell. Take this gun for example, but which one would y'all prefer?

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Enter the Gungeon is so good I have nothing more to add

what if Budda thought his wisdom to robots and slugcats

If every gun has a different Awaken option, why not both. Maybe the first one for a starting pistol, second for a shotgun.
Are you going to make a game out that character?

You're a slugcat. You gotta eat smaller things, and not get eaten by bigger things. Every ten minutes the rain comes down, and if you're outside when that happens, you fucking die.

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don't try to make enter the gungeon.

Crosscode

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Wait, it's not yet released on switch, nvm.

Perhaps.
In the future when I'm not a lazy cunt I may make a game of him.

Nigga whenever I made a game of this lad I plan on it being a hell of a lot more fast-paced. For some reason I'm having this idea of "Madness Combat but minus the gore and top-down" where you go fucking MENTAL on various facilities.

a bit frenetic to be what I'd call a Zelda like game ie combat puzzler

My school project for a vertical scrolling bullet hell was based around a grappling hook/anchor that would tear down enemies while stealing their weapon, and bossfights had this cool mechanic where you had to stay hooked for some time, forcing you to stay in the chain range while dodging, before tearing up big ass pieces of weaponry.
I only made one prototype level but that was fun as fuck. Enemy waves were basically designed around the player targeting specific ships to grab the best weapon to deal with each wave.

You'd be surprised, it's the closest thing to an old school Zelda spinoff.
youtube.com/watch?v=MwcLQzgp7Bk

I don't know what indie even means anymore. If indie means that it's independently funded and published, then no: Microsoft paid for the game.

indie nowadays basically means not following the gaming practices of AAA publishers. A unique game aesthetic also helps

which one should I play next?

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What do anons think about this?

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Ori : Definitive edition.

Tell me what did you think of it after you play it a lil

The aesthetic still grates on me after about 10 hours but the game is a surprisingly competent tactics like game. I was pleasantly surprised.

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Transistor is a personal favorite, Ori is great as well. Pony Island is only about 2 hours long.

I mean, while of course it will take WAY longer in your first playthrough, Ori is hella short too. My One Life run took me less than 2 hours, and 2 hours ans 27 minutes to 100%.

A first time player is not going to do a One Life run nor should he rush through it. Shovel Knight also has achievements for beating it in under one hour but that's obviously not going to happen the first time.

>Redpill
Fuck off.

Rain World

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I know. Im just sayin you can complete it like really fast if youre good

Man I've been disappointed so many times by games promising to be a spiritual successor to ALTTP, how do you expect me to believe this will be different?

I'm expecting it to be a good game, I don't care whatever it's a successor to something or not.

thats pretty fucking sick

Can someone please list out the game names of these? Looks really interesting

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d-did he die?

Baba Is You
Rain World
Hollow Knight
Ori and the Blind Forest
no idea
Forager
Fez
Minit

Wuppo is #5

He's alive and well, in the next cycle.

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play Rain World

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really neat

thanks anons

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are we doing this again? repostan

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