Indie Games

I'm not doing a poll this time, because that doesn't give me enough info to make a good decision. Last month, all five of of the games had good reviews and were widely-known enough that I wasn't worried about picking; this time, all the games are pretty much unknown.

Last month's theme, if it had one, was "games that had good enough reviews that I'd heard about them from multiple sources." This month, the theme is "free games from the Megabundles" so that people who don't have any of the bundles, or who only have some of them, can afford to play even if they're stretched thin with holiday expenses.

Discussion post will go up on Saturday, January 10th (or, erm, soon after), along with the next month's choices.

I looked over the free games in the bundle (well, I looked over a lot of the free games in the bundle) and discovered some things.

• Some games tagged "free" in the bundle-searcher are not actually free. I skipped those.
• A lot of free games are demos for larger games. I avoided anything that looked like "first chapter is free and here's a link to the paid version." (One of the games is incomplete, but "4 chapters out of 6 planned" sounded substantial enough.)
• Some are TTRPGs. I'm also avoiding multiplayer games, because I am a Cranky Introvert and I assume several of you are as well.
• Some are very, very short. I avoided short games with little/no replay value; a puzzle game that can be solved in 10 minutes can be fun but there's not likely much to discuss.

On to… THE GAMES! I'm putting these in alphabetical order because I can't think of any other way to arrange them. It was hard to narrow the choices down to 5; I tried to get a range of very different art & play styles. Links:

• Cromwell by The Digital Technologist: "The King is dead. Long live the Commonwealth!"

• Inside | Out by YoanAllibert: "Recursive First-Person Atmospheric Adventure."

• Lavender by Clockwork Prince: "An alternate take on the classic fairytale of Rapunzel. Puzzle game with horror elements."

• Pet the Pup at the Party by Will Herring: "you are at a house party. you do not know anybody. the clock is ticking... can you find the pup at the party??"

• Vincent: The Secret of Myers by dino999z: "A horror adventure visual novel with point & click components."


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What looks fun? What looks "interesting, but not for me?" Are there any "hard no" games here?

What I really want to know: What's your top choice, and what's your second choice?

I'm leaning toward "A Short Hike" as the first game.

"Rusty Lake" is technically in the lead, but one of those was by a voter who voted for all five, and one was my vote, which is pretty much "eh I guess I can pick what I'm interested in today?" But I picked all the games and I'd be happy to try any of them.

At that point, Rusty Lake and A Short Hike are tied, and I think A Short Hike has wider appeal. The Rusty Lake games have some frustrating parts that, on further thought, I'd rather avoid as a first game, at least for people who don't know they like that kind of thing. (I think I have done one RL game without having to find a walkthrough/hint guide that made me say "oh that's just fucking cheating.")

If there's no strong objections, I'm selecting A Short Hike as the first game.

It was in the original Racial Justice and Equality bundle, and is otherwise $8 on itch.io, Steam, GOG, Epic (where it was one of the free games at one point), and Switch, and possibly other platforms.

If you don't have it and $8 is troublesome, let me know in a DM; I may have a spare code because I pick up bundles of games all the time (and then don't keep track of them.)

Other than that - Would people prefer:
1) Make a post for game discussion soon, so we can discuss as we play, or
2) Make a discussion post next month (say, on the 12th, with discussion to close on the 19th), so there's no spoilers or pressure to comment back immediately?

I've recently discovered playlikeafeminist.com. (I blogged about it here.) I'd love to have a game circle/club, where a group of people play a game for a few weeks or a month, and then talk about it.

...Also I have approximately 5000 games that I have acquired in various itch.io bundles (plus, um, several bundles that aren't on that list) that I... mostly don't play. I downloaded a swarm of solo TTRPGs, played a handful of them, and otherwise mostly just scroll through the collections, thinking about what might be interesting to play.

So I thought it'd be nice to grab the gaming circle guidelines (short version: "It's like a book club, only for video games"), pick a handful of potential starting games, and see who else is interested.

( More under cut! )