Board 8 > Johnbobb ranks every indie game he's ever played

(+) Yeah! (+)

Wow Tokyo Jungle too low

That makes more sense. But I do think you can appreciate a game a lot without playing it much, let alone finishing. I only played like 15 levels of Battleblock myself but it was absolutely genius.

foolm0r0n posted...

That makes more sense. But I do think you can appreciate a game a lot without playing it much, let alone finishing. I only played like 15 levels of Battleblock myself but it was absolutely genius.

Yeah I get that. With Battleblock it's the combination of both the limited playtime and how distant my memory of it is. I'm sure if I rebought it now it'd do better, although I wouldn't expect it to place extremely high either way

There's one game in particular I never finished that I'm dreading ranking (I liked it enough that it escaped this tier even without me getting very far) because I know it'll be too low for B8

foolm0r0n posted...

Also Mark of the Ninja influenced practically every single indie game, every non-indie stealth, and a bunch of mobile games too. It was so influential it made itself seem run of the mill. They kinda did the same thing with Don't Starve.

Could you go into detail please? Not disagreeing, but I enjoyed MotN and never thought about it inspiring influences beyond itself.

Also, the first fifteen minutes of Battleblock Theatre is a wonderful game to only play a few minutes of. That opening cutscene is still one of my favorites.

HaRRicH posted...

Could you go into detail please? Not disagreeing, but I enjoyed MotN and never thought about it inspiring influences beyond itself.

The UI showing you full stealth info in a dietetic way, that was a hot topic for a long time. And then visually, the super stretchy 2D bone animation became very trendy.

Tokyo Jungle was funded and partially developed by Literally Sony, how is it even on this list

okay it feels indie but I dont even agree with that at all. It feels like a Sony Japan Studio game

finished another indie game, so everything below it is moving down one spot

152. Pizza Tower*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wlq6fFOqI28

Just putting an asterisk next to this one because 1. I'm really not very far in it and 2. I know for a fact it would place much higher if it was available on console, because my shitty laptop is not doing it justice. It's funny and wacky and fun to play, but as much as I like it I really don't like playing it in this format.

151. Rime
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biPr3V7-IXI

I don't really remember why I stopped playing this? Rime is pensive and cute and mystical and a little mind-bendy in its puzzles at time. It's everything I typically look for in an indie game, and yet for some reason I dropped it somewhere along the way. Maybe it was an irl distraction? I can't remember what, but Rime lands quite near the top of the list of games I want to go back to eventually.

#150 - 126

"Yeah I finished (almost) all of these games and enjoyed them for what they were but not much more than that" Tier

150. The Binding of Isaac
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27Le3kOOFQk

Very unpopular opinion, but I didn't really get into The Binding of Issac. Thematically, it's fantastic. Creepy, Biblically-horrifying shit shown through the perspective of a tiny child who attacks by crying at his enemies. Gameplay-wise, it's not my thing. Roguelike procedurally-generated dungeon crawler has to lan pretty close to the very bottom in terms of game genres I care for (with a select few exceptions we'll get to later).

149. Coffee Talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA1lEU_zTCw

I really expected to like this one more than I did. I mean, it's story-based, sad, full of weird monsters being treated like people in the Bojack Horseman way, and very gay. I just wish there was more interactivity here. The only "gameplay" is making drinks, which is pretty simple, and clicking to move forward text boxes. It's like a visual novel with less anime girls. I do like the story and all the characters though.

148. If On a Winter's Night, Four Travelers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCT-aMqrINg

This is the newest indie game I've played. I'm realizing as I write these that a lot of the games in this zone are ones where the gameplay didn't click with me much even though I enjoyed the story. IOAWN,FT is extremely dark and brutal and depressing despite being ultimately <2 hours long. It's a story of a few people on a train (implied to be going to the afterlife) telling their last memories before dying. They're all fucking sad and get progressively darker and more twisted. It's also free! Unfortunately, it suffers from just how indie it is. It's difficult to even open through Steam half the time, and has the slowest walking sped of literally any game I've ever played, which makes simple point and click tasks a pain to figure out because backtracking is painful. I swear this game would've gone up 20 spots if it just tripled the walking speed.

Johnbobb posted...

150. The Binding of Isaac
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27Le3kOOFQk

Very unpopular opinion, but I didn't really get into The Binding of Issac. Thematically, it's fantastic. Creepy, Biblically-horrifying shit shown through the perspective of a tiny child who attacks by crying at his enemies. Gameplay-wise, it's not my thing. Roguelike procedurally-generated dungeon crawler has to lan pretty close to the very bottom in terms of game genres I care for (with a select few exceptions we'll get to later).

lmao I'm like exactly the opposite. I really dislike the game's appearance and theming (I can get behind biblical horror BoI is just kinda juvenile about it) but I put in like 100 hours because the gameplay is so so so so good.

BoI is one of my very favorite games, and I did not like it the first few times I played it. If you felt like you tried it enough, you probably did -- it took me three or five tries before I gradually changed my mind -- but your mileage may vary.

I won't go near BoI because of its aesthetic. I find it incredibly offputting.

BoI theming was a huge selling point for me. I've liked Ed's games since the vagina shooter though. And I love roguelikes in general, but BoI's twin stick gameplay was kinda meh.

I don't know what the vagina shooter is, but I was fine with Meat Boy.

This is also the first I'm hearing of the vagina shooter

Plebs, all of you

It's even programmed by the same guy who did Isaac 1 (not the sequels though)

Was a little sad they didnt put that one in The Basement Collection, but I think that was back when Steam still cared about whether a game had explicit stuff

Johnbobb posted...

149. Coffee Talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA1lEU_zTCw

I really expected to like this one more than I did. I mean, it's story-based, sad, full of weird monsters being treated like people in the Bojack Horseman way, and very gay. I just wish there was more interactivity here. The only "gameplay" is making drinks, which is pretty simple, and clicking to move forward text boxes. It's like a visual novel with less anime girls. I do like the story and all the characters though.

Man I don't remember the details of the story, but I remember feeling very attached and sad after finishing the game, especially the full ending.

ScareChan posted...

Man I don't remember the details of the story, but I remember feeling very attached and sad after finishing the game, especially the full ending.

I will say the true ending of the game was easily my favorite part

147. Monument Valley 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW2KUxyq8Vg

I played Monument Valley and liked it (list spoilers whoops). I played Monument Valley 2 and also liked it but less than Monument Valley 1.

146. Bastion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TptJHeWngJs

This is the one I was dreading dropping, because I know Board 8 is pretty big on it as indie games go, and believe me, I get it. Again, this falls victim to me not playing games much on Steam, though I also had mixed feelings on the gameplay itself. I only ended up getting around an hour into Bastion, but I did really enjoy what I got through, 95% because of Rucks. Seriously, top tier narration to the point that while many details of the game have faded, Rucks is endlessly memorable. I do someday want to go back and play this one again, because I feel like I'd get a lot more out of it now than I did then. Future list hint: There is exactly 1 other Supergiant Games entry on this list, and that one I did finish.

145. Dungeons & Lesbians
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4lTTY2JgEk

I will be very surprised if anyone here has even heard of this game, much less played it. I got it as part of the Itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality they put out a few years back (a bundle I unfortunately didn't play much of because, again, not a big PC gamer. But the title and art style was enough to draw me in. It's a short, around 1-1.5 hour visual novel about a group of lesbian friends playing D&D, cutting between them as players and as characters. It's extremely cute and a fun time for how small it is.

Nah bastion is way too low. You owe it to yourself to go back and give it a fresh perspective

144. Cibele
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QyZagctAOU

Oh hey it's another cute(ish) romantic-themed game cutting between real life and the game world. It follows two young people slowly forming a romantic relationship after meeting in an MMO, cutting between the MMO gameplay (which is ok, and the game itself would be better if the MMO was better imo), gameplay of you navigating Nina's computer which is, of course, extremely early 2000s, and live-action scenes of Nina as she gets progressively more invested in the relationship. This all builds up to them flirting and eventually meeting in person, only for it to reveal the guy was basically using her for sex. It's a game more built around aesthetics and story than the gameplay, which is mostly fine given the story it's trying to tell.

143. Everybodys Gone to the Rapture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1tBl7upgDU

There are going to be quite a few of these first-person exploration games (insulting known as walking simulators, a term I've never really cared for). That being said, it's not the least accurate term to explain Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, a game whose entire concept is "every other living thing is gone and you need to figure out why." The reasoning why is interesting and the unfolding of the backstory through the memories of the two scientists investigating it is compelling, even if it unfolds slower and with less player interaction than I would've liked.

Johnbobb posted...

I will be very surprised if anyone here has even heard of this game, much less played it.

you underestimate my power level

Anyway Bastion is one of my favorite games but I'm not super surprised to see it ranked somewhat low. I think there's been a slight turn against it in recent years now that it's not really one of a kind anymore.

I agree with the Bastion ranking. I didn't find the gameplay compelling.

Bow and arrow is one of the best weapons in games

for a long time Bastion would have been my #1 if I was making this list

now its probably Hades? Supergiant is so good at video games.

Bastion is one of those games I enjoyed playing, but had no desire to continue once I'd had my fill of it.

142. Pony Island
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vLzSh1UKgs

Half of the time I think this game is a fever dream I had. It was one of Daniel Mullins' (maker of Inscryption) first games to get a real following, and is essentially you're being held captive and being forced to play an extremely simple cutesy game called Pony Island by a corrupeted demonic entity in the computer that I think was Satan and you have to escape by finding hacks and workarounds in the computer to beat the Pony Island game? I want to go back and play this one again because it was definitely confusing (intentionally) the first time around

141. Sportsfriends
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zh5EXf4rpo

I got this as a free game on PS+ years back and kept it on my PS4 for years because it was a lot of fun for having people over that basically anyone could pick up and play. It's a collection of 4 mini-games. I never played Johann Sebastian Joust (as it required PS Move, which I never bought) and I never played much Hokra, but I've played a LOT of the other two over the years. BaraBariBall is a game where you're trying to punch a ball into the opponent's half of the arena, with only a single small platform and tons of air tech to try and avoid falling to your death. Super Pole Riders is by far the one I played the most and is basically a game where each person is a pole vaulter, and you have to use the poles to simultaneously navigate the arena, attack the other players, and push the ball along a string to score on your opponent. It's an extremely simple concept that has a surprising amount of strategy. The games are extremely simple but also extremely replayable.

140. My Friend Pedro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3Efaiu6gBA

My Friend Pedro is one of the more disappointing entries on the list, only because my expectations for it were especially high. It's no secret that Devolver Digital makes good shit, and man this game looked slick. And gameplay wise, it is pretty slick and definitely very fun to play when it goes well. It's kind of a tossup though if it actually goes the way you intend to though. It's a game where the fun comes from looking like a ridiculous Matrix-esque badass, but it's not exactly badass to slow motion crash onto your face directly in front of the enemy you're diving at. But the big downside is the level design, because until you get to the goofy, over-the-top levels toward the end, you're stuck in exciting locales like "the sewers" and "old town".

139. The Cave
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5br6aYHmqU

The Cave is a very flawed game in some of its execution, but its concept is top tier. You play as a selection of 7 characters which you know nothing about beyond their archetype name, like "the knight" or "the twins" or "the hillbilly." Each character has a unique ability, and when you play as them, you gain access to special levels dedicated to their stories, where they have to relive experiences from their lives, revealing that they all did terrible, terrible things in their lives and now they are essentially stuck in purgatory, some of the worst ones being the hillbilly, who burned down an entire carnival and everyone in it after getting rejected by a girl and the time traveler who went back in time to the prehistoric era to kill her rival's entire family line

Devolver doesn't actually make anything

ok devolver releases good shit

138. Grow Home
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR-4ZoDo_yg

So I might've fucked up with this inclusion. I was like 100% sure it was an indie game without looking into it, but on a second look, it's a Ubisoft game, developed by Ubisoft Revelations, the developers of The Crew, the Driver series, and a few Just Dances. But it was apparently also made by an eight-person team as an experimental project that was never intended for public release. So calling it an indie game is a stretch, despite feeling like an indie game. It's the concept of the awkward movement, this time by a robot just learning to walk, who needs to climb giant plants all the way up to its spaceship. It's a game full of frustration, but B.U.D. is such a lovable little guy that it makes you want to keep going. He's basically the little engine that could.

137. Crayon Physics Deluxe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9R1MYxK2C8

Hundreds of shitty mobile games have tried to use this same concept, but none have ever done it as well or as iconically as Crayon Physics Deluxe, which is equal parts cute, challenging and extremely satisfying when you see your first-grader-with-imagination contraption actually manage to do the seemingly simple task of moving a ball to a star. This game came out in 2009, when I was about 16, pretty much the perfect age to start appreciating the style and challenge presented here, and I ended up spending a lot of time playing through as a teen.

136. Pandemic II and Plague Inc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMxuZiS1mMU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO6zmD4Nd2s

Speaking of games that specifically appealed to 2010s teenager me. Including both here because they are quite literally the same game. Create a virus/bacteria/etc., stealthily spread it across the world and crank up the deadliness with the goal of causing mass extinction. These games definitely feel a little different past Covid.

135. Reus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmKlAlV9IpE

Reus is a really cool game that I want to go back and try out again, because it's been a long time. You play as four giants that can shape the landscape of the earth in four types of landscapes: forest, rock, ocean and swamp. And the goal is ideally to create a prospering society, but ultimately you can only change the land itself; you can provide to the humans but what they do with what you provide them is out of your control. It's a very cool game but unfortunately one I forget I've played half the time. They did announce a Reus 2 is finally coming soon so you can bet I'll be diving into that when it comes out.

134. A Little to the Left
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9ycFAixbBI

I think I discovered this one because of Tiktok? It's a very relaxing game that can be played entirely in an afternoon. In fact, that's exactly what I did. I threw it up on stream and spent a few hours chatting with friends while arranging simple household items to make them appear organized. Bonus credit for being incredibly easy to jump into and for being open on many of the levels for alternate ways of organizing (ex. when arranging books on a shelf, organizing by height, thickness, or color will all result in success).

133. That Dragon, Cancer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60ZCaupyHhc

I don't want to rank this game. I don't even really want to talk about it. It's more of an art piece than it is a game, and a mostly well-made one. It's not on a technical level of many of the others on this list, but obviously that's not the point of the game. I don't particularly ever want to play this again, as frankly just thinking about it makes me sad.

132. Afterparty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoE7zAOtKuc

Afterparty is a game I went into with very high expectations after how positively received Oxenfree (which I may or may not have played) was. The concept of the game, in which two recently deceased friends find themselves in hell, and decide to try and escape hell by beating Satan in a drinking contest. Solid idea, interesting characters, and the game defines itself by a sort of Telltale-esque moral choice system, where every objective can be passed by one of two ways. The issue here is that the choices are largely morally grey, since, y'know, you're in hell, but the game doesn't recognize any of the choices as morally grey. There is specifically a right and wrong answer, which basically always results in sacrificing your own attempts to help out some demons. Only, other friendly demons will turn against you if you make the choice the game wants you too. Eventually you get to Satan, and there are two endings: you can beat him, resulting in the game just kinda ending without a real ending, or you can lose to him or choose to stay in hell, which is the true ending, to the point that you have to wonder why the game even has a choice. The story is cool, but the morality system drops the ball.

131. Fez
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q55RJ41hv4c

Fez is an extremely cool game mechanic with a pretty good soundtrack that I frankly can't think of much more to say about. It's very neat.

130. Apotheon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOvwpj0pw9A

Apotheon doesn't have the most unique gameplay, especially compared to some of the more interesting gimmicks and mechanics featured on this list. What it memorable gameplay, it makes up for with one the most memorable 2D art styles I've seen in a game, basing everything on ancient Greek artwork. It's also a very cool God of War-esque story of a mortal Nikandreos trying to kill the gods, and succeeding in doing so, with all of Earth left in ruins along the way, and Nikandreos taking over as the new god tasked with recreating humanity from scratch. Even though the gameplay wasn't quite my thing, and the game felt a bit dull at times, I feel like it would rank much higher for me if I'd played it more recently.

This is the biggest tier sorry

129. Erica
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28iBP_kkpdI

Another one I never would have heard of, much less played, had I not gotten it free on PS+. Making a fully live-action game in 2021 is wildly ambitious. You don't even press any buttons, just swipe up or down or left or right on your controller on phone. That being said, while it often doesn't feel much like a game, at least not much more than like Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, I still enjoyed it. It helps that Holly Early killed it as Erica, and I legitimately don't think the concept would've worked without a great lead role. I'm a also such a sucker for a psychological thriller murder mystery.

128. Zen Pinball 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFBlrc8D1z0

It's pinball and it's fun. If I remember right, I think I had the Portal table, the 20th Century Fox animation tables, the South Park tables, and most of the Marvel tables.

127. Sound Shapes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfPbJE6XDxg

There should really be more rhythm-based indie games. Well, I mean, there probably are, and I just haven't heard of them. Maybe because indie games typically can't afford music copyright music licensing? Fun fact: Beck recorded three original songs for this game and never released them outside of the game, so you can only hear them in Sound Shapes (or in YouTube recordings of levels). The gameplay balances a fine line between extremely frustrating and extremely satisfying, but is overall a chill time.

and that finally concludes this tier

seeing Apotheon made me wonder if Luftrausers will be here somewhere

NFUN posted...

seeing Apotheon made me wonder if Luftrausers will be here somewhere

do they have a connection?

Johnbobb posted...

do they have a connection?

yeah. my friend played them at around the same time when i was hanging out

#104-126

"Games I Thoroughly Enjoyed But Aren't the Kind of Thing That Comes to Mind When I'm Thinking of Games to Recommend" Tier

126. Super Time Force Ultra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kyxrll5Bc-Q

I might not be a huge run-and-gun fan, but I do love me some goofy movie references and time travel shenanigans. The game has you collecting heroes from across time to take down a time-traveling super villain, sort of like an over-the-top parody of Chrono Trigger. So while you start with a few regular soldiers, you end up with a skate-boarding dinosaur, Mad Max, Leonardo Da Vinci, and a buff machine gun-toting "Dolphin Lundgren". I had the PS4 version, which also included that guy from Order: 1886 (remember when that game was gonna be the next big thing?), the guy from Journey (which transitioned shockingly well to a run-and-gun game), and former Playstation president Shuhei Yoshida, who attacks by tweeting at enemies. Every character feels distinct and fun to play as.

125. Brawlout
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LCY6xy28uc

Around like 80 spots ago I mentioned Bounty Battle, the indie crossover fighting game which got a bunch of hype, sucked, and then was abandoned. Brawlout is the opposite of that. It was very clearly Smash Bros. inspired in its gameplay and had an original cast of goofy characters, the cool thing about them being that unlockable costumes essentially made them entirely different characters with altered moves and aesthetics. The problem was, the game was just okay and the in-game currency unlockable system was absolutely terrible. But the developers took the many criticisms to heart, redid the unlock system from scratch, improved the gameplay, and added in more free content, including four new crossover characters. In the end it was a respectably fun party fighter that I got some good times out of.

124. Hohokum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSZ0cLRJWqk

Think Snake, but x1000 and with a much more interesting color scheme. And also not really like Snake at all, except for the fact that you're flying through the air as a weird worm thing. It kind of reminds me of LocoRoco in the way that it's just silly, bright and colorful without ever being anything much deeper than that.

123. Runbow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24tvlbiijBc

Speaking of fast-paced, colorful, silly games: here's Runbow. It's Hue, but the color changing happens automatically, and quickly, as you're sprinting across platforms trying not to fall to your death. The more players you can get at once, the better it is. Seriously, this game is cheap and a bunch of fun with a group, especially a competitive group, although don't expect there to be any single-player content to speak of.

122. Monument Valley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh_4JJNULZ0

Monument Valley was something special when it first came out. I don't particularly care much for mobile games most of the time, but this succeeded by having an immediately distinct art style, a vaguely surreal story to tell, simplistic controls and interesting puzzles. There's been a lot of replicators since, but the original is still probably the best of them.

121. Outland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0fAssuGXHk

Look, that whole "changing the color changes its tangibility" concept has been done a lot in games, indie games especially, but Outland is both one of the first times I remember it being done and one of the better instances. Outland stands out from the others by not just being about its hue-changing. That's a key mechanic, but it's also a solid action game with distinct art and combat. I feel like Hollow Knight was very inspired by Outland, particularly in it's fast-paced swordplay, even if Outland's platforming isn't necessarily on the same level.

120. Maneater
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCRmiOqUgYQ

I'm kind of surprised it took this long to make a Jaws video game. Wait, they made 4 Jaws games? Maneater is pretty blatantly exactly what it's advertised, with one of the main draws for me actually being how funny it was. There are so many easter eggs littered throughout Maneater, some of my favorites being a sunken Bluth banana stand and Pennywise hiding out in the underwater sewer tunnels. Chris Parnell narrates the game and is hilarious the entire way through. The gameplay itself gets bonus points just by managing to make what is basically an entire game as an underwater level still playable, even if combat is awkward at times and it wants you to collect S-K-A-T-E or whatever Tony Hawk shit it asked for.

119. Psychonauts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeQu0kkcHHA

Is Psychonauts an indie game? I feel like most Double Fine games are arguably indie games, though I specifically excluded Brutal Legend because it feels like it's much higher budget and on a bigger scale than most others by the developer. This is definitely roundabout where the line starts to get fuzzy. Apparently Playstation listed it as part of their indie collection. Anyway, all this is to say, it didn't click with me quite as much as it did with many others. It's fun enough, and it's creative and funny, but after all was said and done I could only think "yeah, that was good." It's creativity was definitely it's high point, but the gameplay of it never really felt like something particularly special.

118. Runner3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6R5lHlTv3k

Look, there's more than one "run and jump" game on this list and there's ultimately only so much I can say about them. I always get stuck trying to be a perfectionist and in doing so take forever to actually push through the game until I'm burnt out on it.

I wish I could've liked Outland more. The gameplay was fine, I just wanted... idk, more depth? More of an actual metroidvania, I guess? I basically can't remember any part of it except the bosses, and I didn't even play it that long ago.

Maneater rules but I didn't realize it was indie.

Kenri posted...

I wish I could've liked Outland more. The gameplay was fine, I just wanted... idk, more depth? More of an actual metroidvania, I guess? I basically can't remember any part of it except the bosses, and I didn't even play it that long ago.

Maneater rules but I didn't realize it was indie.

Yeah, I definitely get that. I'm mostly going off of decade-old memories too, which is part of why I can't rate it higher. It's hard to say if it would still hold up

As for Maneater... I think? It's developed and self-published by Tripwire, but I haven't really played any of their other games and can't really account for their indie status. I've definitely seen it referred to as an indie game though

117. Little Inferno
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0TniR3Ghxc

This game was a very particular sort of disturbing, the kind you'd find in a Roald Dahl story. You play as a child whose only source of entertainment (and survival) is burning all of his toys in a fireplace, gathering money from the burned toys (don't question it) and using that money to buy more toys and various objects to burn. The story comes in the form of letters sent by a neighbor child, who sends you presents and is also an arsonist. This is the type of simple gameplay that makes indie games so interesting. The lower budget often breeds creativity, and the act of burning things and seeing how they react in the fire is addicting.

116. Tacoma
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QrjsQaKG3c

Still far from the last of these first-person exploration games. This one has a lot in common with Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, but with a handful of much-needed improvements. You're still wandering around an abandoned area trying to find out what happened, only this time it's a space station (which is frankly a more interesting environment). You still get the story from remnants of previous events, only now they're told by AI hologram recreations. The character design is disappointingly not-existent, given that they all appear as colored vague beings, but the game still does a decent job at making you care about them and their stories.

115. Cook, Serve, Delicious!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtsWILfZhxU

Is Cook, Serve, Delicious! the best cooking game ever? Maybe not, but it's definitely in the discussion. The rate at which it throws things at you becomes insane as the game goes on, to the point that it seems almost impossible to make everyone happy... just like real food service! In fact, this probably feels closer to real food service than most other restaurant-running games manage to, and I know that because I was working at a Subway when this game came out. Some day I should go back and play the sequels.

Coming off of World of Goo, Little Inferno is one of my bigger disappointments in indie games, I can only think of one bigger off the top of my head which Im almost positive will be on the list later. Its just completely uninteresting to me.

114. Donut County
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWt1GPkfzkM

This is essentially the anti-Katamari, where instead of drawing everything into a big ball to make it grow bigger, you're drawing everything into a hole in the ground... to make it grow bigger. Think Katamari but with a late-Millennial/early-Gen Z sense of humor. It's cute and very fun but unfortunately very short lived.

113. Entwined
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv5SEynpCWQ

Pixelopus closing down fucking sucks. They were essentially a team of 9 college students funded by Sony, last about a decade, put out two very solid games, and then shut down earlier this year. I don't think Entwined was quite the success it was expected to be (I remember when it was first announced a decade ago, it was basically predicted to be the next Journey) but it was still extremely pretty and pleasant to play.

112. The Looker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvAJbmPHoHM

If you liked The Witness, go play The Looker. If you hated The Witness, also go play The Looker.

111. Machinarium
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwZBdWRSBRs

What would you call this art style? It's like, kind of a storybook Dr. Seuss style, but a little grittier and darker. It reminds me a lot of David Firth's later stuff. It's a point-and-click adventure where you play a tiny robot trying to do... something? It's the type of adventure game where half the time you only really seem to learn why you were doing something after you've done it. One of the coolest things about Machinarium was the way it handled hints and tips, because like more games in the genre, things are rarely straight forward. The tips make it more accessible to those not as tuned in to puzzle games while still not telling you the answers outright.

110. McPixel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0FLuVkk8UI

https://i.imgur.com/GHjdBC6.gif

WazzupGenius00 posted...

Coming off of World of Goo, Little Inferno is one of my bigger disappointments in indie games, I can only think of one bigger off the top of my head which Im almost positive will be on the list later. Its just completely uninteresting to me.

What was it about Little Inferno that disappointed you?

I definitely liked LI more of the two at the time, but that was also 10 years and I havent' really played either since

Johnbobb posted...

112. The Looker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvAJbmPHoHM

If you liked The Witness, go play The Looker. If you hated The Witness, also go play The Looker.

Shout-outs to the hint button.