I think it should be no secret that I love the indie gaming scene. My Steam library has no small number of games that a lot of people have never heard of, which is a shame. It's not a shame due to their being there, but because they really ought to see the light of day. As such, I'm going to talk briefly about why indie games are awesome for everyone and plug a few mildly obscure ones in hopes that someone reading this might play them.
Being an attempted indie game developer myself, I've looked in a fair number of places about how well a decent game might be expected to perform. While my efforts have largely been fruitless, I have found a few useful sources. Primarily, Hitbox, the team behind Dustforce, published their sales figures. So far, this has been the only place I've managed to find anything resembling reliable information about publishing an indie game. The results here are encouraging, though. A team of four people sacrificed almost everything for a year and a half, and made enough money to give themselves, all of them, at least two years to work on a new game.
Published on Steam, the game saw most of its sales after initial release from various indie game packs which Steam makes available fairly regularly. To me, this is an amazing example of capitalism at work. A good product is made and rewarded for it by the consumers, driven mostly by incentive oriented sales. It's a beautiful thing, especially since there's a huge backlash against the heavily mass-produced games we generally get out of the AAA industry.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with that term, the AAA industry refers to the cadre of huge publishers that drive the console game market. Companies like Nintendo, Square-Enix, Ubisoft, EA, and, to some extent, Valve make up this group.
Since the advent of 64-bit hardware and beyond, we've seen a trend in demanding that new releases be as visually stunning as they are mechanically detailed and, in appropriate cases, narratively driven. Unfortunately, the drive for increasingly better graphics, while it has definitely had nice results, also drives up the cost of game development. Whereas you used to need a team of 3 or 4 people to do the art for an entire console launch, at least a dozen are now required, and they're working much harder and for longer to make the assets necessary for the same length of game. Additionally, we're starting to see games that focus on spectacle, the impressive visuals in a game, over actual gameplay or narrative.
A prime example of this for me was FF12, which was gorgeous, but a combination of worthless protagonists and boring gameplay made it impossible for me to slog through. With that series, I've seen a number of arguments that this trend started as far back as FF7, which I'm inclined to agree with. While that particular game didn't hold up well to a recent replaying, it at least had an interesting plot with a number of foreshadowed twists that kept the player engaged. Contrast that with the next entry, FF8, which had a surly main character, interchangeable party members with only barely distinct personalities, and a plot so convoluted and full of hastily buried plot holes that I'm surprised I ever finished it. I've got to mention that I really like FFX, though, so it's not all bad.
I'm sure most everyone reading this has heard of this, but the most recent Tomb Raider game sold incredibly well, better than every previous game in the series combined. It was still a financial failure. This is an excellent example in the problem that the game industry has created for itself. We, the consumers, are not entirely without fault in this, either. Increasing demand for visual masterpieces has driven the cost of development so high that it's incredibly difficult to make a profit on a game that isn't either an old engine or extremely well managed.
This is where indie games come in. They come in a variety of scopes, but these games are generally produced by less than ten person teams. While they don't necessarily do much in the way of realistic 3D graphics, they can still be visual rapture and generally focus much more on actual gameplay and overall aesthetic rather than pure presentation. Braid manages to do everything extremely well, despite its lack of a 3D environment.
A lot of indie games tend to be 2D, though from the perspective of a programmer, there's not a good reason for this other than that the art is hard to obtain. Sure, there's a fair amount of math that goes into determining the player's view, but that's all been done before and is freely available to anyone with an Internet connection. Instead, it's much easier to design a 2D game. Because the cost of producing a game in a small team is so much lower than in the AAA market, new ideas can be tried without the same level of risk.
You know what? It works.
There have been quite a few indie games that manage to incorporate new ideas in interesting manners, and have been commercial successes. Even games that are just tight platformers, like the previously mentioned Dustforce, manage to find their niche and let the developers continue to make more fun for the masses. There's a big surge in indie development, and I don't think it's hard to see why.
Rather than continue to extol the virtues of this type of game development, I'm gonna throw out a list of some indie games I've enjoyed that you might, too.
First up is Guns of Icarus, a short game about defending your blimp-style airship from sky pirates in a post-apocalyptic world with a variety of guns. You run about your decks fending off foes while keeping your ship in repair. Depending on your performance, you get a variety of new artillery to choose from at the end of the level to help you succeed in delivering your goods to a hope starved world. It's a fun experience, though the short narrative between levels represents some of the worst of what indie games are known for. Still, it paints a bleak picture and is rather a lot of fun, so you should check it out!
My next highlight might be familiar to anyone who watches Extra Credits, but the demo might have me sold on it. The game is Pulse. In it, you are blind, but blind in the same way as Toph; you see the world through a sort of echolocation. I should note that this game violates the "indie games are 2D" rule. Certain objects in the environment make noise, allowing you to "see" where the immediate vicinity. Additionally, running gives you a short field of vision around yourself. The environment is populated by adorable little bunny-esque creatures and large bipedal dinosaurs that would love to nom on you. The focus is on survival and progress, though there's a fair bit of exploring to be done if you're brave enough. The Kickstarter ended recently, so this game should be coming out in the nearish future.
The last one I really want to mention, though I haven't played it as much as it deserves, is Flotilla. It's a Rogue-like game in space. For those who don't know, Rogue was a dungeon crawler of sorts featuring permadeath. Also, ASCII art.
Coincidentally, check out ADOM. It has a high learning curve, but it's a lot of fun if you're in the mood to die a lot.
Back to the game I'm ostensibly plugging. The game is Flotilla, a game of random encounters in space. Basically, weird stuff is in the universe, you encounter it, and it's hilarious. Occasionally, you'll have to fight other people with space craft, which is where most of this game's challenge comes from. You have a fleet of customizable ships that you must pit against opponents. Movement takes places in a 3D grid. In turn based combat, every move is decided in advance. You tell your ships where to move and how to orient themselves. At the same time your opponent is doing the same. When both sides are ready, the turn happens and lots of shots are fired. It's really quite enjoyable watching your ships be blown to bits, but it can be a bit frustrating as well. It plays out a bit like a round of combat in Burning Wheel. It's a lot of fun, but takes time to master.
Though I'm done giving specific plugs, I feel I should mention Bastion. It's awesome.
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