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The onslaught of indie games continues as Lair of the Clockwork God has been announced as coming to the Switch (as well as PS4 and Xbox One).

Game is a mix of platforming and point and click but as weird as that sounds, it's reviewed well so far from its PC release so could be one to watch. Its supposedly up for pre-order with a discount.

Crazy good couple of weeks for indie games though. Jenny LeClue - Detectivu is also releasing next week alongside the likes of Hypnospace Outlaw and Windbound and that's just off the top of my head and with having had Spiritfarer, Manifold Garden and A Short Hike (seriously, buy this game. Ignore the visual style as the game is just so wholesome and a joy to play. Think BOTW's openness mixed with Animal Crossing) just release this week.

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The Last Campfire, from Hello Games, is set to release on Apple Arcade later this week (27th August I believe) but Nintendo have updated the game page on their websites in North America and Europe, putting a price up for the eventual Switch release ($14.99/£13.49). It's set for release this Summer and with their now being a price and the Apple Arcade release date, I wouldn't be surprised to see a date very soon. Might get a date during Opening Night Live on Thursday, which is the 27th so it could launch alongside the Apple Arcade version. Fingers crossed anyway that its either this week or follows the same pattern that Amanita Design did with Creaks where they released that 10 days later on consoles after the Apple Arcade release.

Obligatory trailer for to remind what the game was. Liked the look of it when it was shown a few years back at the Game Awards so looking forward to playing it (that Game Awards appearance is what makes me think we'll see a showing on Thursday with either a shadow drop of release date for next week).

Edit: Also looks like we'll be seeing Little Nightmares 2 at Opening Night Live on Thursday also.

The game is still slated for a 2020 release so I wonder if we'll get a new trailer showing gameplay (there was rumours early on that this one might be more 3D movement as opposed to the original which while allowing you to move along the Z axis was still primarily a 2.5D puzzle platformer) and a release date for later this year, if it hasn't slipped which it doesn't seem to have done so far.

Edited by Ganepark32
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The Last Campfire out now:

Looks quite good!

Edited by MindFreak
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Looking forward to playing The Last Campfire but there's a long list of games I've got on the go so who knows when I'll get to it. An interesting tidbit with regards to the game is that it comes from some of the creative team behind the Lostwind games on the Wii. You can definitely see some of that DNA in the style of those games.

Anyway, arcade racer Hotshot Racing from Curve Digital, Lucky Mountain Games and Sumo Nottingham is releasing on Switch (and PC, PS4 and Xbox One with Gamepass) on September 10th.

Looks good visually. Curious as to the depth of content but could be one to watch.

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Another indie hitting in the next couple of weeks to keep an eye out for. Mo:Astray is releasing on Sept. 10th. Its up for pre-order now woth a 10% discount.

I've had this on my Steam Wishlist for a while now and heard really good things about it. Finally get a chance to sit down with it in the coming weeks so lookibg forward to it.

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Playing The Touryst. It seems like it should be a charming and relaxing game, but the camera controls are so incredibly frustrating.

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Trailers for some indie games coming out of Gamescom.

Scourgebringer has an official release date: October 21st for Switch and Xbox One (it'll be on Gamepass for the latter). It's out now on in early access on PC and will have its full release then for that platform too.

Had a chance to play the demo for the game during the summer showcase on the Xbox One and loved what I played. A cross between Celeste and Dead Cells is pretty much what you get. Plays and handles well so for fans of rogue likes, one to keep an eye out for.

Here's a new trailer for Minute of Islands, which is coming to PC, Mac and consoles next year (a Switch version is amongst those). Very nice art style and looks like it'll be a point and click perhaps. Again, could be interesting.

While this Summer has perhaps lacked big announcements for next gen or Switch, indie devs do seem to be continuing to put out some good stuff.

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First gameplay from the recently announced remake of Wonder Boy IV, Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World:

Looks really rough and requires a significant amount of polish to look decent. Yikes. 

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26 minutes ago, MindFreak said:

First gameplay from the recently announced remake of Wonder Boy IV, Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World:

Looks really rough and requires a significant amount of polish to look decent. Yikes. 

I think the problem is that they're trying to remain too faithful to the original Mega Drive animations and it just looks odd and stiff on a 3D Model.

Take the third game remake that Lizard Cube did. Similar physics, but you can tell they put in effort to add some more movement to the characters.

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Of course, hand drawn sprites trump 3D models any day, but some flourish in the animations could go a long way to make it look better.

Also, why do these modern Wonder Boy games keep changing the studio who makes them? You already have two great modernised games for the series and Sega still decide to try a different team? Weird.

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Played a bit of Night Call myself thanks to it being on Gamepass on Xbox One and enjoyed it enough. Its definitely not going to be for everyone as there's not a lot to the actual detective work but I found the characters you meet along the way interesting enough and found the conversations well written, even if your dialogue choices don't seem to have a huge bearing on where they head in most cases.

Cloudpunk has a release date, October 15th. Been waiting for this one since it was released on PC and now can't wait to play on console. I just hope its been optimised well enough as I know some people had issues with it running on their rigs. Cool that they're including the first person view point they recently added to the PC version. Its very much a narrative focused game but its definitely the kind of game I love to play because of that so looking forward to picking it up.

 

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Got A Short Hike for review the other day. Completed it yesterday with about 2 hours on the clock (8 or 9 golden feathers). I felt that I had seen most of what the game had to offer at that point and went for the top (also thinking that there was more to do after the 7 feathers limit). I enjoyed it a lot, it was very relaxing and had a good vibe. It's just so short that it is hard to judge properly, the concept would wear incredibly thin had it been stretched to 5 hours, I think. Still, it's cheap, it's enjoyable, it's charmning and when you go for the smooth pixels, it's great to look at. 4/5 from me.

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Carto is releasing on 27th October. 

I don't think we got a release date before, but I'm not 100%, so sorry if I'm repeating old news! 

Edited by Julius

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Monster Sanctuary is coming to the Switch on December 8th. 

Quote

Embark on an epic adventure and explore mystical lands as an aspiring Monster Keeper. Discover a huge array of monsters and assemble your team - you’ll need their power to thrive in battle and uncover an expansive world!

Looks like a really unique blend of monster taming and platforming, remember seeing a bit of it last year or the year before, and it's made some huge strides since. One I'll try to keep an eye out for!

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Can’t see any mention of this game on here but I’m not surprised it has flown under everyone’s radar. I think it’s a reboot of the old games for the ZX Spectrum which I enjoyed growing up  

Horace is a fantastic platformer with a great gravity based mechanic that should appeal to anyone growing up watching 80s and 90s British TV and a fan of retro games especially, but is a must for any platforming fan’s collection. Think it was only made by a team of 2 and launched on Steam last year I think, but has recently come out for Switch. I bought it at launch but have only recently started playing it. About four hours in so far and I’m having a blast with it. Only £11 as well.



 

 

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I'm currently playing The Last Campfire. About 3/5 into the game now and it's chill, relaxing. The puzzles are on the easy side, never spent more than a few minutes and almost always clear them first try. The overworld puzzles are a bit less obvious at times and require a good bit of exploration, which is nice. The game looks good and Ember controls fine (though I could have used that the dash was more a constant run).

It shows some technical hiccups, though. It's funny, I've just played Doom Eternal where there was absolutely no frame drops or slowdowns despite being incredibly fast-paced. This, however, has some issues with some stuttering and a second of freezing every minute or so. It doesn't matter but it does seem a bit sloppy.

The game is not really good but it's a fine game and I feel it's worth going through it, especially since I got it when it was discounted in December and it's a short game.

Edited by MindFreak
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There are so many indie games I want to play, its hard to know where to start. Good to know the industry is so buoyant though. What's the financial health of these small studios, are they coping well?

Edited by LazyBoy

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5 hours ago, LazyBoy said:

What's the financial health of these small studios, are they coping well?

I can't recall profit margins, but I've routinely seen claims like "60% of our sales are on Switch!" which leads me to believe they are doing well enough...?

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Yeah feels like every big indie studio would say sales on Switch were more than all other platforms combined. 

I wonder if Gamepass has changed the situation though. I haven’t bought an indie on Switch for a while as they seem to end up on Xbox eventually. 

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4 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

Yeah feels like every big indie studio would say sales on Switch were more than all other platforms combined. 

I wonder if Gamepass has changed the situation though. I haven’t bought an indie on Switch for a while as they seem to end up on Xbox eventually. 

I read a thing last year that mentioned the impact of that which stuck in my mind. They thought indie games were still selling like mad on the eShop because Switch-only players will have friends with Gamepass or whatever, who recommend the game to them and they pony up.

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Finished The Last Campfire just now. While I did like the game initially, I think many of the puzzles were too easy and obvious. The joy of a good puzzle game is the satisfaction of solving a tricky puzzle, and I know it's a hard balance to get byt sadly, many of the puzzles in this are just trivial, the solution obvious and the way to get there was set in stone with only a few possible ways to start them. Moving a box around to make a path, light a candle with a box with fire, make the water sink. Yeah, sure, there were good puzzles but only a handful. It's not bad but if you are a pro puzzler, then there are better puzzle games out there. 

The story is good, it's telling a tale of death and acceptance in a good and light manner, I liked that. 

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