01/10/2024
The gaming industry landscape can be broken down into three types of games. AAA, those are your huge budget games, with billions of marketing dollars poured into them. Your God of Wars, Call of Duty's Grand Theft Autos, Halos, etc.
Then their is the AA games. These are slightly less budgeted games, released by smaller teams, through major publishers. These tend to be games that push new ideas or combine existing game mechanics into some new idea, they also tend to be more niche. Some well known AA's include series like Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Metro series, etc.
And finally, at the top of the heap is Indie games. Indies are titles that were developed by anywhere from a single dev to a small team (usually less than 10 people, but not always). And they are fu***ng glorious! I have had more fun playing Indies (and AA 's) than any other type of game. Indie's used to be at the bottom of the heap, but thanks to the AAA market committing su***de by letting too many FOMO tactics and cheap microtransactions take over their games, they have made AAA games less popular than ever. Which has also created a massive backlash in the gaming community.
And I just can't get over how amazing the Indie gaming scene is right now. It's been growing exponentially since the mid 2010's, when Steam gave so many new devs the opportunity to release their dream projects. Whereas AAA games are almost always created to appeal to the lowest common denominator, with an incredibly dumbed down interface, simple game mechanics, and boring repetitive gameplay, Indies and AA's tend to eschew all of that in favor of innovation and above all, that all important "Fun Factor".
And lately Indies have gotten their hands on Unreal Engine 5, which has given Indies the same toolset and options as any AAA developer! I'm going to close this post by listing some of my favorite Indies of the past couple years.
Flowstone Saga (JRPG / Tetris)
Realm of Ink (Hades inspired Roguelike)
Echo Point Nova (Open-World motion-based FPS Exploration Sandbox)
Lorn's Lure (First-Person Exploration/Climbing)
Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles (Tactical / RPG / Sim)
Fallen Aces (Comic Noir 1930's FPS)
I Am Your Beast (FPS / Arcade Arena)
Little Kitty Big City (Cozy Games)
Intravenous I & II (Top-Down Stealth Shooter)
Mullet Mad Jack (FPS Roguelike)
Station to Station (Train themed puzzle game)
Steamworld Heist I & II (Tactical RPG)
Vladik Brutal (Half-Life inspired FPS)
Blood West (Horror Western Immersive-Sim)
Everspace 2 (Space Arcade/Flight Shooter)
Fortune's Run (Sci-Fi Immersive Sim)
En Garde! (comic book inspired fencing game)
Sands of Aura (Third-Person Soulslike)
Sunless Sea (RPG / Text Adventure)
Sunless Skies (RPG / Text Adventure)
Zero Sievert (SP top-down extraction game)
Trepang 2 (FPS)
Tales of Kenzara: Zau (Metroidvania)
Minishoot Adventures (Zelda-inspired bullet hell)
Chained Echoes (JRPG)
McPixel 3 (Hard to desscribe. Kind of like Warioware)
Katana Zero (Side-Scrolling Action / Tactics)
Fading Afternoon (Side-Scrolling Yakuza life sim / brawler)
Elderborn (Conan inspired first-person melee)
Sanabi (Metroidvania)
Eastshade (Painting RPG / Cozy game)
Romancelvania (Dating-Sim / Metroidvania)
Lunacid (Immersive-Sim / King's Field inspired)
Rollers of The Realm (Pinball RPG)
The Legend of Tianding (Metroidvania based on famous Singaporean folk hero)
Astlibra (Metroidvania / RPG)
Cultic (FPS / Boomer Shooter)
Crystal Project (JRPG / Exploration)
Roboquest (FPS / Roguelite)
Hollow Knight (Metroidvania)
Subnautica (FPS / Aquatic Exploration)
Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon (Skyrim-like RPG)
Sprawl (Motion-based FPS)
Gunfire: Reborn (FPS / Roguelite)
Wartales (Tactics / Strategy / RPG)
Midnight Fight Express (Arcade / Brawler)
HAAK (Metroidvania)
Teardown (Open-World Physics Sandbox / Heist / RPG?)
Selaco (FPS / Immersive-Sim)
Gloomwood (Victorian FPS / Stealth / Immersive Sim)
Hellpoint (Sci-Fi / Lovecraftian Soulslike)
Terror of Hemasaurus (Rampage clone)
Prodeus (FPS / Boomer Shooter)
Source of Madness (Lovecraftian Roguelite)
Warm Snow (Hades inspired Roguelite)
Nobody Saves The World (Zelda-inspired Metroidvania)
Hunt The Night (Zelda-inspired Soulslike)
Vigil: The Longest Night (Metroidvania)
Death's Gambit: Afterlife (Metroidvania)
Noita (You really need to look this one, up, I can't explain it lol, it's fu***ng crazy though)
Cloudpunk (Cyberpunk Uber Simulator)
The Last Faith (Metroidvania)
Yoku's Island Express (Pinball RPG)
Salt & Sanctuary (Soulslike)
Disco Elysium (Immersive-Sim / RPG / Text Adventure)
Spiritfarer (Super sad game about ushering souls into the afterlife)
Hard West II (Horror Westernn Tactics / Strategy RPG)
Wildermyth (Turn-Based RPG)
Blacktail (Slavic Fantasy inspired FPS / Exploration)
Tunic (Zelda-Inspired puzzle game)
The Last Hero of Nostalgaia (Soulslike parody)
Bang-On Balls: Chronicles (Mario 3D inspired platformer)
