Games have come a long way since the time when 8 or so colored pixels were good enough to be considered a person. In the modern era anything less than photo realism will make me spit out my Mountain Dew in disgust. In this age, however, it's fairly easy to overlook the ones who have benefited the most from this development. I'm talking of course of independent game developers.
Indie developers, as they are known, really first started coming into their prominence with a game you may have heard of called Minecraft, which first came out for public play back in May of 2009 with incredibly staggering success. Minecraft at the time was released by then-indie studio Mojang, and was one of the first games in the post-64-bit-age to show us that graphics weren't the heart of what makes games fun. It was actually, if you can believe it, game play!
You can tell just by looking why this is the second most sold PC game of all time.
The smashing success of Minecraft and the new advancements in technology opened the floodgates for a new breed of indie games. Throughout the years, we have seen many, many indie games worthy of praise and others...not so much. Right now I would like to take some time to talk about some of my personal favorite indie games that have come out over the years.
Hollow Knight came out in 2017 from a small studio by the name of Team Cherry. The game itself is a 2D metroidvania adventure game that takes place in the long-forgotten kingdom of Hollow Nest - a kingdom inhabited by sentient bugs which has fallen to ruin through unknown circumstances. You play as an unnamed knight who finds himself in this lost kingdom, tasked with uncovering its deepest secrets to stop an ancient corruption that threatens to wipe out what little remains of the kingdom.
This is one of my favorite indie games but I still have yet to beat it. Now a disclaimer: before I say this, let me explain myself before an angry horde shows up at my door. This game is the Dark Souls of side-scrolling platformers. Now put your pitchforks down for a second and let me tell you why. This game is very difficult, BUT more than that it also has a lot of similar mechanics. You can only save at benches where you can sit your knight down to allow him to rest. Any death you suffer will return you to the last bench you sat at. Upon your death you lose all your Geo aka the in-game currency, and must make your way back to where you died to reclaim it after you beat your shade, which is essentially you, except it can fly and wants you dead. Even the lore has a similar feel to Dark Souls in that you need to comb through flavor text of items just to get a complete picture of whats happened. With fun combat, exploration, and lore, this game is easily worth a play.
Ori and the blind Forest was a 2015 game released by Moon Studios. Ori, like Hollow Kinght, is also a metroidvania adventure game. Though, where Hollow Knight seems to focus more on combat, Ori is more about the platforming. Taking place in the mystic forest of Nibel you play as Ori, a spirit from the spirit tree who must find their way home and reawaken the forest to heal the land. Throughout your adventure you must face many dangerous traps and monstrous creatures to complete your journey and as you play you gain various acrobatic abilities adding more complexity and variety to the platforming nature of the game.
Now let me start by saying this game made me cry within the first 30 minutes. In terms of indie games, this is definietly one of the most beautiful in my opinion, with bright colors and a glowing particles everything just seems to pop with life. The soundtrack is so beautiful and relaxing to listen to and really helps set the atmosphere for the rest of the game. It also has a unique save mechanic in which you can save anywhere, as long as it is safe, but you have a set amount of saves that you can use before needing to refill them. In a game where a single wrong jump can send you face first into a pit of spikes, save management plays a very important consideration. I have played and replayed this game many times because, even though I know what to do and where to go, it's still fun playing through it just to take it all in once again.
At this point almost everyone knows about Five Nights at Freddy's, whether for its unique style and jump scares or... other... reasons. In this series you typically play a night guard of some sort of establishment, usually of a pizzeria. However at night the happy Chuck-E-Cheese-esque animatronics come to life in an attempt to kill you and stuff you forcibly into a murder suit. You must survive increasingly difficult nights with time and power management from a stationary position.
Now on the surface this game doesn't seem like anything too notable, with both the gameplay and graphics being rather simple, but that's whats very interesting about this series. Scott Cawthon managed to take the simple game he made and fill it with a mysterious lore that some debate whether or not even he knew the full story of what he was doing. That was one of the biggest draws of this game for me at least. With a dark mystery involving the secret murder of children and the identity of said killer being a point of debate for many, this was a game that definitely caught my attention..
Oh man, where to start with this one? Undertale is an RPG game made by Toby Fox. In the game you play as a child who fell down deep into the earth to the kingdom of monsters. While down there you discover the story of the kingdom and how the monsters came to be sealed within the earth. The gameplay is all about choice: you can either go around befriending every one you meet or slaughtering them without mercy. The dialogue and events that happen can vary greatly depending on which path you walk. With a unique spin on RPG turn-based-fighting, the game seems to appeal to almost every type of gamer, from a completionist to just a casual player. Even if you want to have a bad time.
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With Undertale, Toby Fox took a common gameplay element, turn based battle systems, and put his own unique spin on them: instead of just fighting you could find other ways of winning a battle. Whether through talking, running, or fighting, the way you played was up to you. While not the prettiest game to look at due to its simple graphics, the story and gameplay felt really fun and unique. The game also has a few meta elements as well: characters knowing how many times you have done certain things or what you did to your precious save file, giving it a bit more of depth of character development. Top it off with quite a few mysterious secrets and this game had me from beginning to end.
If you stayed with me for this long then, hey, thank you! But you may be wondering well, so what? The reason I wanted to talk about indie games was because how much they mean for me and gamers in general.
When gaming first reached prominence in popular culture, the only way you could make it working in the industry was if you were lucky enough to get into a top tier gaming company, and even then the chances of getting to make a game the way you wanted wasn't very likely. Indie games changed all of that. They showed that you didn't need a big company to make a great game; if you had the dedication and time then anyone could do it. However the unfortunate side is - not everyone does.
Being an indie developer doesn't come without risks: there's a chance no one will even hear about your game without the backing of a large studio, or if they do, maybe people won't like it and the thing you dedicated so much time and effort into won't make it anywhere. Conversely, your indie project could even become too big for you to keep up.
With Triple A studios being able to release top tier games around once a year, a small developer would be hard pressed to keep up. A lot of people seem to forget that and the demand becomes too great to meet. Through everything, this is why I will always give indie games a chance, Even if I don't like them, I will do my best to at least see what these people tried so hard to make. Much like with the music industry, I try to give start ups a chance because in the end - that's all any of us can do.
