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I'm not quite sure how it happened. Really, I'm just as clueless as anyone. There I was, minding my own business, burning through (all three! Dear lord I swear on everything holy that by the end of it I'd forgotten what sunlight felt/looked like) the Xenosaga series, doing no harm to anyone. "This is good," I thought to myself. "This is good storytelling. Maybe rough in patches. Maybe the visual aesthetics's an acquired taste. But this is good. This is good storytelling." And it was. By cracky, it was brilliant and huge and poignant and new. And by the end of it I never wanted to see anything like it again.
But the gaming bug bites still itched, and I needed a new wonder to steal my time. So out with the PS2! In with the... the dusty, disused, poor neglected Super NES! How I missed thee! We shall never part! Oh, the hours of fun we've had! Oh, this time will be different! Oh, never again to spill upon your resilient, radiant frame Kool Aid and Grape Soda and Jack Daniels and why exactly you've been such a magnet for beverages through the years I'm still unsure.
So I relived the joys of Super Mario All Stars. Flirted with a Link to the Past. Made bedroom eyes at Donkey Kong Country from across the room and gently held Chrono Trigger's hands. And I thought to myself, "This is good." And it was good. "This is good gameplay. Simple, intuitive mechanics that can be picked up in minutes and enjoyed for hours." And by the end of it, as you may suspect, I never wanted to see any of it again.
I don't know how it happened. But the bites were itching worse now than ever, so off I ventured into the indie games frontier. Here are some of the treasures I've accrued along the way. Little wonders marked on a dirty, rumply map. Maybe, I thought, these strange new territories might be easier to navigate if others marked their own favorites on the map. This is that place. On the map. Your hearts are your markers, your thumbs your pins.
Indie Masterpiece #1: I Wanna Be the Guy
I'll get it over with. I don't like hard games. This game is hard. Very hard. I will not, and can not, be held responsible for any damages done to person or property including but not limited to hair loss, impairments of vision (because you will NOT go to bed until you've cleared that bastard orchard from HELL) or other faculties or spontaneous aneurysms. That being said, this game is also inexplicably fun and incredibly humorous. It's a platformer from hell, the ultimate golden pillar erected in the shrine of The Computer Cheats. You will die. You will die a lot. And you will enjoy every second of it.
Indie Masterpiece #2: Jason Rohrer
You may remember Jason Rohrer as the creator of Cultivation, a strange blend of social-gaming and farm-simming. You may not. It's worth checking out, but his more recent games are where the gold is. Calling Passage and Gravitation "games" is even a bit of a stretch; they're more like songs, really, written in the format of a computer game. They're mood pieces. You play 'em when you're feeling a tiny sting of melancholy, or when you need a little boost of joy. There's not much to say about the gameplay; in Passage, you walk. You can explore. You can search for treasure. You can find and take a spouse, which makes the walk a little slower and the end a little sadder, but the world seems brighter in between. Gravitation is much the same. They aren't really games that do much in terms of gameplay, and they don't have much to "say," but they make you feel, dammit!
Indie Masterpiece #3: Psychosomnium
Pure surreality. A puzzling, perhaps nonsensical, plot that unfolds like an episode of the Twilight Zone put through an anime filter and adapted into a GameBoy title. Art direction is top notch. Music is good and very fitting. Gameplay is sort of typical platformer/adventure fare, but the overall aesthetics make it a unique experience.
So, uh... Whatcha got, 'lithgames? |
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