3 Cheap and Challenging Indie Games To Test Yourself With

Part of being a filthy hipster is only liking things that are obscure and non-mainstream.

If you’re really good at it you’ll manage to like obscure things that have the potential to become mainstream, thus giving you a chance to then hate it for “selling out”. Whilst following this fabled path, I discovered something – I was still having fun, but it wasn’t costing me £49.99 per game. I felt like an 8-bit Christopher Columbus, stumbling onto a gigantic pixel mine in this vast unknown territory. The games I was finding were innovative, fun and often had unique art styles to cover up their lack of CGI budget, which end up giving a lot of them a cult feel. The best part is that the indie games were HARD. Properly hard, not just a few retries of a level, but days and days of despair and untold horrors at the hands of pixelated bosses.

 

1. Risk of Rain

When talking about brutal difficulty and pixelated bosses, you don’t need to look much further than Risk of Rain. Developed by two students from the University of Washington under the team name of Hopoo Games, Risk of Rain is a 2D platformer rogue-like thing which will have you weeping and pleading with various deities. The player is a survivor of a space-freight crash on a mysterious planet; the aim of the game is to clear mobs on each level, earning enough gold to open chests and receive random items – when you are ready you can activate the teleporter and take on the boss!

Beware dawdling to grind levels and items though, as the longer you take to beat the game, the harder the game becomes, leading to frantic searches for the teleporter and anguished screams as more and more elite mobs spawn on your head. The items work in a similar way to those in Binding of Isaac, each spawning randomly and not giving you a huge amount of information on how it works. (You can always check the wiki but only dweebs do that).

The game is nothing special visually, with a classic 2D art style and fairly repetitive enemies, but keeps it varied enough level to level that the player is unlikely to get bored. The gameplay is the real heavy hitter, with multiple characters to choose from – each one bringing their own specialised set of skills to the table. For example, the Commando kites mobs with a diving roll whilst tacking on huge damage with a rail gun. In comparison, Acrid gets up in the enemies face and stacks a bunch of different poisons to deal monstrous damage. This wide choice in styles allows for a high skill tier, and multiple ways to complete the game. The variety implemented in this way leaves plenty of room for experimentation and has the added bonus of encouraging the best part of this game – the co-op. Different combinations of characters and experimental item builds can lead to hilarity, or despair. Flip your shit at a mate because he picked up the Frost Shield you desperately needed, or laugh as he picks up his 5th pair of Headstompers, leading to some poor enemies getting flattened.

Finally, the cherry on top of this cake is the soundtrack. Produced by Chris Christodolou, it is a beautiful composition of songs to die to. Even the menu music has had me sat in silence, enjoying every bar of my impending doom. Seriously, the music in this game is incredible and should be listened too even if you don’t play it. However, I would thoroughly recommend this game to any fan of platformers or rogue-likes, and anyone who is just looking to become depressed at how bad they are at games.

 

2. The Long Dark

Have you ever wanted to be trapped in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but the clothes on your back? Then this masterpiece of loneliness is for you. It has been brought to us by Hinterland Studio, a new independent group created by Raphael van Lierop – producer of Company of Heroes. The studio is an absolute powerhouse of names in the gaming industry with developers from such classics as Saints Row and Red Faction, and their first foray with their new initiative has already begun successfully.

The plot is this; your plane has crashed due to a geo-magnetic disaster which is believed to have wiped out most of humanity. You are stranded, cold and alone in the unforgiving landscape of northern Canada. It is you versus Mother Nature in a tumultuous conflict that will only have one loser (it’s you, you’re going to lose.)

Last night I finally survived my first 24 hours in the bitter white death-scape, which welcomed me into its arms shortly after this milestone. I was chuffed to bits, having successfully purified some water, fought off a wolf, cooked a bit of frozen deer that I harvested with a knife and holed myself up in what appeared to be a hunting lodge. I scoured the lodge for more firewood, and my searching was rewarded with the discovery of a rifle and one bullet. Motivated by this discovery and the Risk of Rain soundtrack which I am STILL LISTENING TO, I braved the wilderness. Armed to the teeth, with a full belly and proper winter clothing – I was unstoppable.

That was when I heard the ice crack.

So what, I was dead, again? My hopes and dreams of running the Canadian outback from on high were shattered like thin ice, by thin ice. Despite this complete cock-up on my part, I was straight back into a new save file, scouring the ground for frozen corpses and running for shelter from the freezing wind. There is no two ways about it, this game is immensely playable – with none of the zombies and ghouls plaguing every other survival game, it is a refreshing break to only have to worry about your own vitals and the occasional wolf. Yet, even without monsters this game is possibly the toughest survival I have played to this day, and it has so much more to be added. The slightly cell-shaded graphics and the endearing character dialogue only add to this joyous winter bundle, so if you’re dreaming of a white Christmas then this is definitely an early-access title that you should look into.

 

3. Prison Architect

Have you ever dreamed of building and running your own prison? No? Me neither actually, so why am I still playing Introversion Software’s Prison Architect…?

The problems I’m having with Prison Architect are thus:

I’m completely addicted to it.

There aren’t enough hours in the day to play it as much as I want to.

There doesn’t seem to be a cure for PA addiction.

So where do I begin? The game starts you off in a neat little landscape and deposits you with a wedge of cash, some workmen and a letter explaining the basics of prison maintenance. I immediately ignored all the advice and built a giant Doom Fortress. Alas my doom fortress had no water to 80% of its rooms and was far too big for the 8 prisoners I currently looked after (not to mention it completely bankrupted me). Back to the drawing board, and still determined to be silly, I constructed a panopticon style prison where all the prisoners govern themselves through the unerring paranoia of whether or not they are being watched, as per the teachings laid before me by the social theorist Jeremy Bentham.

Unfortunately my prisoners either hadn’t read much Michel Foucault, or they just hated postmodernism because they all immediately escaped.

Back to the drawing board again then, and now a little more reserved, I began to build a logical working prison. I am now in charge of over 100 prisoners and am running the shit out of that place. My utility network of electrical cables and water pipes is a thing of beauty, my guard patrol schedule rivals that of Buckingham palace and my prisoners are kept in line through a combination of good food and brutality.

If you are fond of any God games such as The Sims or Theme Hospital then you will definitely enjoy Prison Architect and even if you don’t think it’s up your street I urge you to have a try – let your inner sadist free as you keep these pixelated pariahs locked away, and test your efficiency on a grand scale. All in all this game is very satisfying and for the low price it garners on Steam it is 100% worth it.

Originally posted Dec 12th, 2016

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