So…yeah. I dropped the ball this month.
My life kinda exploded at the beginning of the month. Things got way too hairy at the last Airbnb in Barbados where I’ve living and I had to move out in a hurry. I’m not gonna lie, August has been tough.
Three weeks of bouncing around between friend’s spare rooms and grungy Airbnbs has made it difficult to sit down for a few hours and actually play a game. Not to mention play one for long enough to write a blog post about it and properly promote it so people actually read it.
I’ve still been trying to put out content when and where I can, like the interview with the creators of Gibbous: A Cthulu Adventure I did last week.
Thankfully, my situation is now becoming more settled which leaves me more time to sit down and check out the indie games that have been floating through the internet lately – the ones with Kickstarter campaigns, early access releases, or even full releases.
Here are the indie games that caught my eye in August.
Near-Mage – Stuck in Attic
I’ll start off the first couple of entries with some indies that are particularly close to my own heart – because I know the creators and I know what they’re capable of.
Near-Mage is the second project made by my good friends Stuck in Attic – a three-person indie game studio based in Transylvania. Yes, that Transylvania. And you’d better believe that the stories and settings they create are influenced by it.
Near-Mage is a point-and-click adventure game where you combine different types of navigate to solve puzzles and navigate through the game world. I’m excited to start mixing around different dark and arcane powers to see how I can make people’s heads explode or turn them into salamanders.
In Near-Mage, you play as a recent high-school graduate who is figuring out what to do with their life when she gets invited to study to be a mage at a magic school in Transylvania. That’s a story that speaks to me as someone who was lost and directionless for a good portion of their post-college early 20’s.
The game is also inspired by creatures from traditional Romanian folklore. It features traditional hand-drawn, frame-by-frame animation that makes the world it presents feel really fun and inviting.
Add this to the hype list.
Follow Near-Mage on Twitter, support the Kickstarter, and wishlist it on Steam.
12 Minutes
A lot of the games Annapurna Interactive get labeled as “cinematic experiences” because they play more like interactive movies than anything else. That be more true of 12 Minutes than of any of their other projects – specifically, it feels like a Hitchcock movie.
The premise of 12 Minutes is that you’re stuck in an infinite time loop where you’re desperately trying to save you and your wife from a horrible situation.
One minute, you’re having a romantic candlelight dinner with your wife to celebrate her expectancy. The next, a man claiming to be a police detective bursts through the door, pins you to the ground and beats you to death with his fist.
This is the kind of stuff that haunts my nightmares. It’s gripping. It’s suspenseful. It reaches into your gut and clenches a fist around your stomach.
12 Minutes is available for $24.99 on Steam. You can also follow it on Twitter.
Lamentum
Lamentum is a game that I’ve had my eye on for a little while, and it was finally released to Steam this week.
Normally pixelart games make my eyes gloss over, but Lamentum stands out from the other games I see floating around by it’s frankly incredible character design.
Lamentum came out only a couple of days ago at time of writing and the reviews have been pretty positive. It’s a 2D survival horror exploration game.
Where this game really shines is in the art direction – particularly when it comes to the monsters. This is a survival horror game that takes place in a mid-18th-century gothic horror setting inspired by the Cthulu mythos. Lovecraft is my jam, and so is survival horror.
The enemies contort and writhe as they move across the floor, extend themselves and turn inside out as they lumber and lurch towards you as they threaten to peel off your skin.
Lamentum is available on Steam for $14.39 and you can follow the devs on Twitter.
The Bends
I’m going to take the opportunity to help promote another friend of mine. The Bends is a project in development by my friend Cody Reader a.k.a. Phantom Sloth Games.
There are few things I can think of that are more terrifying than being trapped under the ocean (see my previous review of Subnautica.) For the thalassophobes among you, this is a game that promises to deliver. The game places you in a diving suit deep below the ocean with god knows what lurking around you in the inky, black depths of the ocean.
The Bends is Cody’s project for the HPS1 Summer of Shivers game jam. As such, the game takes after the first generation of Playstation games e.g. Resident Evil, Silent Hill. It looks, sounds and feels like an early PS1 game.
This game is really freaky and I love it. I can’t wait for it to be real. You can watch the trailer at their itch.io page and follow Phantom Sloth on Twitter.
Cosmo’s Quickstop
I’ve played a lot of really grim games this year. Darkest Dungeon, Grime, Dark Souls. I guess it must come from being in a generation living through a literal apocalypse.
It’s always nice when something more uplifting like Spiritfarer comes along, or even something just offbeat or silly for it’s own sake. In comes Cosmo’s Quickstop.
Costmo’s Quickstop puts you in the role of the employee of a gas station set in space. You provide a series of services and chores for the passers-by who come through – fill up that tank, wash that window, fix that engine. Again – a bit like Spiritfarer.
Unlike that game though, the chores ramp up in pace and the stakes get higher quickly. Things start easy as pie until the tasks keep piling and piling and piling until you’re running around like a space chicken with its head on fire as shenanigans ensue.
This is a game you should check out if life has been tough lately and you need a good laugh. Cosmo’s Quickstop is available on Steam for $19.99, and be sure to follow the devs on Twitter and join the Discord.
Recompile
The last game on this list is one that I’ve seen featured on a few other roundups about indie games that made the rounds this month.
If I had to describe this game with one word, it would be “shiny.”
Recompile is a hacking Metroidvania that puts you in the role of a self-aware computer program in a fight for its own existence: you jump, fight, and hack your way through the monolithic and primary-color lit world of the Mainframe to save yourself from deletion.
This game’s defining feature is it’s hacking mechanic: you can hack locked doors, forefields, the environment and even enemies can be hacked using the same logic structures used in programming.
One thing’s for sure, this game sure LOOKS impressive. This game features intense, pulse-pounding combat and a whole sweet of particle effects to dazzle the eyes.
Buy Recompile on Steam for $19.99 and follow the lead dev on Twitter.
Wrapping Up
And that’s all I got this month! The games to follow this month are:
- Near-Mage: A beautifuly-animated point-and-click adventure game about training to be a magic user
- 12 Minutes: a gripping interactive thriller about a man stuck in a perpetual time loop
- The Bends: a game with PS1-era style graphics about being stuck in a diving suit at the bottom of the ocean
- Lamentum: a pixelart survival-horror exploration game set by 18th-century gothic and lovecraftian horror
- Cosmo’s Quickstop: A managment sim game about having to do too many things at once because it’s your job. IN SPACE!
- Recompile: a metroidvania about a sentient AI fighting and hacking its way to freedom
On a closing note, I’m working on building my email list this month. If you like getting these weekly indie game reviews and developer interviews, please consider subscribing at this link! Take this GIF of Peridot flying away on candy corn balloons in return.
