Don’t have a lot of time but want to play some games from the indie sphere? Here’s a sampling of short indie games that’ll charm you for as long as they last.
Venba – 1.5 hours
One of the great things about shortform indie games is that they can often give you a glimpse into a country or culture that’s completely foreign to you. If you love learning alongside playing, or you just feel like experiencing how the other half lives, indie games are for you. Trying to find just one specific example of that is like trying to find a needle in a needlestack, but for our money, there’s a lot to love about a game like Venba. If nothing else, you’ll come out of the experience with a mountain of new meal recipes if you’re looking to expand your horizons in the kitchen. Only Venba will have you saying “I’ve come up with a new recipe” like Ignis from Final Fantasy XV.
Venba follows the titular character, an Indian woman from the Tamil Nadu state, who immigrates to Canada alongside her husband, and eventually has a son. The game follows the family as they try to ingratiate themselves in Western culture, while struggling to maintain their connection to Tamil culture. The main gameplay loop concerns cooking, as Venba tries to restore her mother’s old cookbook, remembering old recipes through trial and error while maintaining conversation with her husband and son. There are some dialogue options, but the story is fairly linear, making Venba a short and bittersweet affair.
Sayonara Wild Hearts – 1.5 hours
Sayonara Wild Hearts isn’t the first game in the world to explore the marriage between gameplay and music, and it’s definitely not going to be the last. What makes Sayonara Wild Hearts unique in its approach is that it isn’t simply just another rhythm action game. There’s moments where the music guides the gameplay and obstacles, but for the most part, Sayonara Wild Hearts exists more like a playable album. Each level is its own song, with specific music and background, and the visuals on offer here are just oozing with variety and charm that makes Sayonara Wild Hearts one of the most unforgettable journeys in gaming. It’s also pretty short, so it can easily shoot up to the top of your backlog.
The story here in Sayonara Wild Hearts is both literal and metaphorical, leaving plenty up to interpretation for players to imprint their own meaning. Still, the game’s heavily based on the major arcana of the Tarot deck, with five personifications of the deck stealing all harmony in an alternative universe. Meanwhile, in the real world, a young woman who’s undergoing a massive heartbreak is transported to that alternate universe as The Fool, fighting against evil by sword fighting and riding motorbikes in a world that’s incredibly neon pink, blue and purple. Sayonara Wild Hearts is gorgeous, and frankly, the only thing louder than the colour palette is the music after we turn it up to max volume and sing our hearts out.
The Dark Queen of Mortholme – 30 minutes
The formula of most games has always been pretty simple: there’s a big evil thing, and you should go murder it to save the world. Why mess with the classics, right? Well, The Dark Queen Of Mortholme posits a different idea. Instead of playing as the hero, why don’t you just play as the final boss instead? If you need more convincing, you’re playing as a goth baddie. Yeah, now we’ve got you. The Dark Queen of Mortholme is a narrative focused with dialogue choices, but unlike other games in that genre where all you’re doing is walking around rooms and trying to find things to interact with, Mortholme allows you to play as the Queen as she murders the hero.
An indie game set entirely within the Queen’s throne room, you control the Queen as they’re forced in battle with the all-conquering hero, only for the hero to be slain. Sounds like evil wins, right, but the hero has this uncanny knack of coming back for more. And more. And more. Between each fight though, the Queen and the Hero exchange conversations about how the two came to be in the situation they’re in, and depending on the choices you make throughout the game, you can affect the ending in a variety of ways. Do you and the hero come to a bit of an understanding about your situation, or will evil reign eternal? The choice is yours, and you better make the right one.
Despelote – 2 hours
If you want games about football, or soccer if you’re wrong, you don’t need to look too far to find some fantastic examples. EA Sports FC, eFootball, though we’ll still call it Pro Evo, and Rematch all offer excellent on the pitch action, while games like Football Manager give you all the stats and spreadsheets you need to truly succeed off the pitch. Everything about the beautiful game has been digitised for your benefit, except for being a fan. Not only that, but being a football fan in a country that’s never qualified for the World Cup before and is putting their hopes on an international team that could genuinely reach the biggest stage yet. That’s the perspective that Despelote gives you, and it’s a stunning example of games as art that should be on your wishlist.
On the surface, the game is a semi-autobiographical tale of an eight-year-old Julián Cordero, roaming the streets of Quito, the Ecuadorian capital city in the midst of the country’s qualifying stages for the 2002 World Cup. Essentially, you’re just playing kickabout and interacting with the locals, but interspersed beyond all of that are elements of hope for something better in the midst of the country’s economic turmoil, the expectations and weight parents place on you and the way memory distorts your perception of events. To say more would be to rob Despelote of some remarkable moments of introspection, but if you’ve ever got into a debate with someone about games as art, Despelote is the frontrunner in gaming’s defense.
Astebreed – 2 hours
Do you know which games are exceptionally short? Old school arcade games. They were always just a couple of levels long, meaning you could often blast through them in half an hour, but the game would rob you of every single coin on your person before you ever saw the credits. Astebreed is a return to those kinds of play, but instead of a ludicrously punishing difficulty, you’ve got an intense and challenging shoot ‘em up that isn’t going to make you want to throw your controller at the wall in rage. Whether you’re a diehard shoot ‘em up fiend or you just want to do a bit of casual enemy blasting, Astebreed is a bite sized experience that deserves to be consumed by everyone.
Astebreed puts you in a mech piloted by one Roy Becker, as he finds himself in the midst of a galactic war against a technologically advanced alien race. Now, shoot ‘em ups tend to come in three forms: horizontal shooters like R-Type, Einhander or Cho Aniki if you’re a freak; vertical shooters like 1942, Ikaruga and Raiden or 3D shooters like Rez or Child Of Eden. There’s less examples of that third one, if we’re honest, but what makes Astebreed such a mind-blowing experience to play is how seamlessly the game switches between all three throughout the game’s levels. Sure, some of those later levels might be a bit tough, but this is a shoot ‘em up firing on all cylinders. Besides, even if it’s a short game, the amount of unlocks means there’s always a reason to go back.
Adios – 1.5 hours
They say that one of the hardest things to do is quitting “the life”. You know, walking away clean from the underworld. How many stories, whether in game, film or TV form, have seen people trying and failing to escape the mob? Adios is certainly another one of those games, but instead of flashy gunfights and everything else you’d expect from the last third of a Mafia game, Adios gives players time to sit with the characters and choices they make, making it a much more cerebral affair, and at around 2 hours to complete, it’s one that everyone can make time for. Again, just don’t expect plenty of explosions and fist fights.
Adios casts players as a humble pig farmer in rural Kansas who may or may not have been disposing of dead bodies for the mob. Anyone who’s ever watched the film Snatch will know how effective pigs are at getting rid of bodies, but we can’t just sit here talking about Snatch, as much as we’d like to. There’s indie games to gush over. Anyway, your old friend who just so happens to be a mob hitman has come round to drop off another stiff, just as you’ve finally managed to pluck up the courage to tell him you’re quitting. Naturally, he wants you to stay, partially because he needs to get rid of the body, but also because he’ll have another body to dispose of if he can’t convince you otherwise. The choices you make over the course of this fateful October day will determine how the rest of your life goes, and how long it’ll actually be.
The Procession To Calvary – 2.5 hours
Do we talk about point and click adventure games too much? It feels like across both channels recently we’ve had a few point and click games on the docket, so if we’ve been boring you with that, feel free to let us know, but before you do, let us talk to you about The Procession To Calvary. One of the key methods of making a point and click adventure game actually memorable and worth playing is by having some good looking backgrounds to click on and inspect. Nobody is going to want to play a point and click adventure game if all the visuals look like a monkey just throwing shit at the screen, so it helps to have some gorgeous visuals. How much more gorgeous can you get than Renaissance paintings though?
The Procession To Calvary feels like a point and click game designed to look like a collage of priceless artwork, and for that alone it’s both unique and eye-catching. Players explore real life paintings created by the likes of Rembrandt, Michelangelo and all the other greats of the Renaissance era, as you try to chase down the tyrant Heavenly Peter after the events of a Holy War. That might sound like a bit of a stuffy premise, until you see naked men wrestling and sample some of the game’s actual writing, and you quickly realise this whole game is a comedic farce. Anyone who’s been waiting for some kind of playable Monty Python game should consider this a worthy substitute and improvement on Monty Python & The Quest For The Holy Grail. Turns out, there’s more than a few Python games. Anyway.
Umurangi Generation – 2.5 hours
Before we start, if you’re wondering what Umurangi means, it’s a Maori or Te Reo word for Red Sky, and given the gameplay of Umurangi Generation, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the bulk of the game is about taking pretty pictures of sunsets. You know, a red sky? Taking pictures is definitely the crux of Umurangi Generation’s interactivity, but there’s a huge amount of environmental storytelling on offer in this game that you need to be paying attention to at all times. Sure, you could just take pictures until the credits roll, but if you really want to make the most of your short time with Umurangi Generation, take a beat during the levels and really soak in the atmosphere.
Set during a period of time the game’s Steam description states is the “shitty future”, Umurangi Generation follows a group of friends stuck in a UN occupation of Tauranga, New Zealand. Instead of grabbing a gun and rebelling against the world, you’ve got a camera that you upgrade over the course of the game, letting you choose to document the world as is. Each level has various challenges to complete, which will test your photography skills if you’re looking for some meatier gameplay hooks, but regardless of your enthusiasm Umurangi Generation forces you to bear witness to a world that’s steadily approaching the worst. If that feels a bit too like real life at the minute, this next game should be less of a bitter pill to swallow.
Thank Goodness You’re Here! – 2.5 hours
There’s a worry that the primary British, or at least English exports tend to be from down south, meaning anyone in America or other countries seem to think that people either talk posh or like they’re from Eastenders. See: not posh. England isn’t a monolith though, and if you’ve been looking for a hint as to what life in other parts of the country might be like, Thank Goodness You’re Here could be the answer. Granted, not everyone in the North of England looks quite as weird as the characters in Thank Goodness You’re Here, but this is a chance to experience different dialects and styles of humour that England has to offer without having to wait for the new Fable. As for the British in the comments: ey up chuck, welcome ‘ome.
Thank Goodness You’re Here is an adventure game that’s designed to be both surreal and incredibly funny. You play as a travelling salesman, who inexplicably is yellow and tiny, as they arrive in the fictional English town of Barnsworth in the North of England. They’re here for a meeting with the mayor, but the lad is busy so you decide to explore the town and mingle with the locals. Spoiler alert; all of the locals are barmy eccentric silly sods who are all looking for you to do them a favour. Every new interaction is an opportunity to be taken off guard by hilarious situations, well written weirdos, making Thank Goodness You’re Here a short but incredibly sweet adventure.
En Garde – 4 hours
En Garde might be the longest game in the video, with a full playthrough maybe taking about 4 hours-ish, so if you don’t quite think it counts as a short game, fair play to you, but four hours is about the same length as a standard Call of Duty campaign. It’s still short, basically, and it’s going to feel a hell of a lot shorter when you actually start playing this incredibly fun action game. Best described as Sifu for swashbucklers, En Garde takes its name very literally. Instead of beating your opponents with your bare hands, or using some kind of massive greatsword, En Garde is about being a mischievous little rogue with a rapier and an attitude for messing with people. Think Zorro, The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo and so on.
Players control Adalia de Volador as she battles the evil Count Duke’s forces across four episodes, trading barbs and blows with the soldiers as a hero of the people. As a combat game, you’ve got your typical mix of attacks, dodges and parries to get an advantage over your opponent, but En Garde rewards players for dispatching their foes with Panache. Literally, there’s a Panache meter which lets you use stronger moves. Now, you can run in and stab everyone and look like a psycho killer, or you can kite everyone into the path of a falling chandelier, looking like a suave scallywag in the process. Us? We’re going for overly flamboyant slapstick, every time.
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