Indie Games

[drahkon]

@Sméagol

 

I have both :p

 

Bought the Season Pass of Kentucky Route Zero when it was available as a Daily Deal on Steam

Haven't really played it, yet, but will get to it soon.

 

Papers, Please is an interesting little game. Not finished with it, but I'd still recommend it.

 

 

I have my eyes on Hammerwatch

 

 

Looks kinda...cute

And as always, buying the game from its homepage is much cheaper than buying it on Steam (6€ instead of 9€).

 

Downloading the Beta now, to try it out.

[flameboy]

So been going through http://www.freeindiegam.es browsing the odd game and this has to be one of the wierdest games ever:

 

http://www.nowness.com/day/2013/9/4/3305/ballroom-battle

 

 

BALLROOM BATTLE. I get the feeling it's viral marketing for something.

[Sméagol]

Feels a bit weird bumping this one, but I quickly wanted to comment on Twelve Minutes which I believe is an XBox exclusive, though I played it on Steam.

After the disappointment that was Loop Hero, which I absolutely hate, comes another. But Twelve Minutes doesn't have the excuse of being a roguelite.

On paper, it looks like it would be something I'm into. A Timeloop point & click adventure. But it's an example of cool concept poor execution. I can forgive a bit of jankiness (slow mousepointer, a softlock at one point because an npc couldn't figure out what to do etc), but some mechanics already got more annoying and tedious. One thing that's a Point&click sin in my opinion, is having to click on something twice (or thrice even) to discover something and progress. There was no story reason to do so.  At this point I started looking at guides, as it was becoming too much trial and error.

Then there's the problem of scale.You think limiting the scope to an apartment would make things easier for the developers, but they actually made things too ambitious by making it a game that's focussed on story and dialogue. In any other timeloop game I've played, if you fail in one loop, you go try something else in the next. While on the one hand I've seen a lot of variations of how things play out, on the other hand it doesn't feel like nearly enough. There's not actually a whole lot you can click on, but npc's may react differently depending on what was said earlier. And this is where you can see the devs didn't account for a lot of stuff. One example, the guy that invades your home, wants a particular pocketwatch. If you put the pocketwatch on the table, and hide in the closet, that guy simply ignores the pocketwatch at first, and always goes looking for you in the closet even if he has no reason to do so. That's not how I expected it to play out. And there are a lot of examples of "wouldn't it be easier of I could say this or that". And the trial and error gets tedious. If you want to try out a small variation at the end of the loop, you'll have to repeat a lot of actions a lot of time, and there's plenty of waiting involved. There is some streamlining (in certain situations you can fast forward), but overall it's still tedious.

Then the story itself. Can't fully comment on it as I haven't finished it (yet?). I was intrigued at first, but the last twist had me facepalming. "No they're not doing that are they?" It's so convoluted. Maybe if the writing was good they could make it work, but what I've seen so far doesn't convince me they can, and I'm at a point where I barely care to continue. I also have no idea why they decided to cast James McAvoy, Daisy Ridly and Willem Dafoe. The characters don't have their likeness, and James McAvoy and Daisy Ridley don't sound like themselves either (American accents). Why bother casting them? They're also not voice actors, and aren't super convincing. I mean, I've heard much worse too, but still. Willem Dafoe is recognizable, and also the best performance, but I don't know why they didn't simply cast voice actors instead.

Anyway, that's more text than I had in mind for a short indie game, but there you have it. I don't recommend it, and I doubt my opinion is going to change if I continue playing it.