I might be a bit younger than some of Icrontic’s readers, but I still grew up playing DOS games on floppy. These were the good times. Hundreds of games, each trying to be cheaper (in price) than the other to make a sale. Now we get the opposite: big shot, major-studio games for $70 each. I don’t necessarily like gaming now. I’ve always preferred retro and always will. Who played Pac-Man on an original arcade machine? How about the first Lemmings? Commander Keen anyone? You get my point.
Indie gaming has picked up the torch from these classics. Indies are the new frontier for inexpensive, high quality games, and because of the resurgence of Indie gaming, we’re entering a new era where it’s easy to fall in love with pure gaming all over again—games that don’t require multi-million dollar development budgets.
I would like to introduce you to some fantastic Indie games, some more well-known than others. I want to start with two re-imagining of games that I really love. Both of these games are free PC downloads.
First is my current love affair, Mari0. Technically, it’s the original Super Mario Bros that came out in 1985. The twist is, Mario now carries the Portal Gun from Valve’s Portal. Not only does it give you infinite possibilities for getting around, it gives you a good laugh every time. You can also customize your Mario, from a selection of 30 hats, to his colour and the colour of his portals. The best part is, you can play with four players. It gets messy because you get lost in portals, but it’s rather funny.
Another Mario-related game I enjoy is Super Smash Land—a parody of Super Smash Bros that came out in 1999 on the N64, but as if it was made on the original Game Boy (yes, that big grey chunk of plastic with a black and brown screen). With some classic characters from the original game (Mario, Pikachu, Link & Kirby), you also get two new secret characters to unlock. Any of you who enjoyed (or still enjoy) the Super Smash franchise will love this game.
Before I go any further, I want to talk to you about the Humble Bundle. It’s the best way to get a bunch of indie games at once, because it’s a pay-what-you-want bundle of games, with profit going to some charities (Child’s Play for instance) and some to the developers themselves. You choose exactly what amount of your money goes to whom. With games that run on most OSes (Windows, Mac OS, Linux, sometimes for Android and even some Steam games), you can get four or more great games for an awesome price, and feel good by giving to charity. They started in 2010 and they have done eleven bundles so far, with six in 2011. Subscribe to their mailing list to keep up on their bundles.
Allow me to go in the puzzle department for a while, and end with some mind blowing, rage inducing, controller throwing games.
Braid, a marvelously well-designed game with a soothing soundtrack, will have you making your way through platform levels, Mario-style, but with some time-altering abilities to solve problems (i.e.: get a key into a door). You will cry, you will get mad, and you will look on YouTube for some solutions. With the ability to rewind time or place time distortion fields, you have to use your logic skills and the items not affected by time to go through some crazy cloud-jumping and Goomba-like furry monster-dodging to collect all puzzle pieces that will unlock the mystery that hides in your attic… It’s available on XBLA, PSN, PC, Mac OS & Linux.
Ever dreamed of repairing a Steampunk clock? Good, now you can with Cogs on PC, Mac OS & IOS devices. Based on those really old puzzles where you have a bunch of squares and move them one by one to recreate a picture or align numbers in the right order (is there a name for it?), the goal is simple: There’s one cog outside the puzzle that spins, and one that doesn’t: connect them with those in the middle. The game gets harder and at some point you’ll have steam pipes to connect and some other surprises as well. With three game modes and awards based on time and number of moves it took you to solve each level, Cogs will make you scratch your head more than a few times.
Let me quickly finish with games I somehow doubt you don’t know about, but I want to include them since they are highly fun and amazing:
World of Goo, on PC, Mac OS, Linux, IOS, WiiWare, and Android, is another puzzle solving game à la Lemmings. You have goo balls, and you can build structures by attaching them together. You need to get to a pipe at the end of the level—a seemingly simple task that will suck you into this game and force you to try to get all achievements (called OCD: Obsessive Completion Distinction criteria).
Plants VS Zombies is available on pretty much any device you can think of. I don’t think any of you have never heard of this game. It’s a tower defence game in which you use various plants to repel a zombie invasion. Also for PC users: you get two hats for Team Fortress 2. There’s also an homage to this game inside of World of Warcraft, granting you the possibility to get a Sunflower pet companion. You can get a free trial on PC, so if you don’t know about this game, go for it!
Indie gaming is where it’s at!
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