Diamonds in the rough or smash hits in the making, these are the indie games you should pay attention to
One of the joys of being involved in the indie game community is seeing all of the creativity and new ideas for interactive stories you see from aspiring new devs.
Stories that energize your emotions. Make you dream of fantastical worlds and imagine new possibilities. Think about complicated and difficult topics from a fresh and unique perspective. Even games that just entertain you for a weekend are a welcome escape from the fact that we’re surrounded on all sides by a civilization-ending death plague.
Not all indies are made equal though. For every unearthed gem there are at least 20 cringy visual novels or FNAF rip-offs. Sadly, this is one of the reasons why indie games often have a poor reputation.
Sorting through the piles of dung can take some time. This is why going forward, I plan to do monthly recaps of the games which caught my attention for the month.
These are games I find on Kickstarter. Games I come across Steam. Even games I find on Twitter showcases. These are games that may be trying to raise funding, or building a small but growing audience. But for one reason or another, they’re games that I think are interesting and deserve paying attention to.
Here is the March 2021 edition of Indie Games to Keep Your Eye On.
Aveliana
I generally like stealth-games, even if most action games implement stealth mechanics poorly. But something stood out to me about Aveliana, a 2.5D game that’s 128% funded on Kickstarter.
It could be the fact that it looks and sounds beautiful. Aveliana features smooth, pastel colors and an ambient soundtrack. Most stealth games like the Thief series use brooding or tense music meant to heighten your senses and put you on edge, but Aveliana by contrast looks and sounds and feels nice to look at. The beautiful environments are really a treat for the eyes.
On the other hand, it could be the trailer which has a cute fourth-wall breaking sequence.
Instead of going in swords a-thwacking, Aveliana has you sneaking around your enemies and taking them down commando-style. You sneak around enemies by observing them while hidden or from a distance, making note of their movement patterns and weaknesses, then either gracefully moving past them or bonking them on the head when they aren’t looking. It’s an interesting style of gameplay for a game that appears to take place in a fantasy setting.
You can support Aveliana by wishlisting it on Steam, playing the demo, following the developer on Twitter or joining the Discord.
Holomento
Holomento is a roguelike, permadeath RPG which references Zelda and Terranigma as inspirations. It’s an open world game which features roguelike elements such as procedurally generated dungeons.
The trailer features fairly generic enemies which are standard staples of RPGs: giant rats, skeletons, wolves, and so on. But Holomento caught my attention because of its settings and levels which are super impressive for a game of this size and scope.
Environmental details like the use of lighting and shading give the landscape of the open-world a mystical, serene quality to them. The devs clearly put a lot of thought and planning into building this world, at least as far as the aesthetics are concerned. Plus, the soundtrack is pretty.
Support Holomento by pledging to the Kickstarter, wishlisting it on Steam, or following the game on Twitter.
Worship
Who doesn’t enjoy worshiping the dark one and calling upon him to bring the end of days? Boring people and evangelicals, that’s who.
Worship is a cultist-themed roguelike coop game with a Lovecraftian setting, that features gameplay inspired by Pikmin, and animation and art that heavily resembles games like Don’t Starve.
In Worship, you serve an eldritch, unspeakable elder god, grow a cult to worship them, lead your followers, then finally summon them to this plane of existence.
I drew comparisons to Don’t Starve before, but while Don’t Starve had a very Tim-Burtonesque visual style with odd angles and eerie, gothic character designs, Worship has much more of an Among Us thing going on. It’s a remarkable feat when make literally stabing yourself in the hand with a sacrificial knife and drawing blood rituals in the sand somehow look cute and endearing.
You can support Worship by donating to their Kickstarter or following them on Twitter.
Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends
This is one which hits a few nostalgia buttons for me.
The Little Nemo franchise based on Windsor McCay’s comic strip which debuted in 1905. I remember watching the 1989 movie Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland when I was about 5 years old and I remember it leaving an impression on me.
However, I don’t think I personally know anyone else who has any familiarity with Little Nemo, either the comic strip, the movie, or the 1990 NES game. Little Nemo is clearly beloved by someone though because the Kickstarter has almost made its $70,000 goal.
I didn’t know much about Windsor McCay himself, but reading the Kickstarter page got me excited about the man and his work. Apparently he’s regarded as one of the best animators in American history and has inspired Walt Disney, Maurice Sendak and others. The Kickstarter is taking advantage of the fact that Little Nemo has recently become public domain.
The visuals are where Little Nemo seems to truly shine. While the NES game was a fairly standard platformer, this itteration goes the extra mile to be a tribute to McCay’s legacy. It purports to use many of the animation techniques McCay pioneered himself, and it shows. Little Nemo features surreal dreamscapes bursting with creativity and absolutely gorgeous hand-drawn animation.
Little Nemo makes the most out of the source material given to it with fantastical scenarios, including a fast-travel system where you ride in a throne resting in the mouth of a dragon and a boss level where you fight the moon.
This is a game that reignited my interest in a franchise I had nearly forgotten about. I don’t know if it will end up being a good game, but I can almost guarantee you that it will be interesting.
The Kickstarter has just 4 days to go at time of writing and will likely be over by the time this blog post is published, but you can still follower the developer on Twitter.
Curse of the Sea Rats
This is the one I’m most excited for. If I had to single out any one game on this list for success, it would probably be this one.
Curse of the Sea Rats is another game I came across via the Twitterverse. The dev team draws inspiration from the works of Don Bluth and Rennaissance-era Disney to make a game that looks and feels like one of the epic Saturday morning cartoons you grew up with as a kid, like DuckTales or TaleSpin.
Apart from being the game closest to launch, it also seems to have a bigger budget and some really exceptional marketing. I mean by god, just look at this absolutely gorgeous landing page.
Curse of the Sea Rats styles itself as an epic metroidvania (sorry, ratoidvania). The story centers around four prisoners of the British empire – an American settler, a fugitive slave from Barbados, a Japanese emissary, and a Cheyenne warrior – who are transformed into rats by a pirate witch and embark on a quest to get their human bodies back.
Everything from the animated cutscenes to the character sprites to the gameplay trailer just feels fun. It’s fun and it oozes with passion, not to mention talent. I’ve been playing a lot of really grim, dark, gloomy games this past year. Dark Souls. Darkest Dungeon. Witcher III. Death’s Gambit. It’s so refreshing to come across something light-hearted, uplifting, epic and adventurous for a change.
Plus, one of the playable characters is from Barbados, where I currently live. I thought that was really cool.
Support Curse of the Sea Rats by wishlisting it on Steam or following the devs on Twitter.
Wrapping Up
And that’s all I have for now! I don’t claim to know how any of these games are going to turn out, but I think each of these games offers something new and refreshing enough to be worth paying attention to.
What are the indie games that came across your radar in March? Were there any important ones that I missed? Tell me about them in the comments
Excellent list! Can’t wait to jump into these, particularly Curse or the Sea Rat!