Calling out indie decline

[Humanity has risen!]

In this thread, post examples of indie games that exemplify everything that we despise about them. Including, but not limited to the following:

-An art style purposing to imitate 8 or 16 bit consoles or older computers
-Made in Flash or with an art style indistinguishable from Flash
-Overbearing "chiptune" music
-Cartoon characters who behave in unbelievably stupid ways, or like Teletubbies on speed
-Cartoon characters that are too zany
-Cartoon characters with stupid gimmicks
-Cartoon characters designed in otherwise unbelievably stupid ways
-Tries too hard to be funny
-An art style that tries too hard to look "artistic"
-An art style that tries too hard to woo the hipster crowd
-Meta game jokes used in any other way than sparingly
-Uses gameplay gimmicks

And the worst sin of all

-No decent, non-gimmicky gameplay to back it all up

Imagine my disappointment when I looked at the latest game added to GOG's library

http://af.gog.com/en/gamecard/edna_harvey_the_breakout_harveys_new_eyes/?as=1649904300

I don't even need to add a single world to convey that it is the incarnation of every single point listed above.

 

[Don Peste]

I sense much fear in you.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92962578

so quirky and zany xD

 

[Humanity has risen!]

I sense much fear in you.

Why, because I oppose stuff that used to be whimsical Quake 2 mods or Newgrounds Flash games to be made into actual games with even more pretentiousness?

 

[Admiral jimbob]

That's something that does get me about indies. Their rise - which I think is overall a good thing - has coincided with a huge decline of imaginative mods. Even around the early days of Half-Life 2, we had Dystopia, The Hidden, plenty of others, all with very active player bases. NWN had a huge range of campaigns and modules twice the size of the official campaign. Half-Life 1 speaks for itself and the Morrowind modding scene was a thriving, varied place with real talent and ingenuity. Now, SP games just have more and more ludicrous porn mods and fanfic companions, multiplayer mods are deserted, sparse and amateurish, and the people who used to save these scenes have moved on to making shitty indie fare.

It's not as black and white as all that, but the link never really occurred to me. Sad state of affairs. Can't blame people for wanting to make money off their work, I suppose.

 

[Commissar Draco]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92962578

The Last actually is good idea for 50-ties/Hemingway style African Safari game with adventure part, shooting Elephants with BIG GUNS and running from machete rape squads Mau Mau Freedom Fighters.

 

[Fart Master]

When one of these quirky fake 8/16bit platformers manages to raise tens of thousands of dollars on Kickstarter. Oh wait thats already the reality.

 

[Don Peste]

I sense much fear in you.

Why, because I oppose stuff that used to be whimsical Quake 2 mods or Newgrounds Flash games to be made into actual games with even more pretentiousness?

Fuck pretentiousness. I don't like it, I don't buy it. I see a stupid RPG Maker game or Minecraft clone in Greenlight, I vote no.
I think it's better to ignore them than to rage. Only give attention to the games who deserve it.

Edit: Like Grimoire [griːmˈwɑː].

 

[Humanity has risen!]

When one of these quirky fake 8/16bit platformers manages to raise tens of thousands of dollars on Kickstarter. Oh wait thats already the reality.

The thing is, I'm not that opposés to this when there's am actual game beyond this, which is why I don't despise stuff like Wizorb or River City Ransom. The Wizorb guys are making a Metal Slug clone now. I had to support a decent Montreal game studio.

 

[Infinitron]

Indie

PixelBlob - You're a blob and you have to eat things to get bigger and bigger. Exactly like Katamari Damacy but with pixel art design by a non-artist and crude, Flash-style animation.

Rogueish - This randomly-generated dungeon crawler has terrible graphics, extreme difficulty and is similar to all those games you downloaded for free ten years ago. On your TV.

​

Torturing of Tim - Rogueish, but with gross monsters and a weird, overwrought plot informing all of the mindless dungeon crawling. And you can have pets that are dead baby ghosts.

Music Presser - Uses your catalog of mp3s stored on your OUYA to generate levels of flashing lights and Dr. Who tunnels while you press buttons in time to the rhythm.

Platform Legends - This hilarious Mario ripoff skewers all those old video game conventions of the NES era that all people who should be playing games are way too young to remember.

Anime Dreadfulness - Somebody spent 1,000 hours translating a game where two anime characters play chess. You don't play chess, you guide their conversation, which will determine the winner. Upgrade their chess shirts to gain fans and collect items to sell in your chess shop between conversations.

Peter Molyneux's Hat Sir - Details are limited, but we know you play as a lost hat blowing through steampunk streets and it will change the way you think of love.

Woof - This indie darling is a wordless wonder of design in which you play a small puppy in a wooded area. Without any guidance, you are left to form a narrative. Are you splashing through a bubbling stream to find your way back home or just out to have fun and chase butterflies in a beautiful, sunlit glen? It doesn't matter, nobody is keeping score and the whole game is a metaphor for dying.

​

Incomprehensible Winning Star: Nephilim - Epileptic nightmare of spinning, flashing wire frame spaceships and swirling bullets set to terrible chiptunes. Includes giant bosses named after fallen angels fromParadise Lost and a triangular, green player ship that must be guided through a pocket of non-bullets.

Dug Craft - A cooperative builder similar to Minecraft, but 2D and using Dig Dug characters, sound effects, gameplay and story. It's actually just Dig Dug, but some autistic kid in Nebraska figured out how to make a working virtual CPU out of Dig Dug tunnels and trapped Fygars, so it's amazing now.

Spoiler

Cosmope

The Developer's Pitch:

"I woke up. The dawn had scrubbed her scent away. All these mistakes, all these regrets were as nothing and somehow... I knew they were everything.​

When lives take different directions, it is as a starling bursting forth from infinite realities. Each different. Only one way back to her."​

Why We're Looking Forward To It:
Cosmope promises to combine gravity with physics in a space-like setting that is relaxing and artistic. With several shapes moving around the screen at any given time and an infinite number of things those shapes might represent, it will give players plenty of food for thought.

.fluiduous

The Developer's Pitch:

"Mankind is but a tadpole in the ocean. What if that ocean is digital? What would a high score even mean to the soul? Would infinite lives not strip away our humanity rather than extending it?​

The haunting remnants of land-based life thwart us at every step. Take control. Turn a 1 into a 0. Tell the people closest to you that you love them. Swim the slipstream of time.​

There are many journeys in life. Life is also a thing in life."​

Why We're Looking Forward To It:
A unique blend of physics and time manipulation, .fluiduous lets you aim at things and swing to get points, or rewind time if you didn't get enough points. This richly atmospheric and relaxing title should appeal to thoughtful individuals who can understant its genius.

tranScEEnD

The Developer's Pitch:

"You are a seed, the manifestation of potential. The wind is your means of transportation - and the deliverer of your fate.​

Embark on a relaxing journey through a visionary world unlike anything you've ever seen before.​

tranScEEnD features a one-of-a-kind gameplay experience that blends time manipulation with gravity. In the end it turns out you weren't really a seed at all, but an alien ship and the whole thing was a metaphor for sexual abuse."​

Why We're Looking Forward To It:
This has the potential to be the most exciting seed-centric indie game since 2009's SEED (Actually A UFO). Although the two games are obviously different - tranScEEnD has brownish backgrounds - we're hoping for a game that outdoes its spiritual successor.

Re:LAX

The Developer's Pitch:

"Combining an innovative time manipulation gameplay mechanic with rhyhm-based action, Re:LAX is the only game featuring a blob of energy investigating his partner's death by absorbing other blobs and using physics to spit them out at enemies."​

Why We're Looking Forward To It:
It isn't mentioned in any of the press releases yet, but we've discovered that Re:LAX will also feature a Gears Of War-style cover system. Your level of protection will vary depending on how captivated you are by the beauty of the game, how much it reminds you of poetry, and how chill you are in general.

Fizzix

The Developer's Pitch:

"We have rendered bubbles of several sizes. Keith bought a synthesizer, and we're hoping to find a way to plug it in and record some music.​

I just read a shitload of T.S. Eliot and am pretty sure I can reword some of his stuff to make it better."​

Why We're Looking Forward To It:
Keith has a synthesizer. We've seen it, and it has a waltz preset.

Kinetica

The Developer's Pitch:

"You are a UFO, navigating through a unique and beautiful environment with gravity-based physics. At the end, you discover that you were actually a seed all along and that everything was a metaphor for seeds."​

Why We're Looking Forward To It:
Everything we've seen of the game oozes atmosphere. We're especially excited by the technical prowess of Kinetica's graphical engine, which is capable of rendering circles, lines, colored lighting AND bloom.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

The Binding of Isaac is borderline

 

[dnf]

Cross posting from the BTE, 2deep4u games:

Scam History


Are 3D platformers too complex for you? Then remove all the platforming challenges, the enemies, the time limits, most of the moves, and most of the stage design, and cut the length down to a couple of hours so that no one will have enough time to get bored by the fact that all they are really doing is pressing forward, and voilà: you've got Journey (2012).



Are flight simulators too complex for you? Then remove all the complexity and replace it with essentially a mindless collectathon on auto-pilot, and voilà: you've got Flower (2009).



Was Pac-Man too complex for you? Then remove the mazes, most of the ghosts, the scoring, and most of the risk (hence also the reward), and reskin the entire thing with programmer graphics and bleep-blop "music", and voilà: you've got Flow (2006)."

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Indie games are just like AAA-titles, some of them are good, some of them are shit, most are mediocre.

That's how it's been since the start, Big deal. Move along.

 

[sea]

I blame the fact that we stopped stoning these sorts of people to death at birth.

 

[Brinko]

I don't know if this counts in terms of HHR's criteria but the only indie game I've played was some insipid Newgrounds game where all you did was walk a captive to a trench for execution and it was supposed to bring awareness to Africans killing each other. I specifically remember the gaming press shooting loads all over this turd and praising it as one of the best examples of videogames as art.

 

[potatojohn]

"Decline" is a long-term trend, not specific games, and there's no trend of decline in indie games like there was with mainstream games that declined into cinematic popamoles.

 

[Metro]

The Binding of Isaac is borderline

It's a good game, you just have shit taste. If a game is good it doesn't matter what medium it's presented in whether it's 8-bit or flash or has an art style you personally dislike.

 

[spekkio]

Define "indie".



No, really.
I played games like Aquaria and Machinarium and liked both a lot. Not sure if those are "indie". Acquaria was made by 2 guys AFAIR. Machinarium was made using Flash.

 

[MetalCraze]

Codex what happened to "Indies save gaming, fuck you"?

 

[Admiral jimbob]

p-people have different opinions to each other??? i don't understandg[hg[honj mh

 

[Phelot]

While I really like seeing video games try new things, I do agree that some of them just stink of hipsterism. I'd rather see new takes on gameplay rather than trying to cram philosophical BS into the game.

 

[Metro]

Codex what happened to "Indies save gaming, fuck you"?

No one ever advanced that argument other than you to set up a straw man. There's good and bad everything. Every single indie game doesn't 'save gaming' but the good ones (in combination with digital distribution) have helped the PC gaming landscape by obsoleting publishers. While you might think PC gaming is terrible can you imagine how much worse it would be if all we had to choose from were AAA offerings from Acti-Blizz, EA, Bethesderp, etc?

 

[dnf]

Define "indie".



No, really.
I played games like Aquaria and Machinarium and liked both a lot. Not sure if those are "indie". Acquaria was made by 2 guys AFAIR. Machinarium was made using Flash.

These games are pratically the exceptions of the "indie scene". Aquaria is a great 2d action game and probaly the best these indies has to offer, and Machinarium is a good adventure,though it has popamolitis like a built in walkthrough.

 

[Excidium]

Machinarium was a terrible adventure game. Very charming, though.

 

[Infinitron]

Codex what happened to "Indies save gaming, fuck you"?

No one ever advanced that argument other than you to set up a straw man. There's good and bad everything. Every single indie game doesn't 'save gaming' but the good ones (in combination with digital distribution) have helped the PC gaming landscape by obsoleting publishers. While you might think PC gaming is terrible can you imagine how much worse it would be if all we had to choose from were AAA offerings from Acti-Blizz, EA, Bethesderp, etc?

It's Skyway, he thinks the developers are the true evil behind the curtain and the publishers are just a scapegoat.